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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

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.

  • Article

A nose through Blythe House

Recently sold and emptied out, Blythe House was once one of the UK’s biggest museum storage facilities. Here, museum worker Laura Humphreys reflects on her relationship with the store’s architecture, objects and aromas.

All stories (6)

Images

  • Smoking tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.): flowering and fruiting stem. Coloured etching by M. Bouchard, 1772.
  • A Scotsman and a Native American man smoking pipes by barrels of tobacco. Coloured engraving.
  • A married couple, Mr and Mrs Potts, arguing about Mr Potts's habit of tobacco smoking. Lithograph by T.H. Jones.
  • A no smoking sign: World No Tobacco Day in Kenya. Colour lithograph by Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, 2005.
  • A group of five heads; three men smoking tobacco and two women taking snuff. Coloured lithograph by F-S. Delpech, c. 1823, after L. Boilly.
  • A group of five heads; three men smoking tobacco and two women taking snuff. Coloured lithograph by F-S. Delpech, c. 1823, after L. Boilly.
  • Lobelia tupa L Campanulaceae Tabaco del Diablo [Devil's tobacco]. Distribution: Central Chile. Dried leaves are smoked as a hallucinogen by the Mapuchu Indians of Chile. It was also used as a respiratory stimulant. The genus was named after Matthias de L’Obel or Lobel, (1538–1616), Flemish botanist and physician to James I of England, author of the great herbal Plantarum seu Stirpium Historia (1576). Lobeline, a chemical from the plant has nicotine like actions and for a while lobeline was used to help people withdraw from smoking, but was found to be ineffective. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • A man holding a tobacco pipe and blowing a smoke ring. Mezzotint by A. Blooteling (Bloteling) after P. Staverenus.
  • Tobacco: chemicals contained in its smoke and their effects on human health, especially the heart. Colour lithograph, 197- (?).
  • Tobacco: an Irishman, a Scot and an English sailor smoke, take snuff and chew respectively. Coloured aquatint by Hunt, c. 1833, after W. Summers after C. J. Grant.
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