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72 results
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When doctors get sick

| The Secret GP

Feeling guilty about developing a health problem, our anonymous GP contemplates how the system could better support doctors when they’re sick.

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Female masturbation and the perils of pleasure

| Dr Kate Lister

Dr Kate Lister exposes the brutal 19th-century ‘cures’ for women who indulged in masturbation.

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How do advertisers get inside our heads?

| Charlie WilliamsSarah MarksDaniel Pick

Vance Packard exposed techniques of mass manipulation developed by 1950s advertisers that are still at work today in the age of big data.

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The ‘epileptic’ in art and science

| Aparna NairTracy Satchwill

From scarred outsiders in literature to the cold voyeurism of medical films and photography, people who experience seizures and epilepsy are rarely shown in a compassionate light in popular culture.

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Photographs as evidence of gender identity and sexuality

| Dr Jana Funke

Intriguing photographs from sexologists’ archives suggest they could have helped people explore their gender identity and sexuality.

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Dyslexia and its misconceptions

| Madeleine MorleyLucy Grainge

Overcoming common myths about dyslexia only adds to the challenges of growing up with the condition. Madeleine Morley, who was diagnosed with dyslexia aged eight, goes into myth-busting mode and shares her personal experiences.

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A little wildness

| Rowan Hisayo BuchananFaye Heller

To salve her longing for a dog, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan chose a puppy. She found that, despite centuries of domestication, her dog still retains aspects of her wild ancestry.

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Deadly doses and the hardest of hard drugs

| Stevyn Colgan

The invention of the modern hypodermic syringe meant we could get high – or accidentally die – faster than before. Find out how this medical breakthrough was adapted for deadly uses.

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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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What the nose doesn’t know

| Stephanie Howard-SmithSteven Pocock

Losing her sense of smell for over a year motivated Stephanie Howard-Smith to sniff out the history of treatments for this unsettling condition.

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The yogi as hermit, warrior, criminal and showman

| Lalita Kaplish

How the modern world changed the life and reputation of the yogi.

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Crones

| Helen FosterEast Midlands Oral History ArchiveAsma Istwani

Menopause can be tough when nobody talks about it and all the stereotypes are negative, but it can also be transformative, marking the start of a new stage of life - cronehood.

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Ken’s ten: looking back at ten years of Wellcome Collection

| Ken Arnold

Wellcome Collection founder Ken Arnold picks his favourite exhibits.

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Diagnosing OCD in the past

| Joanne EdgeThomas S G Farnetti

Mining the writings of and about famous historical figures, retrospective psychologists try to diagnose their mental health problems. But, inevitably, partial evidence is open to misinterpretation.

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How the Peckham Experiment inspired my fiction

| James Wilkes

Find out how an unruly mass of archive material from a 1930s radical health centre has inspired brand new writing.

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A head apart from the body

| Rob Bidder

We look to the future of science via science fiction to explore how a head may live apart from its body.

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The current that kills

| Ruth Garde

In the 19th century, electricity held life in the balance, with the power to execute – or reanimate.

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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?

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The boundaries that shape my writing

| Caroline ButterwickKimberley Burrows

While writing about her life can be enormously helpful, Caroline Butterwick needs to regularly reassess her boundaries. Here she explores the line between what’s public and what’s private, and how porous that can be.

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Sex work, stigma and whorephobia

| Matt Valentine-ChaseJessa Fairbrother

Like everyone, sex workers sometimes need medical or mental health support. But shame and stigma seriously affect attitudes and access.

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How electromagnetic therapy inspired me

| Sarah James

Poet Sarah James explores how repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation treated her depression and influenced her art.

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Nurturing my autistic, gender-questioning child

| Jude LaxJack Lax

As mother of an autistic child who questions her gender, Jude Lax describes cherishing her growing daughter as she explores her identity.

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Conflicted and confused about lithium

| Laura Grace SimpkinsMatjaž Krivic

Covid-19 left Laura Grace Simpkins out of work and living back with her parents. She now had time to restart her research into her medication, but was she mad to continue?

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Laughing at disaster

| Isabella KaminskiGuillaume Chiron

If joking around can help us cope when the worst happens, could comedy be a useful way to connect on climate change?

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The epilepsy diagnosis

| Aparna NairTracy Satchwill

Epilepsy exists between the mind and body, something that Aparna Nair experienced for herself when she was diagnosed as a teenager.