Medicine
When the local wizard was the repository of all wisdom
Before the arrival of ‘proper’ doctors, everyone in the Middle Ages, from rulers to peasants, turned to magic practitioners and cunning folk for healing and advice
I want to see a doctor – not do another NHS survey
Nye Bevan did not make old bones, and perhaps that’s just as well. According to a recent British Social Attitudes…
Adrift on the Canadian frontier: The Voyageur, by Paul Carlucci, reviewed
Based on the 19th-century ‘voyageur’ Alexis de Martin, Carlucci’s young protagonist is befriended by kindly strangers. But what are their true motives?
How much would your family stump up for your ransom?
Researching The Price of Life, Jenny Kleeman interviews Stephen Collet, who describes haggling for a year with the Somali pirates who kidnapped his sister in October 2009
Not everything in the garden is lovely
For as long as we have been human, powerful chemicals in plants have provided us with stimulants, analgesics – and the means of murder
Are surgical museums such the Hunterian doomed?
Margaret Mitchell on the ethics of museums of anatomical specimens
The deathly malaise that’s crippling Russia
Now is a difficult time to empathise with Russians – which is why we need Maxim Osipov. We need him…
How the ancients treated gout
Medical problems come and go in the media, and at the moment the flavour of the month appears to be…
How we fell for antidepressants
The French novelist, Michel Houellebecq, with his accustomed acuity about modern culture, titled his last novel but one Serotonin. By…
The danger of learning too much from Covid
When Ray Bradbury was asked if his dystopian vision in Fahrenheit 451 would become a reality, he replied: ‘I don’t…
The treatment of mental illness continues to be a scandal
There is much more desperation in this searching and enlightening history than there are remedies. Andrew Scull is a distinguished…
TB is back with a vengeance
If you were a teenager before 2005, one reminder of tuberculosis in British life is that small circular scar on…
Eugenics will never work — thankfully
The creation of a master race is an ancient idea which, thankfully, can never work, says Sam Leith
Why has medicine been so slow to improve over the centuries?
Medicine was founded by Hippocrates in the 5th century BC. Doctors continued to study the Hippocratic texts into the 19th…
Why cocktails are superior to wine
I often argue that, in theory at least, well-made cocktails are indisputably better than wines costing 20 times more. My…
What did the Romans ever do for us?
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is planning to install a statue of John Chilembwe in Trafalgar Square. Mr Chilembwe…
How the Lancet lost our trust
How the Lancet lost our trust
The hidden death toll of lockdown
The last patient I treated was 105 years old. She has lived through two world wars, a depression and at…
In an age of science, why are face masks a matter of opinion?
In 1846 Vienna, as across much of the world, a relatively new disease called puerperal (or ‘childbed’) fever had reached…
The truth behind 'do not resuscitate' orders
Coronavirus is revealing many good things about our society: the number of people willing to volunteer to help tackle the outbreak…
On the NHS front line, we’re braced for what’s coming
The fight against coronavirus has only just begun
Do Jews think differently?
Sixteen years into a stop-go production saga, I got a call from the director of The Song of Names with…
The snake-oil salesmen who prey on schizophrenics
Schizophrenia is the psychiatric illness about which the most misconceptions abound. It’s not so much the ‘negative’ symptoms that cause…
Letters: Of course Brexit is David Cameron’s fault
All Cameron’s fault Sir: In this time of febrile political speculation, there can have been few more arresting subject headings…
Arthritis, nerve pain and chronic fatigue: my life with Lyme disease
Some medical experts claim that Lyme disease is worse than cancer. It’s not a competition, but I do know one…
