Medicine
A warning to those who argue that we live in a visual society
‘Can one person really grasp the significance of what another person has been through?’ asks Dr Rita Charon in this…
Patients like being told they need an operation. It doesn’t mean they do
In George Bernard Shaw’s play The Doctor’s Dilemma, written early last century, the knife-happy surgeon invents a nut-shaped abdominal organ,…
Vital signs
Exhibit A. It is 1958 and you are barrelling down a dual carriageway; the 70 mph limit is still eight…
Playing Stalin for laughs
Christopher Wilson’s new novel is much easier to enjoy than to categorise. And ‘enjoy’ is definitely the right word, even…
Warning: rationality could be bad for your health
Almost every popular commercial product owes its success to two different qualities. First, it does the job it is ostensibly…
A deadly role reversal
Who would you trust to take a blade to your brain? Medical schools and hospitals, arbiters of this outrageous intimacy,…
Jeremy Hunt is spoiling for a fight. He’s picked the wrong one
Jeremy Hunt is right to fight for NHS reform. But he’s going after the wrong people, on the wrong issue
The ME lobby is just a symptom of our stupidity about mental illness
Do you ever wake up worried that you have tiny fibres growing beneath your skin, all along your spinal column?…
Make-up, chocolates, deodorant and sand: two weeks in cancer scares
Killer facts The World Health Organisation added processed meats to its list of ‘known’ carcinogens. A few of the other…
One in ten British babies will soon be born via IVF. So why is it taboo?
Pretty soon, one in ten British babies will begin life in a Petri dish. So why is it still such a taboo subject?
New mothers deserve something better than NCT classes
Why women are seeking alternatives to NCT antenatal classes
Did Hans Asperger save children from the Nazis — or sell them out?
Simon Baron-Cohen wonders whether the humane Hans Asperger may finally have betrayed the vulnerable children in his care in Nazi-occupied Vienna
Is medical screening bad for your health? Michael Mosley dons a pair of ‘dignity shorts’ to find out
When the link between tobacco and lung cancer was first established in the early 1950s, one obvious question arose: should…
It’s amazing how many different subjects Sir Thomas Browne’s latest biographer doesn’t care about
On the evening of 10 March 1804, Samuel Taylor Coleridge settled at a desk in an effort to articulate what…
Back to Bedlam: Patrick Skene Catling on the book that makes madness visible
Madness is an ancient, evidently inscrutable mystery, often regarded with superstitious fear, yet can provide a refuge from reality. Sometimes,…
The real reason GPs are grumpy: the robots are coming for them
There’s something wrong with the relationship between patients and their GPs. I’ve spent much of this winter in my local…
Why you have to listen to this year's Reith Lectures
Each year the Reith Lectures come round as Radio 4’s annual assertion of intellectual authority, fulfilling the BBC’s original aspiration…
Why the most important years in history were from 1347 to 1352
A group of retired Somerset farmers were sitting about in the early 1960s, so Ian Mortimer’s story goes, debating which…
Meet the bloated, useless General Medical Council
Its licensing system has turned doctors into full-time form-fillers
Six rivals for the name Isis
Not in their name The BBC decided to start calling the Islamic terror group Isis by the acronym IS instead.…
Rotherham has proved it again: social work just doesn't work
The appalling abuse in Rotherham suggests it does not
This strategy won Eurovision. It could also save your life
Oskar Morgenstern grew up in Vienna, John von Neumann in Budapest. Clearly the same Austro-Hungarian intellectual spirit which gave rise…
As a doctor, I’d rather have HIV than diabetes
In the West, the deadliest thing about HIV may now be the stigma
Would you let parents destroy ‘gay’ embryos?
Because I’d like to have a child, and I’m getting on a bit, my husband and I have spent time…
Ancient and modern: Herodotus on 111
The NHS 111 line, designed to deal with problems that do not count as emergencies, is in financial and organisational…
