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  • Article

Homes for the hives of industry

By building workers’ villages, industry titans demonstrated both philanthropy and control. Employees’ health improved, while rulebooks told them how to live ideal lives.

  • Article

Drawing the human animal

We might try to deny our animal instincts, but this series of extraordinary 17th-century drawings suggests they are only too apparent.

  • Article

Do you see what I see?

Is reality actually what you see, or just an elaborate illusion?

  • Article

Reversing the psychiatric gaze

Nineteenth-century psychiatrists were keen to categorise their patients’ illnesses reductively – by their physical appearance. But we can see a far more complex picture of mental distress, revealed by those patients able to express their inner worlds in art.

All stories (7)

Images

  • London in the nineteenth century / by Sir Walter Besant.
  • Pens suitable for feeding and washing sheep. Engraving, early nineteenth century.
  • A European family in nineteenth century dress, inspecting two camels. Gouache painting.
  • National portrait gallery of illustrious and eminent personages of the nineteenth century / with memoirs, by William Jerdan.
  • National portrait gallery of illustrious and eminent personages of the nineteenth century / with memoirs, by William Jerdan.
  • A town centre of north European origin, the foreground is peopled by figures wearing early nineteenth century costumes. Gouache painting.
  • Two men at sea in a fishing boat: one leans over the side, feeling seasick. Reproduction of a nineteenth century engraving.
  • Unzie, an albino Aboriginal man with an abundance of white hair. Reproduction by Sedgwick after a photograph by Wendt, late nineteenth century.
  • An American physician of the late nineteenth century, with his doctor's bag and horse and buggy; advertising the medicine "Dr Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery". Colour lithograph by E.C. Pease, 1910.
  • Thorley's horse and cattle spice is now creating such a sensation throughout the world, that all practical horse-keepers, flock-masters & cattle-feeders are pronouncing it the greatest discovery of the nineteenth century / Joseph Thorley.
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