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12 results
  • Article
  • Article

How nature is defending itself in court

| Isabella KaminskiSteven Pocock

The idea that nature has legal rights is increasingly being taken seriously, but who gets to speak for it? Isabella Kaminski asks how the non-human can be represented within a human-made system.

  • Article
  • Article

The ‘undesirable epileptic’

| Aparna NairTracy Satchwill

Abused in her marriage for being 'a sick woman', Aparna Nair looked to history to make sense of the response to her epilepsy. She discovered how centuries of fear and discrimination were often endorsed by science and legislation.

  • Article
  • Article

The girl with no name

| Paul Craddock

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 cook who became a pariah

| Anna Faherty

New York, 1907. Mary Mallon spreads infection, unaware that her name will one day become synonymous with typhoid.

  • Long read
  • Long read

Primodos, paternalism and the fight to be heard

| Florence WildbloodKathleen Arundell

Journalist Florence Wildblood examines the case of Primodos – a conveniently quick but risky hormone pregnancy test that was prescribed in the 1960s and ’70s – and profiles two women at the story’s shocking heart.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

“It wasn’t an accident that I came to you”

Douglas meets psychoanalyst Susie Orbach for a follow-up session, ahead of delivering a difficult verdict.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

“I’ve never talked to anybody about this before”

Douglas is furious. He’s at crisis point and needs help. Read the first of his two sessions with psychoanalyst Susie Orbach.

  • Article
  • Article

Thalidomide, a bitter pill

| Ruth BlueHollie Chastain

Hear from some of the women who took the drug thalidomide over sixty years ago about the fear, isolation and grief that they experienced as the appalling pharmaceutical scandal unfolded around them.

  • Article
  • Article

Mixed feelings and milk siblings

| Alev ScottVicky Scott

A friend in need has a profound effect on Alev’s feelings about women sharing their milk in this final instalment of ‘The Breastmilk Market’.

  • Article
  • Article

Yoga adapts to time and place

| Lalita Kaplish

A yoga teacher in 1930s India inspired today’s transnational practice with his spectacular fusion of tradition and innovation.

  • Article
  • Article

Synaesthesia, or when senses overlap

| Lydia Ruffles

What’s it like to see heartbeats, taste Tube stations or hear paintings?

  • Long read
  • Long read

Healthy scepticism

| Caitjan GaintyAgnes Arnold-ForsterPaul AddaeFranklyn Rodgers

Healthcare sceptics – like those opposed to Covid-19 vaccinations – often have serious, nuanced reasons for doubting medical authorities.