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35 results
  • Article
  • Article

The birth of the public museum

| Elissavet Ntoulia

The first public museums evolved from wealthy collectors’ cabinets of curiosities and were quickly recognised as useful vehicles for culture.

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Illuminated manuscripts, illuminating medicines

| Cheryl Porter

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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The power of unicorns

| Muriel Bailly

Discover the unlikely connection between pharmaceuticals and unicorns.

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The origins and meanings of pharmacy symbols

What have snakes, unicorns and crocodiles got to do with pharmacies? The history of these modern signs goes back to the Greek gods.

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The making of ‘Quacks’

| Helen Babbs

How do you create a medical comedy that’s authentic and laugh-out-loud funny?

  • Interview
  • Interview

Inside the mind of George Vasey, co-curator of Misbehaving Bodies

| Gwendolyn SmithThomas S G Farnetti

Discover how curator George Vasey honoured the approaches of Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery, who mischievously subvert clichés around illness and death.

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The life and death of Tamagotchi and the virtual pet

| Jenna Jovi

Discover how the 1990s craze for Tamagotchis became a flood of robotic and virtual pets, sending their owners on an emotional rollercoaster ride.

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Political brilliance and the power of self-promotion

| Anna Faherty

How do you convince people you’re exceptional? Meet the ultimate self-styled genius.

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A symbol of a lost homeland

| Yasmeen Abdel MajeedJacqueline Reem Salloum

The story of one protective amulet from Palestine reveals a complex tale. Encompassing the personal history of an influential doctor and collector, it provides a window onto dispossession and exile, and the painful repercussions that are still felt today.

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The intimate and invasive art of ethical taxidermy

| Helen BabbsThomas S G Farnetti

Does displaying dead animals bring us closer to nature, or drive us further apart?

  • Interview
  • Interview

Inside the mind of Ayurvedic Man’s curator, Bárbara Rodriguez Muñoz

| Gwendolyn Smith

The choices a curator makes – what goes in? what stays out? why? – are often as fascinating as the exhibition itself.

  • Interview
  • Interview

Inside the minds of Teeth’s two curators, James Peto and Emily Scott-Dearing

| Gwendolyn Smith

James Peto and Emily Scott-Dearing talk visceral reactions, their interactions and object extractions.

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Mapping the body

These intricate anatomical drawings show how Ayurveda practitioners have explored the human body and how it works.

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Milk trails round Euston

| Esther LesliePeople’s MuseumBenjamin Gilbert

Where cows once grazed near Wellcome Collection in London, baristas now froth their milk. Esther Leslie uncovers Euston’s dairy-based urban history.

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The painter, the psychiatrist and a fashion for hysteria

| Natasha Ruiz-GómezKathleen Arundell

A dramatic painting brings a famous event in medical history alive. But it also tells a tale about the health preoccupations of the time.

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Getting under the skin

| Taryn Cain

Before the invention of X-ray in 1895 there was really only one way to accurately study the human body, and that was to cut it open.

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Race, religion and the Black Madonna

| Daniela Vasco

Mystery and controversy surround the dark-skinned religious icon who represents the Virgin Mary throughout the Catholic world.

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Lovesickness and ‘The Love Thief’

| Julia Nurse

An 11th-century poem of love, lust and possibly gruesome death still resonates today.

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A nose through Blythe House

| Laura HumphreysKevin Percival

Recently sold and emptied out, Blythe House was once one of the UK’s biggest museum storage facilities. Here, museum worker Laura Humphreys reflects on her relationship with the store’s architecture, objects and aromas.

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Sharing Nature: Over the rainbow

| Helen Babbs

Here’s your choice of the most meaningful nature photo on the theme of health.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

You know the drill

| Richard Barnett

Richard Barnett opens wide the true meaning of a healthy mouth.

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Would you like to buy a dinosaur?

| Ross MacFarlane

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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Doctors and the English seaside

| Jane Darcy

Fashionable seaside towns in England owe much of their popularity to 18th-century doctors, who advised them to take the 'sea cure'.

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The Key to Memory: Follow your nose

Elissavet Ntoulia explores what a pair of pomanders can tell us about how and why we remember.

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Why the 1918 Spanish flu defied both memory and imagination

| Mark Honigsbaum

The Black Death, AIDS and Ebola outbreaks are part of our collective cultural memory, but the Spanish flu outbreak has not been.