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Find out what kinds of treatment history offered to people suffering from voice problems.

Historian Emma J Wells examines at how medieval European churches sought to keep their parishioners healthy.

Some games carry a weighty message, from the earliest form of snakes and ladders that led to either heaven or hell, to chess pieces representing the dangerous manoeuvres of unsafe sex in the 80s.

Votive offerings, known as ex-votos, have been a vibrant part of devotional practice since ancient times and, Louisa McKenzie suggests, they still have a place in the secular world of today.

For centuries, women have been ridiculed and punished for excessive talking, despite the fact that men gossip just as much.

Odd diets aren’t just for January. Here are some examples that go back way further than New Year’s Day.

Scratchy throat? Burning fever? Broken heart? It all comes down to the same issue: too much blood.

Period pains are nothing new. Nor are innovative suggestions for how to deal with them.

Nineteenth-century psychiatrists were keen to categorise their patients’ illnesses reductively – by their physical appearance. But we can see a far more complex picture of mental distress, revealed by those patients able to express their inner worlds in art.

There are around 15 iron corsets in museum collections around the world, including two in Wellcome Collection. Historians still dispute their purpose, but these intriguing objects hold clues about who would have worn them and why.

Why is there a gender imbalance when it comes to the donation of organs, blood and tissue, and what can be done about it?

What have snakes, unicorns and crocodiles got to do with pharmacies? The history of these modern signs goes back to the Greek gods.

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.

Many cultures associate physical cleanliness with spiritual purity, while disease and dirt are signs of moral pollution.

Find out how a sweet-smelling liquid anaesthetic captured the public’s imagination and changed pop culture for ever.

From ancient sun gods to artificial light, our relationship to our star has morphed over the centuries, but the sun's power to affect our health is more noticeable than ever.

Early-20th-century folklorist Edward Lovett made it his mission to discover the nation’s beliefs and superstitions, collecting amulets from cottage cupboards up and down the country.

Most new mums are told that breast is best. But breastfeeding doesn’t always come as easily or naturally as you might imagine.

Those who collect play an important role as “facilitators of curiosity”, says Anna Faherty.

Our current Queen fortunately doesn’t have to spend hours laying hands on the sick to cure them. But it was a different story for monarchs of the early modern era, whose touch was a sought-after treatment for scrofula.