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  • Article

The child whose town rejected vaccines

Gloucester, 1896. Ethel Cromwell is taken ill at the height of Britain’s last great smallpox epidemic.

  • Article

Going viral in the online anti-vaccine wars

‘Anti-vaxxers’ are taking their message online using powerful images as well as words. But is the pro campaigners’ response any better?

  • Article

The ‘undesirable epileptic’

Abused in her marriage for being 'a sick woman', Aparna Nair looked to history to make sense of the response to her epilepsy. She discovered how centuries of fear and discrimination were often endorsed by science and legislation.

  • Article

The island of unclaimed bodies

In New York, those who live and die on the extreme edges of society are buried on an isolated island, often forgotten and unmourned. But recent legal changes aim to reduce stigma and restore their dignity.

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Images

  • Seven members of the French committee on vaccination rail at Tapp, a health officer who resists the new discovery. Coloured etching, 1801.
  • Seven members of the French committee on vaccination rail at Tapp, a health officer who resists the new discovery. Coloured etching, c. 1800.
  • Seven members of the French committee on vaccination rail against Tapp, who resists the new discovery. Line engraving, c. 1800.
  • George Rose, in profile, in a roundel. Stipple engraving by T. Blood after A. Wivell, 1818.
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