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Eugenics and the welfare state
Indy Bhullar explores the ideas of William Beveridge and Richard Titmuss, who were strongly influenced by eugenic thinking, and yet championed the idea of the welfare state.
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Wonder years
The confusion and secrecy surrounding his condition seriously affected Chris’s mental health, blighting his teenage years. But somehow he began to hope and plan for the future.
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Getting around the rules of sex education
What should we and shouldn’t we teach our teens about sex, inside and outside of the classroom?
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Beating the bodysnatchers
When a rise in grave robbing called for strong measures, mortsafes became the unassailable solution. Allison C. Meier explores.
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Acting, disableism and inclusive theatre
Deaf theatre director Jenny Sealey discusses inclusivity, community and the resilience of disabled actors.
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Disability, education and prejudice
In the 1960s and 1970s, thalidomide survivors had to fight for a proper education. If they weren’t brought up in institutions, they were often viewed as objects of curiosity, encountering verbal and sometimes physical abuse, both at school and in the world beyond.
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Born different
For Chris North, being born intersex in the 1940s meant his many childhood hospital visits, tests and operations were not explained or discussed. As he reveals, doctors encouraged strict secrecy.
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Doctor in the house
A house is not always a home – sometimes it’s impermanent, impersonal. But other aspects of the itinerant life can be the source of a sense of home.
- In pictures
- In pictures
A short history of wellbeing through exercise
During the current pandemic, billions of people around the world are confined to home, making mood-boosting daily exercise indispensable. Discover how humans from the ancient Greeks onwards have realised the benefits of physical activity.
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Rocking psychiatry with R D Laing
Turn on, tune in, drop out. Discover how six rock songs from the 1960s and 1970s link the ideas of famous therapist R D Laing with the era’s counterculture.
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Rediscovering Margaret Louden, a forgotten NHS hero
Bored during lockdown, David Jesudason started bin diving at night. Then a chance discovery set him on a new path: to tell the story of a forgotten female surgeon.
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The art of soundproof design
Too much noise is more than annoying – it has serious negative effects on health and cognitive ability. Find out how designers and architects are mitigating the downsides of sound.
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‘Jessy’, a film about cerebral palsy
How the 1950s British film industry portrayed this disease.
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The law of periodicity for menstruation
Dr Edward Clarke's Law of Periodicity claimed that females who were educated alongside their male peers were developing their minds at the expense of their reproductive organs.
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The Ladies of Llangollen
As we celebrate LGBT History Month, Sarah Bentley explores the relationship between the two 18th-century women known as the Ladies of Llangollen.
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Native Americans through the 19th-century lens
The stories behind Rinehart's photographs may not be as black and white as they first appear.
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How injury changed my brain
Meg Fozzard, who experienced a brain injury in her 20s, writes about the huge impact it's had on her life, and talks to others with similar injuries.
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The doctor who challenged the unicorn myth
Our era of fake news and medical misinformation is nothing new. Estelle Paranque relays the thrusts and parries of a 440-year-old row over a magical cure-all, the unicorn horn.
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The freedom to provoke
Jamie Hale talks to performer and director Emma Selwyn about the joy of creating work that celebrates, rather than suppresses, autistic behaviours.
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Sex in graphic novels
Sex and sexuality have long been explored in the history of the graphic novel.
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Laughing at disaster
If joking around can help us cope when the worst happens, could comedy be a useful way to connect on climate change?
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A brief history of ventilation
As ventilators continue to play an important part in helping very ill coronavirus patients, medical historian Dr Lindsey Fitzharris traces their development from the first attempts at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation through centuries of medical crises.
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The painter, the psychiatrist and a fashion for hysteria
A dramatic painting brings a famous event in medical history alive. But it also tells a tale about the health preoccupations of the time.
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An insider’s view of Play Well
Curator Shamita Sharmacharja offers behind-the-scenes insights into an exhibition about the serious business of play.
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Intelligence testing, race and eugenics
Specious ideas and assumptions about intelligence that were born during the great flourishing of eugenics well over 100 years ago still inform the British education system today, as Nazlin Bhimani reveals.