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  • In pictures

A medical history of smoking, from cure to killer

Today smoking is seen publicly as a deadly vice, privately perhaps as more of a guilty pleasure. Follow tobacco’s journey over the centuries from medical remedy to killer carcinogen.

  • 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

Public health campaigns and the ‘threat’ of disability

By continuing to represent disability as the feared outcome of disease, public health campaigns help to perpetuate prejudice against disabled people.

  • 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.

All stories (10)

Images

  • Body stretching / [British American Tobacco].
  • Tobacco plantation workers curing and preparing tobacco under a shelter. Engraving, mid-18th century.
  • Tobacco pipes (from New Zealand?). Albumen print.
  • Tobacco plant (detail) from Lobel and Pena, Stirpium...1570
  • Transgenic tobacco plants in laboratory
  • Tobacco (Nicotiana sp.): flowering stem with separate leaf. Coloured etching by M. Bouchard, 1772.
  • "The tobacco-manufactory in different branches"
  • Tobacco free initiative in Djibouti in 2009. Colour lithograph by Icon for World Health Organisation, ca. 2009.
  • A man smoking before his family: World No-Tobacco Day in Kenya. Colour lithograph by Ministry of Health, 2001.
  • Tobacco and betel nut chewing symptoms in Uganda. Colour lithograph by the Ministry of Health and WHO, ca. 2000.
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