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  • Article

How slums make people sick

A newly gentrified corner of Bermondsey leaves little clue to its less salubrious history. But a few intrepid writers recorded the details of existence in one of London’s most squalid slums.

  • Article

Love, longing and tea from the polski sklep

For people of Polish origin in the UK, herbal tea is closely tied to health and shared history. Kasia Tomasiewicz explores her changing relationship to these tea-related cultural habits.

  • Article

The child whose town rejected vaccines

Gloucester, 1896. Ethel Cromwell is taken ill at the height of Britain’s last great smallpox epidemic.

  • Article

Our Covid complicity

Athena Stevens thought she had a cold that she tried to ignore, but it turned out to be Covid-19. Here she reflects on how we have all put ourselves and others at risk with the choices we’ve made during this pandemic.

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Images

  • Chymoral resolves inflammation relieves pain speeds recovery : AAA throat spray for the quick relief of sore throat pain and discomfort.
  • Chymoral resolves inflammation relieves pain speeds recovery : AAA throat spray for the quick relief of sore throat pain and discomfort.
  • A sore throat and cough stopped by a traffic "Stop" sign" representing the medicine Kresival. Colour lithograph, 196- (?).
  • An ill man taking a gargling mixture for a sore throat. Coloured aquatint by H. Pyall after M. Egerton, 1827.
  • Bronchial Cough Electuary for horses : specially prepared for all kinds of coughs, also for sore throat, &c.... /Alfred Parker.
  • If anyone suffering from sore throat ties his (or her) left stocking round his throat on going to bed, he will be better in the morning. Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, E. & M. A. Radford.
  • If anyone suffering from sore throat ties his (or her) left stocking round his throat on going to bed, he will be better in the morning. Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, E. & M. A. Radford.
  • An account of the sore throat attended with ulcers; a disease which hath of late years appeared in this city and the parts adjacent ... / [John Fothergill].
  • In Ireland, sore throats used to be treated by applying salt herrings to the feet ... but today ... : the choice is Strepsils antiseptic lozenges for mouth and throat infections / Boots Pure Drug Company Limited.
  • The modern medicament for relieving nasal catarrh, congestion, colds, hay fever, influenza, asthma, quinsy, bronchitis, sore throat or chest, headache, neuralgia, sprains, neuritis & rheumatic pains : Mentex / Foster McClellan Laboratories.
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