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Stories

  • Article

There’s more to gingerbread than ginger

‘Bake-Off’ finalist Mary-Anne Boermans treats us to the warm and enticing pleasures of gingerbread over centuries.

  • Article

Chemical highs and psychedelic research

Could recreational drugs make you happy? Kate Wilkinson explores why keen clubber Simon believes taking psychedelics has helped him develop as a person.

  • Article

Tripping for spiritualism and science

Getting high in the name of religion or creativity has been practised for centuries. Now it seems hallucinogenics could help treat mental illnesses too.

  • Article

Female masturbation and the perils of pleasure

Dr Kate Lister exposes the brutal 19th-century ‘cures’ for women who indulged in masturbation.

All stories (17)

Images

  • The inevitable consequences of over-indulgence: two drunk men seize a young woman. Engraving after S. Freudeberg.
  • Months of the year: February, in which people celebrate carnival by over-indulgence, frost-fairs etc. Engraving after P. Stevens II.
  • Wood shoot of Myoga Zingiber. Myoga shoots are considered a great delicacy inn Japan but over indulging can result in memory loss.
  • Adipose Tissue
  • 'More to love' Adipose tissue
  • Adipose tissue or Adipocytes, also known as lipocytes and fat cells are the main cells forming fat tissue.
  • Silybum marianum (L.) Gaertn. Asteraceae Milk thistle. Carduus Mariae. Distribution: Europe. Gerard (1633) calls it Carduus Mariae, Carduus Lectus, or Ladies Thistle, and Carduus leucographus [meaning 'white writing', in reference to the white markings on the leaves] because Pliny wrote about a plant he called Leucographis although Gerard notes that it would be 'hard to assume this to be the same [plant].' He also queries if it is the same as the Alba spina of Galen. Of the latter he reports that Galen recommended it for all manner of bleeding, toothache and the seeds for cramp. Gerard writes that Dioscorides recommends that a drink of the seeds helps infants whose sinews are 'drawne together'
  • The Virgin of the Sacred Heart. Engraving by A. Lega.
  • Chang and Eng the Siamese twins, eating and drinking to excess. Coloured etching by W. Heath, 1829.
  • Bartholomew Fair, site of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, pictured in 1721. Aquatint with etching after T. Loggon, c. 1824 (?).
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