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Enduring taboos and the future of skin bleaching
Many condemn skin bleaching in public while secretly lightening their own complexions. To break away from these taboos, we need honest information and open conversation.
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Where hoarding and dementia meet
As Grandma’s dementia advanced, the things she’d amassed became more important: they consoled her. Clearing safe walkways through the piles became the first – though unwelcome – compromise.
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The fine line between collecting and hoarding
Being ‘a collector’ is often celebrated but being labelled ‘a hoarder’ can be humiliating, at best. Georgie Evans asks what makes one set of objects a collection and another a hoard.
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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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The bishop’s profitable sex workers
How did the Church rake in revenue from 14th-century sex regulations? Kate Lister explores a bishop’s lucrative rulebook.
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The poor child’s nurse
Charming family scenes in Victorian ads for children’s medicines were at odds with some of the dangerous ingredients they contained.
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Busting myths about turkey-baster babies
The popular idea of sex-free, turkey-baster-led conception has been around since the 1970s. Christine Ro goes beyond the utensils drawer to find out if it’s ever really happened.
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The desire for lighter skin
Discover why some Black people feel more attractive with lighter skin. Ngunan Adamu speaks to three women who explain how they got hooked on skin bleaching.
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The extraction of the excruciating bladder stones
Among those vying to find alternatives to major surgery for bladder stones, young doctor Jean Civiale stood out, painstakingly honing a method that was to become the norm.
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Ginger’s role in cures and courtroom battles
Some people will use a dose of ginger to help with hangovers – but it hasn’t always been a friend to the thirsty.
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Digitising Audrey
Building digital images of what Audrey created means that her work can be frozen in time – for the digital version, at least, the process of decay is halted, and any number of people can view it without the risk of damaging it.
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The father of handwashing
Doctors performing autopsies and then delivering babies – with not a hint of soap in between – was the grim recipe producing a lot of motherless offspring in the 1800s. But one man’s gargantuan efforts to upend accepted medical thinking turned the tide.