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Mapping the body

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

Chaos within boundaries

How making a series of paintings helped Carrie Ravenscroft process and map her journey towards a neurodivergent identity.

Sex work through the ages

Discover how societies, from antiquity to the present day, have chosen to regard and treat sex workers. While some communities work towards acceptance, others retain harsh judgement.

The neuroscience of how we navigate

Christopher Kemp describes the mysterious case of Amanda Eller, a hiker who got lost in the woods. How can someone take a few steps off a well-marked trail and completely disappear?

Epidemic threats and racist legacies

Epidemiology is the systematic, data-driven study of health and disease in populations. But as historian Jacob Steere-Williams suggests, this most scientific of fields emerged in the 19th century imbued with a doctrine of Western imperialism – a legacy that continues to influence how we talk about disease.

The mystery of the malignant brain

In 1884 a neurologist successfully used a patient’s symptoms, plus a new kind of map, to locate a brain tumour. Discover how his best-laid plans for treatment worked out.

Coasting to catastrophe

In climate change, everything – and everyone – is connected. The watery process that will gradually cut off the Isle of Thanet from the British mainland has begun, and everyone in the UK needs to pay attention.

Living with early onset Parkinson’s

Ten years ago, three little words changed Pete Langman’s world.

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

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

Landscape

Sometimes the body feels like an unfamiliar landscape that you have no map for.

Found items

Books leave their traces in our minds, but we leave traces of ourselves in books too, as these fascinating items found inside old works show.

Interpreting the Ayurvedic Man

Drawing the human animal

We might try to deny our animal instincts, but this series of extraordinary 17th-century drawings suggests they are only too apparent.

Your gut’s instincts

Cultural historian Elsa Richardson explores the stomach’s influence over our emotions, and why trusting your gut is often good advice.

Life lessons across the digital divide

What could 86-year-old Tony teach 20-something Adele as she showed him how to use his smartphone? Rather a lot about digital exclusion, it turns out.

Doris Day blows against

Dodie Bellamy remembers a heady summer watching Doris Day grimace and gust in vintage movies, her expressive exhalations changing her onscreen world with a puff.

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.

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.

How homesickness inspires art

Gail Tolley looks at homesickness through the eyes of three contemporary artists and finds powerful new themes of identity and connection.

The painter, the psychiatrist and a fashion for hysteria

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

Electrical epilepsy and the EEG Test

The EEG (electroencephalograph) literally electrified the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy. But for Aparna Nair the dreaded EEG tests of her adolescence were a painful ordeal.

Fashion for an unruly body

One weekend, just before an operation to correct her scoliosis, Rosalind Jana stopped trying to hide her body. Read how those two days helped her step into the future.

Printing the body

The 18th century saw multiple technical developments in both printing and medicine. Colourful collaborations ensued – to the benefit of growing ranks of medical students.

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.

A nose through Blythe House

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.