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  • In pictures

How Mills & Boon made medicine romantic

‘Doctor-nurse’ romances are a hugely popular trope. Agnes Arnold-Forster explores their history and surprisingly nuanced depictions of womanhood, hospitals and the welfare state.

  • Book extract

The history of brainwashing

Is it possible to control what other people think? In this abridged extract from his book ‘Brainwashed’, psychoanalyst and historian Daniel Pick offers us a new history of thought control.

  • 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.

  • Article

Tripping for spiritualism and science

Getting high in the name of religion or creativity has been practised for centuries. Now it seems hallucinogenics could help treat mental illnesses too.

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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.
  • Satirical veterinary frontispiece, 1771
  • American medical biography: or, memoirs of eminent physicians who have flourished in America. To which is prefixed a succinct history of medical science in the United States from the first settlement of the country / By James Thacher ... Two volumes in one.
  • The medical and surgical history of the war of the rebellion, (1861-65) / Prepared, in accordance with the acts of Congress, under the direction of Surgeon General, Joseph K. Barnes, United States Army.
  • The medical and surgical history of the war of the rebellion, (1861-65) / Prepared, in accordance with the acts of Congress, under the direction of Surgeon General, Joseph K. Barnes, United States Army.
  • The medical and surgical history of the war of the rebellion, (1861-65) / Prepared, in accordance with the acts of Congress, under the direction of Surgeon General, Joseph K. Barnes, United States Army.
  • The medical and surgical history of the war of the rebellion, (1861-65) / Prepared, in accordance with the acts of Congress, under the direction of Surgeon General, Joseph K. Barnes, United States Army.
  • The medical and surgical history of the war of the rebellion, (1861-65) / Prepared, in accordance with the acts of Congress, under the direction of Surgeon General, Joseph K. Barnes, United States Army.
  • The medical and surgical history of the war of the rebellion, (1861-65) / Prepared, in accordance with the acts of Congress, under the direction of Surgeon General, Joseph K. Barnes, United States Army.
  • The medical and surgical history of the war of the rebellion, (1861-65) / Prepared, in accordance with the acts of Congress, under the direction of Surgeon General, Joseph K. Barnes, United States Army.
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