Richard Aspin
Dr Richard Aspin is Head of Research in the Wellcome Library. An archivist and manuscripts curator by training, he has spent many years working with the Library’s collections, as both custodian and researcher. His main motivation for studying the past is to help rescue forgotten lives from the enormous condescension of posterity.
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Spotlight: pass the port, Dr Jenner
When Edward Jenner, the vaccination pioneer, died in 1823, he left over 800 books among his personal effects. They are listed in an inventory preserved in the Wellcome Library (MS 3028). They include, unsurprisingly, a large number of works on… Continue reading
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A Parisian surgical dynasty and their books
Why do we often sign and date our books when we acquire them? It is not surely for fear that we will lose them and thus to ensure their safe return. Rather, it is to mark their place in our… Continue reading
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The Priory: an elusive asylum
On 26 February 1909 the Coroner’s verdict in the case of the Roman Catholic priest Father George Stacey read as follows: He died from cardiac failure consequent upon exhaustion from having plucked his eyeballs from their sockets, his death being… Continue reading
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Spotlight: a chevron between three gadflies
Jacques Auguste de Thou (1553-1617) was a man who evidently took great pride in his library. In his will he forbade his descendants to sell or otherwise dispose of any part of a collection that “for fully forty years he… Continue reading
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Spotlight: vanity of vanities, all is vanity
Jodocus Müller, city apothecary of Dresden, was a prominent and presumably wealthy citizen of that town. In a certificate of 1675 he listed the six pursuits to which he had dedicated his life: To learn the ‘A. B. C.,’ to… Continue reading
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Sex tourism in 18th century London?
We’ve all heard of the Grand Tour, when 18th century Englishmen went off to the Continent to further their cultural education and cultivate their aesthetic tastes, returning with paintings and statuary to adorn their homes. But what about traffic in… Continue reading
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Spotlight: Christmas greetings from 5 Field Ambulance
Christmas cards come in myriad forms, from the reverently pious through the cloyingly schmaltzy to the frankly naff. Humour, where it appears, is usually gently playful (Santa stuck in a chimney, Rudolf held up by celestial traffic lights) or achingly… Continue reading
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A Victorian lunatic asylum begins to reveal its secrets
Dr Richard Aspin pursues the dramatic account by a Victorian barrister admitted to a lunatic asylum in 1875 in the newly digitised casebooks of Ticehurst House Hospital. “I was therefore ‘removed,’ half-dying, in a state of semi-consciousness, I can scarcely… Continue reading
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Spotlight: Her Majesty’s dinner
This royal menu card from Balmoral Castle takes us back to the reign of Queen Victoria. Then as now, the monarch spent her summers in Aberdeenshire. Some of the Queen’s most intimate body-servants also hailed from Scotland; not only the… Continue reading
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Spotlight: Dr Joshua Webster’s Diet Drink
The makers of a Georgian universal remedy known as Dr Webster’s Diet Drink or Cerevisia Anglicana (English Beer) were clearly on to a good thing when they inherited the recipe. This ‘medicine’ had been reportedly formulated in 1742 by a… Continue reading