Author: Guest contributor

Thomasin Summerford shares her experience of a one week placement in our Moving Image and Sound Collection. Arriving through the swing doors of the Wellcome Trust building in Euston Square, one enters a reverie of contemporary glass and steel, the… Continue reading

The first manuscript that I ever encountered face-to-face was Wellcome MS. 550. This volume, mainly in medieval Latin, dates from the early 15th century, and is a compendium of different medical and surgical writings. As my research involves the plague,… Continue reading

On National Libraries Day (February 6), Andy Wright, the Wellcome/Public Libraries Project Lead tells us about the role of public libraries in supporting health and well-being. I’m currently on the most amazing adventure of a secondment based at the Wellcome… Continue reading

A box of confectionery arrived at the green room of the Princess’s Theatre, Oxford Street, on 6 November 1894… with no well-wishes attached. Madame Anna Ruppert, starring in ‘Robbery Under Arms’, ate a considerable quantity of sweets. The next day,… Continue reading

Many bishops in medieval England possessed medical knowledge, but that did not mean that such knowledge was always viewed as a desirable quality in a bishop. In 1114, King Henry I of England decided that Faritius, abbot of Abingdon, should… Continue reading

On a recent visit to the Library, archivist Karen Rushton made some interesting connections between letters in the Wellcome Library archives and others in archives at the University of Manchester Library. By their very nature, correspondence by particular individuals often… Continue reading

Notorious among our library staff is a collection known as simply the ‘Broadly Classified Medical’ (BCM). Comprising over 55,000 books dating back to the 1850s, much of the collection is a prime candidate for our 19th century digitisation programme. For… Continue reading

By the middle of the 15th century, women’s healthcare had begun to shift from a field dominated by women to one monitored and controlled by men. Following the classical Aristotelian schema, the female body was perceived as biologically inferior, intrinsically… Continue reading

Holly Story from the Library’s media team has been delving in to one of our many historical recipe books. Here’s what she discovered from the point of view of a curious cook rather than an historian or archivist. In the… Continue reading

Dr Rob Boddice presents the evidence for his discovery of a lost work by Edward Jenner in the Wellcome Library. Edward Jenner, father of immunology, pioneer of the vaccine against smallpox and all-round good egg, is well known for his… Continue reading