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Stories

  • 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

Shakespeare and the four humours

Blood. Phlegm. Black bile. Yellow bile. The theory of the four humours informed many of Shakespeare's best-known characters, including the phlegmatic Falstaff.

  • Article

Parks and politics in Brixton’s past and present

Gentrification is creeping along Railton Road, but racial inequality still lingers in memories of the 1980s, and in the continuing lack of green-space access.

  • Article

Acid and the sexual psychonauts

How LSD fuelled one woman’s journey of sexual self-discovery in the late 1950s.

All stories (174)

Images

  • Bournemouth rationing scheme : leaflet for the guidance of the householder who fills up and signs the application form / A.B.B. Scott, Executive Officer, Bournemouth Food Control Committee.
  • Bournemouth rationing scheme : leaflet for the guidance of the householder who fills up and signs the application form / A.B.B. Scott, Executive Officer, Bournemouth Food Control Committee.
  • Solanum laciniatum Aiton Solanaceae. Kangaroo Apple. Evergreen shrub. Distribution: New Zealand and the east coast of Australia. It contains steroidal saponins that can be converted into steroids, including progesterone, oestrogens, cortisone, prednisolone etc. In 1943, Professor Russell Marker discovered a method of obtaining an unsaturated steroidal saponine, diosogenin, from Mexican yam (Dioscorea mexicana), which can easily and cheaply be converted into steroids, such as prednisone and progesterone, reducing the price of steroid production to a fraction (0.5%) of its former cost. For 20 years drug companies showed little interest, and it was only as a result of Professor Marker forming his own company, and the concerted efforts of several gynaecologists, physiologists and birth-control advocates, that the contraceptive pill was ‘born’ in 1960. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • A person receiving a blood transfusion, 2 people forming a brown shadow within a red heart, a range of sharp instruments about to be sterilised, and a pregnant woman with the silhouette of her fetus showing; a warning about the dangers of contracting AIDS by the AIDS Control Project of the Goverment of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad. Colour lithograph, 1994.
  • Visualising the human breath ("I"), Artwork
  • Visualising the human breath ("Breathe"), Artwork
  • Blue Weevil, Close-up
  • Blue Weevil, Anterior
  • Blue Weevil, Lateral
  • Blue Weevil, Close-up
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All works (148)

Events

  • Discussion

Access to Birth Control in Early 20th-century Ireland

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Part of Exploring Research

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