Search | Gresham College

Screening: When is it Useful, When is it Not?

One of the most powerful tools in public health is screening – whether for cancers like cervical or breast cancer, genetic abnormalities, or infectious diseases. Screening can be transformational, detecting disease early and preventing it taking hold.

What Surgeons Can Learn from Polar Explorers and Fighter Pilots

Trauma surgery, combat flying and polar exploration require professionals to work in risky conditions where error can lead to catastrophe.

Christmas Lies and Legends

Is Santa really Dutch? Were Christmas Trees introduced by Prince Albert? Was Christmas once a time of faith, rather than riotous feasting?

Bowel Cancer and Digestive Cancers

Bowel cancer is the third most common cancer in both men and women. A substantial proportion of bowel cancer is preventable.

The Changing Geography of Ill Health

Ill health has always been concentrated in particular places; tackling these pockets of ill health is an essential role for public health. These may be driven by environmental factors, demography, deprivation and healthcare provision.

Snow White: Evil Witches

The Brothers Grimm’s tale of Snow White has been retold dozens of times in print and the cinema over the past two centuries. A central character is the Evil Queen, Snow White’s malevolent stepmother, who tries to kill her with the help of the occult.

John Evelyn: Britain’s First Environmentalist

Air pollution, the usefulness of trees, ideas for a green belt are not concerns we associate with the 1600s. But John Evelyn, writer, diarist and gardener, was unusual. His thinking in Fumifugium (1661) about air quality, and Sylva (1664) about trees, seems astonishingly close to our own today.

Convincing Fiction: Daniel Defoe to Ishiguro and Knausgaard

How does fiction make itself seem like fact? Professor John Mullan begins where novels begin: with Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, which showed every novel that followed how to make a ‘strange surprising’ story seem entirely ‘probable’ (the word that eighteenth-century pioneers of fiction liked t

The Windrush Thinkers and Artists

London in the 1950s and 60s was a crucible in which West Indian writers, artists, thinkers and scholars imagined new futures for the Caribbean, Britain and the world.

The Role of the State in Public Health, and its Limits

The relative role of the State and the individual is a recurring theme of political theory. It is also a practical question in public health – what are the respective responsibilities of government, individuals and healthcare professionals to protect health?

Suggested searches:

For the Love of Learning since 1597

Popular topics:

Search results