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21 results
  • Article
  • Article

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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Getting around the rules of sex education

| Hannah J Elizabeth

What should we and shouldn’t we teach our teens about sex, inside and outside of the classroom?

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Sex in graphic novels

| Stephen Lowther

Sex and sexuality have long been explored in the history of the graphic novel.

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Guerrilla public health

| Harry Shapiro

From safe-use guides to needle exchange schemes, Harry Shapiro reflects on 40 years of drug harm reduction in the UK.

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Thomas Sankara and the stomachs that made themselves heard

| Perry BlanksonAnna Keville Joyce

Thomas Sankara’s vision to transform farming and health in Burkina Faso turned to dust with his assassination. Perry Blankson highlights the considerable achievements of Sankara’s brief span in power.

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Can isolation lead to manipulation?

| Charlie WilliamsSarah MarksDaniel Pick

Military-funded researchers wanted to know if isolation techniques could facilitate brainwashing. One neuroscientist suggested that it might improve our own control over our minds.

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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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Duelling doctors

| Russell Moul

An enduring enthusiasm for 18th-century gentlemen to defend their ‘honour’ by duelling placed doctors in a delicate position. Specially when they faced being shot themselves.

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Dealing with the dead after a nuclear attack

| Taras Young

Cold War-era predictions of death on a vast scale became routine. But the British authorities were less prepared to dispose of the bodies.

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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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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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Thousands of years of women’s pain

| Jaipreet VirdiAnne Howeson

Even in the 21st century, women with severe monthly pain find their suffering minimised or dismissed by the medical profession. Such pain is seen as simply a natural part of being female.

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The search for a cure for endometriosis

| Jaipreet VirdiAnne Howeson

Discover how a white American doctor’s experimental operations on black female slaves laid the foundations for modern gynaecological surgery.

  • 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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Picturing mental health

| Lalita KaplishSolomon Szekir-Papasavva

Ron Hampshire created artworks while resident at Netherne psychiatric hospital. What can we learn from them?

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John Walter on ‘Alien Sex Club’

| John Walter

I’m a painter, but I make worlds.

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Cocaine, the Victorian wonder drug

| Douglas SmallBenjamin Gilbert

Today, cocaine has a very poor public image as one of the causes of crime and violence. But for the Victorians it was welcomed as the saviour of modern surgery.

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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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Ways appear

| Chris North

While his sense of body shame meant the personal side of his life was unfulfilled, Chris’s career was rewarding. His own childhood experiences gave him profound empathy for the children he worked with.

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When you don’t belong, you drink

| Tanya PerdikouNaomi Vona

In the third part of her exploration of belonging, Tanya Perdikou unpicks the addictions that have shaped her past and uncovers the connections that make recovery possible.

  • Interview
  • Interview

How to design an HIV awareness campaign

| Paul Steinberg

Using carefully crafted, colourful graphics is one public health team’s creative approach.