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13 results
  • Book extract
  • Book extract

My important, ridiculous nose

| A L Kennedy

The nose is a much-maligned appendage, but it’s a powerful organ capable of invoking powerful emotions from past memories and sexual attraction.

  • Article
  • Article

Drugs in Victorian Britain

| Louise Crane

Many common remedies were taken throughout the 19th century, with more people than ever using them. What was the social and cultural context of this development?

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Ayurveda: Knowledge for long life

| Aarathi Prasad

The story of medicine in India is rich and complex. Aarathi Prasad investigates how it came to be this way.

  • Article
  • Article

The search for a cure for endometriosis

| Jaipreet VirdiAnne Howeson

Discover how a white American doctor’s experimental operations on black female slaves laid the foundations for modern gynaecological surgery.

  • Long read
  • Long read

The ambivalence of air

| Daisy LafargeCarol Nazatto

Daisy Lafarge investigates the effects of air quality and pressure on body and mind, exploring air as cure, but one with contradictions.

  • Article
  • Article

Diagnosing the past

| Joanne Edge

Historical texts rarely supply enough detail for a definitive diagnosis, so medical historians need to proceed with caution.

  • Article
  • Article

On contagion

| Daisy LafargeNaki Narh

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.

  • Article
  • Article

My mother, and metaphors of a pandemic

| Sandy Di YuSteven Pocock

A pandemic. Two members of one family, living thousands of miles apart. And months of calls and messages that helped them grow closer.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

Trans masculinity on the record

| E-J ScottThomas S G Farnetti

Curator of the Museum of Transology in Brighton E-J Scott tells the story behind a few of the 250 objects from the collection, and the powerful effect they had on him as he put trans lives on the record.

  • Article
  • Article

Finding the words to talk about emptiness

| Cassie DoneyJames Albon

Shored up by a diagnosis and medication, Cassie Doney tried to find out more about the profound feeling of emptiness they were experiencing. But research is thin on the ground.

  • Article
  • Article

Dying to be in nature

| Matthew PonsfordAndy Merritt

The modern funeral business is one that uses up precious resources and pollutes the planet. But you can make sure it’s only your memory that leaves its mark with these new and natural ways to leave this earth.

  • Article
  • Article

Pain, politics and the power of photography

| Giulia Smith

Art historian Giulia Smith explains what she most admires in the work of Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery, and how their approach makes illness political.

  • Article
  • Article

When wounds replace words

| Jules MontagueSteven Pocock

For the many thousands of refugees waiting in Greece, the process to establish the truth of their tragic personal histories is often extremely upsetting. But a group of medics and legal workers is working together to make the system more humane.