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  • Article

Eugenics and the welfare state

Indy Bhullar explores the ideas of William Beveridge and Richard Titmuss, who were strongly influenced by eugenic thinking, and yet championed the idea of the welfare state.

  • Long read

Healthy scepticism

Healthcare sceptics – like those opposed to Covid-19 vaccinations – often have serious, nuanced reasons for doubting medical authorities.

  • Article

Sacred cows and nutritional purity in India

Apoorva Sripathi explores the complex reasons behind India’s recent boom in all things dairy – beginning with a 1970s Western food-aid programme.

  • Article

Ginger’s role in cures and courtroom battles

Some people will use a dose of ginger to help with hangovers – but it hasn’t always been a friend to the thirsty.

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Images

  • Aconitum carmichaelii Debeaux. Ranunculaceae. Chinese aconite, Chinese wolfsbane, Carmichael's monkshood. Herbaceous perennial. Distribution C. to W. China to N. America. Named for Dr J.R. Carmichael (d. 1877), English physician, plant collector and Protestant missionary from 1862-1877 in Guangdong and Shandong, China initially in Canton. He aided Francis Forbes to collect plants for Kew. Aconitum plants are so poisonous that Theophrastus states that death was the punishment for possessing them. Aconitine is the poison and was used - from Aconitum ferox - in the 'curry murder' in London in 2009. It causes respiratory paralysis, bradycardia (slowing of the pulse), cardiac arrhythmias, tingling, sweating, gastric cramps, diarrhoea and death, both by ingestion and by absorption through the mucous membranes and the skin. Despite this it is widely used in Chinese herbal medicine. It is a restricted herbal medicine which can only be dispensed by a herbal practitioner for external use following a one-to-one consultation, or by prescription from a registered doctor or dentist (UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)). Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Patient suffering under conventional medicine compared with health via Morisonian alternative medicine; represented by trees, one bloated and dying under the varied administration of conventional doctors and the other drained of impurities and healthy. Coloured lithograph.
  • Two trees being cultivated by doctors; symbolising the differences claimed by James Morison between the 'organic' and his 'hygeist' approached to health. Lithograph, c. 1835.
  • Two trees being cultivated by doctors; symbolising the differences claimed by James Morison between the 'organic' and his 'hygeist' approached to health. Lithograph, c. 1835.
  • Two trees being cultivated by doctors; symbolising the differences claimed by James Morison between the 'organic' and his 'hygeist' approached to health. Lithograph, c. 1835.
  • Two trees being cultivated by doctors; symbolising the differences claimed by James Morison between the 'organic' and his 'hygeist' approached to health. Lithograph, c. 1835.
  • Chinese Materia Medica illustration, Ming: Cassia blossom
  • Chinese Materia Dietetica, Ming: ' Salt gall' water
  • Chinese Materia Dietetica, Ming: Brine
  • Erythroxylum coca Lam. Erythroxylaceae Coca. Distribution: Peru . Cocaine is extracted from the leaf. It is no longer in the UK Pharmacopoeia (used to be used as a euphoriant in ‘Brompton Mixture’ for terminally ill patients). Cocaine, widely used as a local anaesthetic until 1903, inhibits re-uptake of dopamine and serotonin at brain synapses so these mood elevating chemicals build up and cause a ‘high’. Its use was often fatal. Coca leaf chewing was described by Nicolas Monardes (1569
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