Author: Julia Nurse

In another of our occasional series introducing the digitised archive collections in the Codebreakers: makers of modern genetics online resource, Julia Nurse, Content and Metadata Officer at the Wellcome Library introduces the Honor Fell papers. The original papers are located… Continue reading

To mark World Blood Donor day, on 14th June, consider the work of some pioneers in blood research – the Medical Research Council Blood Group Unit (BGU). Robert Race (founder of the BGU) and his wife/assistant, Ruth Sanger, effectively opened… Continue reading

Not many paintings are assessed for the genetic defects of the characters portrayed – Jan van Scorel’s version of Adam and Eve of 1540 is an exception. Geneticist Hans Gruneberg, whose digitised archive forms part of the Codebreakers: Makers of… Continue reading

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of Crick and Watson’s paper on the structure of DNA in Nature. In the published paper their assessment of the discovery was subtle though crucial: It has not escaped our notice that… Continue reading

At Brighton hippodrome in December 1948, an 18 year old girl, Diana Grace Rains-Bath, volunteered to be hypnotized on stage by the Russian born American hypnotist, Ralph Slater who wrote the 1950’s classic book “Hypnotism and Self Hypnosis”. Duly rendered… Continue reading

It is World AIDS Day on 1st December, a day that has been marked annually at the Wellcome Library since the digitization of the Library’s international collection of 3000 AIDS posters several years ago. The collection continues to grow as… Continue reading

Carlos Paton Blacker or ‘Pip’ as he was more commonly known by his closer contacts, was a psychiatrist and eugenicist who played a crucial role in family planning in Britain during the 20th century. His archive, which is in the… Continue reading

  It is not only Independence Day in the US today. It is also the 30th anniversary since the death of Terry Higgins, the first person publicly identified as dying with AIDS in the UK on 4th July 1982. To… Continue reading

Blood transfusion has become such an integral part of life-saving procedures used today that it is hard to imagine a time when operations were extremely risky affairs. The emergence of the Blood Transfusion Service in 1946 was a blessing, though… Continue reading

It is Global Hand Washing Day today and we’ve chosen to mark the date by highlighting material from a recent library acquisition of African health posters, a number of which remind us all of the importance of hand washing and… Continue reading