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Stories

  • Article

Inhaling happiness and gasping for a high

The rapid, short-lived high we get from whippets, reefers and vapes can be accompanied by long-term health consequences. The search is on for safer ways to get stoned.

  • Article

Booze and bad behaviour

Our love of alcohol is like a party that’s lasted nine centuries. But there are signs that the demon drink is losing its appeal.

  • Article

A brief history of ventilation

As ventilators continue to play an important part in helping very ill coronavirus patients, medical historian Dr Lindsey Fitzharris traces their development from the first attempts at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation through centuries of medical crises.

  • Article

Drugs in Victorian Britain

Many common remedies were taken throughout the 19th century, with more people than ever using them. What was the social and cultural context of this development?

All stories (6)

Images

  • Tobacco factory, Industrial Corner, Barcelona St., Cuba: a view of the interior, showing men seated at rows of desks, rolling cigars. Photograph, 1902.
  • Comic sketch of a fat man being rowed in a boat with the name of cigar importer below. Woodcut, early 19th century.
  • Seventeen unlabelled figures illustrating clay tobacco pipe manufacture. Engraving, late-18th century.
  • Eight illustrations of the kiln used in baking clay tobacco pipes. Engraving by Mutlow, c. 1812, after J. Farey.
  • Tobacco plantation workers curing and preparing tobacco under a shelter. Engraving, mid-18th century.
  • A tobacco plantation in the Caribbean islands, with black workers and a white overseer. Engraving, 1683.
  • A tobacco plantation in the Caribbean islands, with black workers and a white overseer. Engraving, 1683.
  • A London street scene, mid-19th century, with a tobacconist's shop. Wood-engraving.
  • The manufacture of tobacco with leaves being sorted, dried, cured and pressed. Engraving, c. 1750.
  • The manufacture of tobacco with leaves being sorted, dried, cured and pressed. Engraving, c. 1750.
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Catalogue

All works (225)