Author: chassan

We’ve recently subscribed to Ethnographic Video Online, a database containing almost 750 hours of footage and over 1000 films that document human culture and behaviour. Covering every region of the world, it includes animations, demonstrations, documentaries, edited field recordings, interviews and… Continue reading

Is there life on other planets, and will we ever discover another world with a biodiversity as rich as that found on Earth? NASA’s Curiosity Rover, which last month sent back its first pictures from Mars, is another step in the attempt to answer… Continue reading

Was Florence Nightingale ‘deluded’ and ‘power hungry’, and why do some scientists miss out when it comes to honours? Taking on just these subjects, two articles in the latest issue of History Today address the waxing and waning reputations of… Continue reading

Women at the forefront of medical science, health inequalities, and medical archaeology might not be obvious subjects for poetry, but all these things were given poetic treatment by some of the the prize-winning entries for the 2012 Hippocrates Awards for… Continue reading

At the weekend we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the birth of the artist and writer Mervyn Peake (1911-1968). Most famous for his Gormenghast trilogy – the story of a hermetically sealed earldom decaying within the seams of arcane ritual… Continue reading

As today is the UN World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, we thought we would draw attention to some of the many ways people have sought to cope with drought and its consequences, as found in our collections. The… Continue reading

Bright as the silvery plume, or pearly shell, The snow-white rose, or lily’s virgin bell, The fair HELLEBORAS attractive shone, Warm’d every Sage, and every Shepherd won. With winter closed about us and the last leaves of autumn lost to… Continue reading

The Wellcome Library has set up a trial for a new online database, The Cult of the Body: Sports and Physical Culture in Russia 1891-1919, which can be accessed via the Library catalogue. The database provides access to the wealth… Continue reading

The journals of Arthur Wellington Clah (1831-1916) – Christian missionary and First Nations hereditary Tsimshian chief – are perhaps one of the more unexpected treasures of the Wellcome Library. Written over fifty years, from 1859 to 1910, they comprise a… Continue reading

A recent post on the BBC News Viewfinder Blog draws attention to the remarkable work of Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952), a legendary American photographer, writer, and pioneering ethnographic filmmaker. The Wellcome Library holds thirteen first generation prints of the outstanding… Continue reading