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Pain and the power of touch

As a new physiotherapist, Fiona Murphy quickly learned that her patients’ pain was unpredictable and very personal. But using the right words became the key to helping them.

Inside the mind of George Vasey, co-curator of Misbehaving Bodies

Discover how curator George Vasey honoured the approaches of Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery, who mischievously subvert clichés around illness and death.

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

Diagnosing OCD in the past

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.

Inside the mind of Somewhere in Between’s curator, Laurie Britton Newell

The exhibition's curator shares her secrets.

The shocking ‘treatment’ to make lesbians straight

Being a lesbian has never been a crime in the UK, but 50 years ago, some psychologists experimented with treatments to try to ‘cure’ women of their orientation. Find out what this involved.

The bishop’s profitable sex workers

How did the Church rake in revenue from 14th-century sex regulations? Kate Lister explores a bishop’s lucrative rulebook.

How electromagnetic therapy inspired me

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

My rainforest upbringing

In the introduction to her serial, research biologist Nataly Allasi Canales charts the influences that led her to passion for preserving the species of the Peruvian Amazon, where she spent her childhood.

Synaesthesia, or when senses overlap

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

Dementia playlists and musical memory

Listening to the right music can provide both solace and pleasure for someone with dementia, helping them to reconnect with the world around them. Grace Meadows makes the case for more music in dementia care.

‘My Hair Is Not…’

Eight Black people talk about their relationship with their hair – their hairstyle history, their experiences, and how they decided to have natural hair.

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.

How the Peckham Experiment inspired my fiction

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

Befriending heavy breathers

Read the fascinating story behind the rare manual that helped volunteers on one of Britain’s first free telephone helplines to deal with masturbating callers.

How Indigenous insight inspires sustainable science

The forest of the Amazon Basin is inextricably bound up with the lives of the Indigenous peoples living there. Find out how they feel about the forest, use what it provides, and try to protect it from aggressive commercial exploitation.

Inside the minds of A R Hopwood and Honor Beddard

The curators of ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ reveal the stories behind the exhibits, and the intriguing truths the show confronts us with.

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.

Transforming the decorative into dissent

Discover how embroidered messages by two ‘troublesome’ women in 19th-century asylums are mirrored in the therapeutic quilting work of writer Rachel May.

The unexpected parallels between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Wellcome Collection

With the news of a sequel in development, Russell Dornan explores parallels between ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and Wellcome Collection.