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- Article
The case for safe skin bleaching
Skin bleaching tends to attract a negative press for a whole host of reasons. But when used to treat medical problems, its positive side becomes clear.
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Surviving a flesh-eating disease
Nearly dying from a skin infection gave Scott Neill a chance to start again after an early life marked by grief and depression.
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A brief history of tattoos
The earliest evidence of tattoo art dates from 5000 BC, and the practice continues to hold meaning for many cultures around the world.
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- Book extract
My important, ridiculous nose
The nose is a much-maligned appendage, but it’s a powerful organ capable of invoking powerful emotions from past memories and sexual attraction.
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The anatomy of a brain dissection
Dissecting the brain after death not only helps confirm a diagnosis, but it can also teach us so much more about the symptoms and causes of brain diseases and how to treat them.
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We need less ‘sickle cell warriors’ and more allies
Rejecting the epithet “warrior”, Cheryl Telfer describes the pervasive effect sickle cell disease has on her life, and calls for more people to donate blood to help sicklers.
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The tale of the toxic kidneys
In 1954 a serendipitous coming together of skills and circumstances allowed the first successful organ transplant to take place. Read how Richard Herrick’s life was prolonged by his identical twin’s generosity.
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Losing touch
In these pandemic times, when touch has become taboo, Agnese Reginaldo explores the importance of physical contact to our wellbeing.
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The first seizure
Historian Aparna Nair had her first seizure when she was 11. Here she recalls that first time, and how other people’s reactions are sometimes the most disturbing part about having a seizure.
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- Article
Our endless quest for eternal youth
From poisonous 16th-century cosmetics to the latest “vampire facelift”, discover the fashions in unsavoury methods for improving our appearance.
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- Article
The stranger who started an epidemic
New Orleans, 1853. James McGuigan arrives in the port city and succumbs to yellow fever.
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The colonist who faced the blue terror
India, 1857. In a British enclave, Katherine Bartrum watches her friend, and then her family, succumb to the deadly cholera.
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- Article
Coleridge’s hypochondria
An intense focus on his own bodily sensations led poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to self-medicate with narcotics. But this fascination also put Coleridge ahead of the medical sensibilities of his day.
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The search for a cure for endometriosis
Discover how a white American doctor’s experimental operations on black female slaves laid the foundations for modern gynaecological surgery.
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The child whose town rejected vaccines
Gloucester, 1896. Ethel Cromwell is taken ill at the height of Britain’s last great smallpox epidemic.
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Deadly doses and the hardest of hard drugs
The invention of the modern hypodermic syringe meant we could get high – or accidentally die – faster than before. Find out how this medical breakthrough was adapted for deadly uses.
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- Article
Soil health and dairy farming in the UK
Although healthy soil means more nutritious dairy products, modern intensive farming methods pollute and degrade the environment. However, a regenerative agriculture movement is kicking back against mainstream industrial farming.
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Cowpox, Covid-19 and Jenner’s vaccination legacy
The well-known story of vaccination pioneer Edward Jenner has at its heart his drive to make vaccines free of charge and available to all. Now his principles extend to the global campaign for a people’s patent-free vaccine for Covid-19.
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Hands-on healthcare
A young hospital volunteer feared her contribution was a long way from the serious business of real healthcare. But time spent painting patients’ nails proved to be a valuable contribution to life on the ward.
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A graveyard of plants for the people I love
Searching for her own ceremony to acknowledge the passing of her grandmother, Jennifer Neal turned to plants. The ritual she created was personal and loving, and celebrated life as well as acknowledging loss.
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Bleeding healthy
For thousands of years, and in many different cultures, people have practised bloodletting for health and medical reasons. Julia Nurse explains where and when bleeding was used, how it was done, and why.
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Migraine, creativity and me
Novelist Lydia Ruffles explores how migraine has made her mind stretch, shrink, widen and change, and how it’s influenced her art.
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Hysteria
Mental health and emotional symptoms are common during menopause, but a long history of dismissing sufferers as 'hysterical women', at the mercy of their emotions has made it much harder to discuss these issues and to get support.
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Rethinking the placebo effect
The placebo effect has long been harnessed for both legitimate and fraudulent use, but we’re only just discovering how and why our bodies respond positively to dummy drugs, as Anjuli Sharma reveals.
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Why the 1918 Spanish flu defied both memory and imagination
The Black Death, AIDS and Ebola outbreaks are part of our collective cultural memory, but the Spanish flu outbreak has not been.