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14 results
  • Article
  • Article

The secrets your teeth hold

| Michael A Berthaume

Discover how innocuous-looking human teeth hold a wealth of hidden information about our diet, health and evolution.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Death around the world in ten objects

| Elissavet Ntoulia

Death is many things to many cultures: violent, holy, frightening, calm, disgusting... or just a gateway to another life.

  • Article
  • Article

Ken’s ten: looking back at ten years of Wellcome Collection

| Ken Arnold

Wellcome Collection founder Ken Arnold picks his favourite exhibits.

  • Article
  • Article

Would you like to buy a dinosaur?

| Ross MacFarlane

Two remarkable letters and a drawing of a plesiosaur by Mary Anning offer a tantalising portal into the exciting world of fossil hunting and discovery of the 1800s.

  • Article
  • Article

Crime drama and the realistic cadaver

| Hildegunn M S TraaSteven Pocock

Today we are accustomed to the increasingly realistic look of dead bodies in on-screen dramas. Special-effects expert Hildegunn M S Traa reveals how crime and morgue scenes reflect the social idea of death.

  • Article
  • Article

Why the 1918 Spanish flu defied both memory and imagination

| Mark Honigsbaum

The Black Death, AIDS and Ebola outbreaks are part of our collective cultural memory, but the Spanish flu outbreak has not been.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Pum Dunbar’s living lessons

| Pum Dunbar

Read the ‘legends’ that give insight into Pum Dunbar’s creative process while producing her recent series of collages.

  • Article
  • Article

Dealing with the dead after a nuclear attack

| Taras Young

Cold War-era predictions of death on a vast scale became routine. But the British authorities were less prepared to dispose of the bodies.

  • Interview
  • Interview

Inside the minds of Teeth’s two curators, James Peto and Emily Scott-Dearing

| Gwendolyn Smith

James Peto and Emily Scott-Dearing talk visceral reactions, their interactions and object extractions.

  • Article
  • Article

Spanish flu and the depiction of disease

| Allison C Meier

The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 killed many millions more than World War I did. Find out why contemporary artistic depictions of its devastating impact are so rare.

  • Article
  • Article

Fantastic beasts and unnatural history

| Cassidy Phillips

Find out how a 17th-century compendium of the natural world came to present fantastical beasts –like dragons – as real, living creatures.

  • Article
  • Article

Diagnosing the past

| Joanne Edge

Historical texts rarely supply enough detail for a definitive diagnosis, so medical historians need to proceed with caution.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

The meaning of happiness

| Tiffany Watt SmithEleanor Shakespeare

What is happiness? Tiffany Watt Smith charts how its definition has changed over time, from chance emotion to something that can be measured and controlled.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Eating their own kind

In his grisly history of cannibalism, zoologist Bill Schutt asks what drives an animal to feast on its own flesh and blood.