Author: William Schupbach

The arrival of a royal baby was the subject of a massive painting exhibited in Paris in 1827 by a young and then little-known painter, Eugène Devéria (1805-1865). The subject was the birth of the future king Henri IV of… Continue reading

The stomach: a biography is a new book by Dr Jeremy Hugh Baron, subtitled “Four thousand years of stomach pains: literature, symptoms and epidemiology”.  Dr Baron has been using the Wellcome Library and other libraries for many years, during which… Continue reading

Marking the 60th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II,  William Schupbach, Iconographic Collections Librarian, explores the local environs of the Wellcome Library, then and now.  The painting above shows Euston Road in London, 60 years ago, early in the… Continue reading

In America before World War I, Mr Toad‘s view of motoring was not uncommon: the driver was a wealthy sporting eccentric in the vanguard of modernity; he was free to drive on the public highway; and if people wanted to avoid… Continue reading

The Society of Antiquaries of London is holding a series of public lectures which are free and open to all. Of the five lectures between September 2012 and May 2013,  the first, on 18 September 2012, was on the use… Continue reading

The Wellcome Library’s exhibition of photographs of China taken by John Thomson between 1869 and 1872 is currently on show at The Hunt Museum in Limerick, Ireland. The Hunt Museum is named after John and Gertrude Hunt who presented their… Continue reading

The Wellcome Library was honoured to receive a visit yesterday from staff of the Kuwait Digital Repository at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research: Ms. Shatha D. Al-Own (Project Leader), Ms. Amani Al-Othman (Principal Investigator), Mr Muhammad Mozafar (Task Leader),… Continue reading

The BBC reports the death earlier today of the actor Herbert Lom, who played the police chief in the Pink Panther films. His many other roles included parts in The Ladykillers (1955) and The Phantom of the Opera (1962). Herbert… Continue reading

Wellcome Library no. 70i Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (left) discovered X-rays through a combination of accident and experiment in December 1895, in his laboratory at the University of Würzburg. When he realized that he was looking through opaque objects, and was… Continue reading

The memento mori pictures in the Wellcome Library range from complex and learned allegories to popular works which encourage their owners to laugh in the face of fate. A comparable collection, focused on the Dance of death, was acquired by… Continue reading