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Setting the record straight: maniac or sick man?
Researcher Jon Mitchell searched the Retreat archives in pursuit of John Summerland, an asylum patient whose story figures in histories of madness and mental health. What he found was a lost reputation. Like so many undergraduates, the first time I came… Continue reading
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Ashes to Ashes: doctors debate smoking
To mark national No Smoking Day, historian Professor Tilli Tansey draws on first hand accounts of how the British medical community responded to emerging evidence of the connection between smoking and health in the 1950s. The link between good health… Continue reading
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Disability and sex: a history of suppression
This is an extract from an article first published in the Wellcome Trust online journal Mosaic: the science of life. It is republished here under a Creative Commons licence. Disabled people’s sexuality has been suppressed, exploited and, at times, destroyed… Continue reading
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Attached to her work: Ursula Bowlby and motherhood
How much did Ursula Bowlby’s personal experience of motherhood contribute to her research on the relationship between infants and mothers, and to the development of her husband’s work on attachment theory? These are questions that Dr Katherine Holden explores in… Continue reading
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Prevent and survive: medical activism in 1980s Britain
Dr Christoph Laucht’s research explores the ways in which medical professionals organised to protest against nuclear war in Cold War Britain. We invited him to share some of his findings from the archives. Britain experienced a revival of fears of… Continue reading
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Glasgow University Library’s medical heritage
John Moore, Collections Manager and Librarian for the College of Science and Engineering at Glasgow University Library, reflects on the University of Glasgow’s medical history. Many of the library’s 19th century medical collections will be included in the UK Medical Heritage… Continue reading
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Archivists in the asylum
It’s not often that archivists get to visit the source of their historical records. Archivists at the Borthwick Institute for Archives got to do just that on a trip to former mental hospital, the Retreat, in York. The Borthwick Institute… Continue reading
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A Cancer Landscape: a powerful new exhibition in Brighton
Margaret Felton from Sussex Community NHS Trust reflects on the emotional impact of an upcoming exhibition at the Brighton Science Festival. It was not until I heard artist and cancer patient Michele Angelo Petrone (1963-2007) talk about and show the… Continue reading
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Lionel Penrose: a man of many talents
Katy Makin reveals some insights into the personality of the multi-talented geneticist Lionel Penrose from his personal papers, which have been digitised as part of the Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics online resource. Lionel Sharples Penrose (1898-1974) is best known… Continue reading
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Meditation and modernity: an image of Marguerite Agniel
A photograph in our collections inspired Isobel Routledge to find out more about the intriguingly posed woman in the picture. My desk is covered in postcards from Wellcome Images. One photograph in particular has always stood out for me. It’s… Continue reading