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Healing hard-working hands
The names we use to describe different hand injuries tell us about history, gender and class. Occupational therapist María Cristina Jiménez explores those injuries, and the changing ways we talk about them.
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Would you like to buy a dinosaur?
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.
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A quick guide to drugs, the brain and brain chemistry
Discover some of the major chemicals that govern activity in our brains, how they work, and why certain drugs have the effects they do.
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Is it really OK to not be OK?
Our mental healthcare system is still the poor relation of services that treat physical illness, and the pandemic has shone a spotlight on this situation. Campaigner James Downs argues for fundamental change.
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Heating up and drying out
Menopause doesn’t have to signify old age, but when your body feels like it’s letting you down, it’s hard not to believe that your useful life may be over.
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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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When contemporary dance meets dyspraxia
Discover why a rare neurological condition meant an enthusiastic club-night dancer struggled with formal dance classes. And how persisting with those classes paid off.
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The prostitute whose pox inspired feminists
Fitzrovia, 1875. A woman recorded only as A.G. enters hospital and is diagnosed with syphilis.
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Our Covid complicity
Athena Stevens thought she had a cold that she tried to ignore, but it turned out to be Covid-19. Here she reflects on how we have all put ourselves and others at risk with the choices we’ve made during this pandemic.
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What the nose doesn’t know
Losing her sense of smell for over a year motivated Stephanie Howard-Smith to sniff out the history of treatments for this unsettling condition.
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The meanings of hurt
In the early modern period, gruesome incidents of self-castration and other types of self-injury garnished the literature of the time. Alanna Skuse explores the messages these wounds conveyed.
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Life before assistive technology
When an inherited condition caused Alex Lee’s vision to deteriorate, he began to discover the technologies that would help him navigate the world around him. Here he describes how his life began to change.
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How do advertisers get inside our heads?
Vance Packard exposed techniques of mass manipulation developed by 1950s advertisers that are still at work today in the age of big data.
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On contagion
Reading descriptions of the way humans become infested by parasitic flatworms, Daisy Lafarge experienced painful physical symptoms. Perhaps the very creature she was studying had invaded her body.
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Illuminated manuscripts, illuminating medicines
From rare bugs to exorbitantly priced plant parts, find out more about the artistic and medical uses of pigments from the past.
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In search of the ‘nature cure’
Under the competing pressures of modern life, many of us succumb to mental ill health. Samantha Walton explores why so-called ‘nature cures’ don’t help, and how the living world can actually help us.
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A doctor, his community and coronavirus
Reflecting on his experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic, GP Gavin Francis vividly recalls a home visit to a man stricken with breathing difficulties.
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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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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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The castration effect
Discover how testosterone – or the lack of it – affects the male body, from eunuch slaves to castrato singers, and on to hormone reduction in modern prostate cancer treatment.
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Cocaine, the Victorian wonder drug
Today, cocaine has a very poor public image as one of the causes of crime and violence. But for the Victorians it was welcomed as the saviour of modern surgery.
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Diagnosing the past
Historical texts rarely supply enough detail for a definitive diagnosis, so medical historians need to proceed with caution.
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The 200-year search for normal people
Sarah Chaney poses the question we’ve likely all asked at some point in our lives: 'Am I normal?’, and explores whether normality even exists.
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Natural eating in Jamaica and the Caribbean
Riaz Phillips is passionate about the Jamaican food he grew up with and plant-based Caribbean food he came to later, like roti, baiganee and vegan stews and curries. Here he explores the origins and surging popularity of these natural ‘health foods’.
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The hell of hay fever
After years suffering in silence, David Jesudason finds speaking out about his pollen allergy gives him hope for a future where his hay-fever symptoms are under control.