Our bodies are homes to millions of bacteria – some of which are particularly nasty, and others which can play an important role in our overall health and wellbeing. Scientific research over the past 50 years has uncovered the benefits that good bacteria can provide, particularly in relation to intestinal health. It was discovered that regular doses of the ‘good’ bacteria that live in the intes...

BACKGROUND It has been suggested that improving people's ability to deal with their finances, their financial capability, will directly improve their wellbeing and indirectly their health. To this end, financial capability initiatives have been funded by statutory and charitable health bodies, sometimes as part of a practice termed 'social prescribing'. DISCUSSION This paper examines financia...

Human development (HD), a process designed to enhance human lives directly, is contrasted with economic development, which entails the expansion of material things intended to fulfill human needs. Human development empowers people to participate in the improvement of their own well-being. The paper looks at the record of HD in Africa over the period 1970-2005, using half-decadal data derived fr...

This article examines the reception of the early modern hospital among the indigenous people of the Andes under Spanish colonial rule. During the period covered by this study (sixteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries), the hospital was conceived primarily as a manifestation of the sovereign’s paternalistic concern for his subjects’ spiritual well being. Hospitals in the Spanish American colonies w...