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14 results
  • Article
  • Article

Eugenics and the welfare state

| Indy BhullarGergo Varga

Indy Bhullar explores the ideas of William Beveridge and Richard Titmuss, who were strongly influenced by eugenic thinking, and yet championed the idea of the welfare state.

  • Article
  • Article

Intelligence testing, race and eugenics

| Nazlin BhimaniGergo Varga

Specious ideas and assumptions about intelligence that were born during the great flourishing of eugenics well over 100 years ago still inform the British education system today, as Nazlin Bhimani reveals.

  • Article
  • Article

Coronavirus, Crohn’s and me

| Lucia Osborne-CrowleyThomas S G Farnetti

Clinically vulnerable to COVID-19, Lucia Osborne-Crowley has been shut in her flat for months. With her chronic condition transformed into a life-threatening one, she explores what the pandemic is revealing about living with long-term illness.

  • Article
  • Article

Fees, funding and the NHS

| Cal Flyn

In the 1950s, dramatic political battles over NHS charges brought down a government. But public confidence in the service still grew.

  • 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

Chronic illness and the pressure to get well

| Naomi MorrisCamilla Greenwell

When she was ill, Naomi Morris assumed she was on a straightforward journey from sickness to health. But what if our experiences of mental distress and ill health aren’t that neat?

  • Article
  • Article

How music opens the doors of memory and the mind

| Philip Ball

People living with dementia can often still listen, perform or move to music. What does this tell us about how memories are formed?

  • Article
  • Article

The secret lives of Britain’s first Black physicians

| Annabel SowemimoGergo Varga

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

An animated almanac for the modern world

| Thomas Coleman

Discover why Thomas Coleman wanted to make a medieval folding almanac relevant to the modern world and see the film for yourself.

  • Article
  • Article

The pain that punished feminists

| Jaipreet VirdiAnne Howeson

In a society that viewed getting the vote, and pursuing an education and career, as unnatural goals for women, the pain of endometriosis was viewed as nature’s retribution.

  • Article
  • Article

This is a MOOD

| Kate WilkinsonLaurindo Feliciano

Adults might sometimes dismiss teenagers’ ‘moodiness’, but adolescence is a time of complex shifts in brain and body, which are intricately bound up with fluctuating feelings.

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Why are women more willing donors than men?

| Hannah PartosThomas S G Farnetti

Why is there a gender imbalance when it comes to the donation of organs, blood and tissue, and what can be done about it?

  • 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.

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  • Article

Going viral in the online anti-vaccine wars

| Alex Green

‘Anti-vaxxers’ are taking their message online using powerful images as well as words. But is the pro campaigners’ response any better?