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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.

Synaesthesia, or when senses overlap

What’s it like to see heartbeats, taste Tube stations or hear paintings?

Illuminated manuscripts, illuminating medicines

From rare bugs to exorbitantly priced plant parts, find out more about the artistic and medical uses of pigments from the past.

Daria Martin on ‘Sensorium Tests’ and ‘At the Threshold’

Aphasia and drawing elephants

When Thomas Parkinson investigated the history of “speech science”, he discovered an unexpected link between empire, elephants and aphasia.

Picturing mental health

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

Native Americans through the 19th-century lens

The stories behind Rinehart's photographs may not be as black and white as they first appear.

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.

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.

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

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

The Ladies of Llangollen

As we celebrate LGBT History Month, Sarah Bentley explores the relationship between the two 18th-century women known as the Ladies of Llangollen.

Dealing with the dead after a nuclear attack

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

The yogi as hermit, warrior, criminal and showman

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

The history of brainwashing

Is it possible to control what other people think? In this abridged extract from his book ‘Brainwashed’, psychoanalyst and historian Daniel Pick offers us a new history of thought control.

Cracks that let the light in

Rai Waddingham lives with voices other people cannot hear. Here she describes how she has come to accept, understand and calm her voices, and to acknowledge her strength.

The ‘epileptic’ in art and science

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.

Building a dream in the garden suburbs

In the late 19th century a ‘garden suburb’ promised a retreat from London’s dirt and crowds. See how this new concept was developed to appeal to the health concerns of the literary classes.

Genius spirits and the mystery of creative inspiration

Once upon a time, we all had a genius.

John Walter on ‘Alien Sex Club’

I’m a painter, but I make worlds.

Air of threat

Novelist Chloe Aridjis vividly describes the suffocating atmosphere of Mexico City, as a combination of topography, crowded neighbourhoods, and reckless political diktats create a downward spiral.

Performance art, frozen in time

For over a year, live performance art with an audience present has been largely impossible. But still images continue to allow artists in this sphere to inspire audiences at home.

How electromagnetic therapy inspired me

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

Fantastic beasts and unnatural history

Find out how a 17th-century compendium of the natural world came to present fantastical beasts –like dragons – as real, living creatures.

Audrey and her family

In working on Audrey Amiss’s archive, Elena is getting closer to understanding her. But the way her niece and nephew remember Audrey adds essential detail to the picture.

Going viral in the online anti-vaccine wars

‘Anti-vaxxers’ are taking their message online using powerful images as well as words. But is the pro campaigners’ response any better?