- Long read
- Long read
Rehab centres and the ‘cure’ for addiction
Guy Stagg takes us on a brief history of rehab centres and their approaches to addiction and recovery.
- Article
- Article
Sarah Carpenter on making time for herself through creativity
Art provides a refuge for Sarah Carpenter, allowing her to utilise her energy and keep up the momentum of her recovery.
- Article
- Article
Can our sexual desires be transformed?
In the 1950s, many psychiatrists thought that homosexuality could be reformed. One found that it couldn’t – and his discoveries led to a change in the law.
- Article
- Article
London, city of lost hospitals
Come on the trail of hundreds of ghost hospitals, whose remnants hold clues to medical treatments of the past.
- Article
- Article
My mother, and metaphors of a pandemic
A pandemic. Two members of one family, living thousands of miles apart. And months of calls and messages that helped them grow closer.
- Article
- Article
Female masturbation and the perils of pleasure
Dr Kate Lister exposes the brutal 19th-century ‘cures’ for women who indulged in masturbation.
- Article
- Article
The secret lives of Britain’s first Black physicians
Dr Annabel Sowemimo explores the web of connections between early Black British doctors, the role of empire in West Africa and the pernicious reach of scientific racism.
- Article
- Article
Building a dream in the garden suburbs
In the late 19th century a ‘garden suburb’ promised a retreat from London’s dirt and crowds. See how this new concept was developed to appeal to the health concerns of the literary classes.
- Article
- Article
Vivekananda’s journey
How a young Indian monk’s travels around the world inspired modern yoga.
- Article
- Article
How to be poor and happy
Money, security, self-sufficiency and charitable giving have long been linked to happiness. But what if you’re working class?
- Long read
- Long read
Healthy scepticism
Healthcare sceptics – like those opposed to Covid-19 vaccinations – often have serious, nuanced reasons for doubting medical authorities.
- Article
- Article
The prostitute whose pox inspired feminists
Fitzrovia, 1875. A woman recorded only as A.G. enters hospital and is diagnosed with syphilis.
- Article
- Article
The stranger who started an epidemic
New Orleans, 1853. James McGuigan arrives in the port city and succumbs to yellow fever.
- Article
- Article
Good animals, bad humans?
Could an animal be more evolved than a human? Victorian psychologists thought that in some cases the answer could be ‘yes’.
- Article
- Article
Race, religion and the Black Madonna
Mystery and controversy surround the dark-skinned religious icon who represents the Virgin Mary throughout the Catholic world.
- Article
- Article
The epilepsy diagnosis
Epilepsy exists between the mind and body, something that Aparna Nair experienced for herself when she was diagnosed as a teenager.
- Article
- Article
Life on the line
Former Samaritans helpline volunteer Katy Georgiou recalls the desperate voices she heard during her night shifts, and those whose isolation she helped to alleviate.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Inside the Cold War mind
Martin Sixsmith explores the competing national psyches of Russia and America, and a world divided between their irreconcilable visions of human nature.
- Article
- Article
Yoga gets physical
Modern yoga owes a debt to the physical culture movement that created a world obsessed with health and fitness.
- Article
- Article
People against pollution
Alice Bell reflects on what happens when communities help solve environmental problems, and whether citizen science can help fight industrial pollution today.
- Article
- Article
The girl with no name
When a now anonymous teenager sold her tooth for transplant, she couldn’t have predicted that she’d end up at the heart of a troubling story about 18th-century beauty ideals.
- Article
- Article
The child whose town rejected vaccines
Gloucester, 1896. Ethel Cromwell is taken ill at the height of Britain’s last great smallpox epidemic.
- Article
- Article
Guerrilla public health
From safe-use guides to needle exchange schemes, Harry Shapiro reflects on 40 years of drug harm reduction in the UK.
- Article
- Article
Another way to listen
Background noise is something we often try to ignore. Adjoa Wiredu explores what happens if we intentionally choose to tune in.
- Article
- Article
Desperate housewives and suburban neurosis
Discover how a pioneering health centre replaced housewives’ supposedly empty home lives with a social space that encouraged healthy child rearing.