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Stories

  • Article

Fees, funding and the NHS

In the 1950s, dramatic political battles over NHS charges brought down a government. But public confidence in the service still grew.

  • Article

Witches

Many of the women persecuted as witches in the 16th-century “witch craze” were over 50 and exhibited signs of menopause. Helen Foster suggests that the stigma of the wicked witch still affects older women and how they deal with menopause.

  • Article

The birth of Britain's National Health Service

Starkly unequal access to healthcare gave rise to Nye Bevan’s creation of a truly national health service.

  • Article

Guerrilla public health

From safe-use guides to needle exchange schemes, Harry Shapiro reflects on 40 years of drug harm reduction in the UK.

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Images

  • A donkey as a physician taking the pulse of a dying man. Aquatint with etching by F. Goya, ca. 1797.
  • A donkey as a physician taking the pulse of a dying man. Aquatint with etching by F. Goya, ca. 1797.
  • Henry Addington as a medical practitioner bleeding the exhausted John Bull, assisted by other politicians; representing Britain's strength being sapped by nepotism in politics and by war with Napoleon. Coloured etching by J. Gillray, 1803.
  • A triumphant American slave woman representing quassia (ingredient in acoholic drinks) is carried aloft by two brewers; representing the outcry against a tax on private brewing (?). Etching by J. Gillray, 1806.
  • The assumption of Queen Victoria. Photogravure, 1902, after A. Drummond, 1901.
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Catalogue

All works (12)