The Researcher’s View
What’s it like digging into archives to unearth the past?
Follow the research process with our guest bloggers: the academics, students, artists and others who explore our collections. Share their discoveries as they write – and rewrite – history.
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An epoch in the history of typography
In the preface to The Anatomy of Sleep Jamaican–Scottish physician Edward Binns (1804–1851) claims to have written the first ever treatise on “procuring sleep at will, by directing the activity of the cerebral organs”. But that isn’t the only first… Continue reading
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Doctors and the invention of the English seaside
How did the so-called ‘sea cure’ supplant the taking of waters at fashionable spas for Georgian England’s worried well? This was the question I sought answers for in the Wellcome Library’s collections. There I found several intriguing medical tracts, not… Continue reading
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Women pharmacists demand the vote
On Ada Lovelace Day, pharmacy historian Briony Hudson discovers the pioneering role of women pharmacists in the women’s suffrage movement. In April 1913 Bernard Gill submitted an article for publication to the Pharmaceutical Journal that arrived in a charred envelope.… Continue reading
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Doctor! The heart’s stopped!
Cardiac arrest is a popular narrative device in TV and film. However, on screen, it is shown to have much better odds of survival than in real life. During fictional hospital resuscitations, the dramatic significance of eye contact between team… Continue reading
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Unearthing the health of Victorian London
What can you learn from old bones? Rachel Ives explains what they tell us about the lives and deaths of the dead, and how osteologists use historical sources such as the Medical Officer of Health reports to confirm their findings… Continue reading
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Mental health history ventures out of the asylum
On 26 June the Wellcome Trust played host to a symposium on the history of 20th century mental healthcare in Britain – Keeping Mental Health in Mind. Part of motivation for the event, organized by the Wellcome Library and the… Continue reading
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Stranger than a wolf
Wellcome Images recently acquired a photographic series depicting the gradual creation of a human head in clay. They form part of an art project called Stranger than a Wolf by artist Heather Spears. For the project sculptor Ellie Scheepens was… Continue reading
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Test of an expert witness
When in 1836 James Marsh announced his test for the presence of arsenic, the news was greeted with huge relief. Unknown numbers of deaths, it was feared, were being attributed to diseases such as dysentery or food poisoning when the… Continue reading
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The care of pauper lunatics in Glasgow
Gartnavel Royal Hospital is one of the institutions in our project to digitise mental health archives selected from across the UK, and make them freely available through the Wellcome Library catalogue. As the Gartnavel records begin to appear online, Archivist … Continue reading
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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