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Stories

  • Article

The first seizure

Historian Aparna Nair had her first seizure when she was 11. Here she recalls that first time, and how other people’s reactions are sometimes the most disturbing part about having a seizure.

  • Long read

The ambivalence of air

Daisy Lafarge investigates the effects of air quality and pressure on body and mind, exploring air as cure, but one with contradictions.

  • Article

Womb milk and the puzzle of the placenta

A human baby needs milk to survive – and this holds true even before it’s born. Joanna Wolfarth explores “womb milk”, as well as ancient and modern ideas about the placenta.

  • Article

The unearthly children of science fiction’s Cold War

In the 1950s a new figure emerged in British novels, film and television: a disturbing young alien that revealed postwar society’s fear of the unruly power of teenagers.

All stories (4)

Images

  • L'antiquité expliquée, et représentée en figures / [Bernard de Montfaucon].
  • Bacchus being bathed by nymphs after being born from Jupiter's knee, his mother Semele is consumed by flames. Engraving by C. Patas after A. Borel after Rinaldo Mantovano.
  • Virgil and Dante sitting on the back of Geryon to be transported from the 8th to the 7th circle of Hell. Etching by B. Pinelli, 1825.
  • Proportions of the human body: four figures of the Farnese Hercules and the Laocoön group, with proportions marked. Line engraving by W. Grainger, 1788/1795, after G. Audran (?).
  • The birth of Cupid from Venus, Mercury flies above them and nymphs aid them. Line engraving by W. Cooke, 1807, after E. Le Sueur.
  • Erigone, ensnared by Dionysus, reaching for grapes on a vine. Lithograph by B.-R. Julien, 1835, after L. Poyet.
  • Alcmene giving birth to Hercules surrounded by attendants: in the background a woman is hitting another over the head with a stone. Line engraving by F. Bouttats the younger.
  • An actor poses as a classical sculpture of a gladiator. Photographic postcard, 190-.
  • An actor poses as a classical sculpture of a gladiator. Photographic postcard, 190-.
  • Actors pose as "The Wrestlers" at the London Pavilion. Photographic postcard, 193-.
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Catalogue

All works (248)