- Article
- Article
The girl with no name
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.
- Interview
- Interview
Inside the mind of Somewhere in Between’s curator, Laurie Britton Newell
The exhibition's curator shares her secrets.
- In pictures
- In pictures
Tesla, quacks and violet rays
Imagine a device that can treat everything from baldness to gout. Too good to be true? Yes, and it was banned – but not before hundreds were hoodwinked.
- Article
- Article
Theriac: An ancient brand?
The name theriac survived for around for two millennia as a pharmaceutical term. But a ‘brand’ name is not always a guarantee of quality.
- Photo story
- Photo story
Transitioning and the family album
“It’s really hard to describe to people how you know you’re a man when those ways of describing masculinity to me aren’t true. You need to find your own.”
- Article
- Article
Louis Wain’s cryptic cats
Once famous for his quirky cat illustrations, today Louis Wain is often portrayed as a ‘psychotic’ artist whose illness can be mapped out through his drawings. Here Bryony Benge-Abbott takes a more rounded view.
- In pictures
- In pictures
The aphrodisiac apothecary
Not in the mood? Come and visit our traditional drug store for natural tonics rumoured to increase sexual desire.
- Article
- Article
Finding the words to talk about emptiness
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
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.
- Article
- Article
Another way to listen
Background noise is something we often try to ignore. Adjoa Wiredu explores what happens if we intentionally choose to tune in.
- Article
- Article
The shifting shape of language
Author Jessica Andrews explores how her brother’s deafness has influenced her relationship with words and the world.
- Article
- Article
Indian botanicals and heritage wars
Colonial botanical texts, as astonishingly beautiful as they are, may cast very dark shadows.
- Article
- Article
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.
- Article
- Article
Mixed heritage lesbian couples and fertility treatment
For a lesbian couple who want to share their different cultural heritages with their child, fertility treatment can get very complicated.
- Article
- Article
History of condoms from animal to rubber
Come on a journey from the first recorded condoms in the 16th century to the modern female condoms in the 1990s – and everything in between.
- Article
- Article
The cook who became a pariah
New York, 1907. Mary Mallon spreads infection, unaware that her name will one day become synonymous with typhoid.
- Article
- Article
A history of mindfulness
Matt Drage questions how an ancient religious practice became a secular cure for stress.
- Article
- Article
The secret lives of Britain’s first Black physicians
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.
- Comic
- Comic
Moles
What’s in a name, or beneath a mole?
- Article
- Article
The family food of a kebab van man
Melek Erdal celebrates the physical and mental resilience of her father Yusuf, forged by isolation and dislocation, and reinforced by the distinctive cuisine of his home country, Turkey.
- Article
- Article
Love, longing and tea from the polski sklep
For people of Polish origin in the UK, herbal tea is closely tied to health and shared history. Kasia Tomasiewicz explores her changing relationship to these tea-related cultural habits.
- Article
- Article
Native Americans and the dehumanising force of the photograph
In the second part of Native Americans through the 19th-century lens, we delve deeper into the ambivalent messages within the images.
- Article
- Article
How tuberculosis became a test case for eugenic theory
A 19th-century collaboration that failed to prove how facial features could indicate the diseases people were most likely to suffer from became a significant stepping stone in the new ‘science’ of eugenics.
- Article
- Article
Sick of the theatre
What makes the stage a good place to share real-life experiences of ill health?
- Article
- Article
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.