Our new exhibition explores experiences and perceptions of ageing, from adolescence to older age, and asks how societies can adapt to ensure everyone ages better.

Over 1.1 million items exploring art, health, culture and what it means to be human. Thousands of digitised materials are readily available online for you to explore and download under a range of free ...

In the five centuries since Europeans were introduced to tobacco, smoking has generated considerable controversy. This gallery tracks shifting views on smoking and health, from life-saving stimulant ...

From animal-bladder skin to houndstooth check and sequins, face masks have undergone many revolutions in design over the centuries. Writer Lizzie Enfield traces their history in pictures.

As Covid-19 first swept the UK in March 2020, seven Nightingale field hospitals were rapidly constructed across the country. The design ideas behind these conversions of existing buildings can be ...

How do you avoid catching the plague? Smoke constantly. Carry a sponge soaked in vinegar. Hang oranges studded with cloves around your house. This was the best medical advice available circa 1665, as ...

Yinka Shonibare’s striking and thought-provoking artwork ‘Refugee Astronaut’, on display in the recently opened ‘Being Human’ exhibition, embodies a complex message for modern times. The artist ...

In 1950, an American journalist popularised the term ‘brainwashing’, arguing that a new amalgam of technology, medicine and ideology was allowing an onslaught on people’s minds. In this abridged ...

show credit information for image 'A covered corpse lying on a bed. Etching by Ch. Chaplin after Louis-Henri Deschamps.' When terrible winter storms lashed the East Coast of America in December 2022, ...

show credit information for image 'Legacies of eugenics in school' Legacies of eugenics in school. © Gergo Varga (varrgo.com) for Wellcome Collection. When A-level ...

Ours is the age of contagious anxiety. We feel overwhelmed by the events around us, by injustice, by suffering, by an endless feeling of crisis. So how can we nurture the parts of ourselves that hope, ...

show credit information for image 'A prostitute leading an old man into the bedroom and taking money from him' Wherever there have been people buying and selling sex, there have been laws trying to ...