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Stories

  • Article

Dirt, disease and the Inspector of Nuisances

In the days when ‘bad air’ was thought to spread disease, dozens of Inspectors of Nuisances ceaselessly struggled against the perils of dirt – both visible and invisible.

  • Article

Vivekananda’s journey

How a young Indian monk’s travels around the world inspired modern yoga.

  • Article

What is air, and how do we know?

Watching bubbles in fermenting beer led 18th-century scientist Joseph Priestley to invent sparkling water – and to discover that different gases make up the air we breathe.

  • Article

NHS Blue: the colour of universal healthcare

The 1980s and 1990s saw ideas from the world of business infiltrating the NHS, including the introduction of an internal market, followed by a corporate branding exercise.

All stories (11)

Images

  • Slaughter-house reform / The Animal Defence and Anti-vivisection Society.
  • Slaughter-house reform / The Animal Defence and Anti-vivisection Society.
  • Doctors reduced to drinking in a seedy public house: representing the effect of the various Reform bills introduced by Sir James Graham. Wood engraving after J. Leech.
  • A doctor visiting a patient who insists on self medication; representing Lord Rosebery's chairmanship of a committee advocating reform in the House of Lords. Wood engraving by Sir E.L. Sambourne, 1907.
  • Two doctors - left, the 5th Marquess of Lansdowne, and right, H. H. Asquith - recommending different remedies to an irate patient; representing arguments surrounding the Parliament Act of 1911 and reform in the House of Lords. Pen drawing by F.C. Gould, 1911.
  • W.E. Gladstone represented as Samson destroying the pillars of the British Constitution by abolition of the House of Lords. Colour lithograph by Tom Merry, 24 October 1891.
  • A contrast between the housing conditions of the Irish rural poor and those of the middle-class urban population, envisaged as the result of Home Rule for Ireland. Colour lithograph by Tom Merry, 17 October 1891.
  • The Duke of Wellington as Chancellor of Oxford University, wearing academic robes and carrying a mace, instructs his Tory supporters portrayed as academics in gowns and mortar boards. Lithograph by John Doyle, 1834.
  • Daniel O'Connell sits at a lectern desk with a birch inscribed "repeal" teaching a row of school boys. Coloured lithograph by H.B. (John Doyle), 1836.
  • Britannia and her lion are begging on a bench on the Thames Embankment, impoverished by proposed Liberal reforms; beyond, the Palace of Westminster in ruins. Colour lithograph by Tom Merry, 28 November 1891.
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