Tag: animals

The next seminar in the 2017–18 History of Pre-Modern Medicine seminar series takes place on Tuesday 24 October. Speaker: Dr Benedetta Lomi (University of Bristol), ‘The uses of ox bezoar in pre-modern Japan in ritual and medical practices’ This paper focuses on the therapeutic… Continue reading

Pharmacy was one of the pillars of medical therapy during antiquity and the Middle Ages. Medicaments were derived from the natural world (plants, minerals and animals), and resulted from the combination of different substances, each with specific properties and therapeutic… Continue reading

We know that Henry Wellcome loved his cats, but it’s National Dog Day so to balance out the cats here are a few dogs from our collections. The life story of a fowl   A history and description of the modern… Continue reading

For National Insect Week, Hannah Brown shares some of her favourite insect images from Wellcome Images. Robert Hooke’s drawing of the head and eyes of a drone-fly appeared in his book, ‘Micrographia’, the first book to illustrate insects and plants… Continue reading

The theme of World Environment Day 2016 is the illegal wildlife trade. All five of the world’s species of rhinoceros have been brought to the edge of extinction thanks in part to a lucrative international trade in exotic animals and… Continue reading

Dr Angela Cassidy shares some of the challenges of being an historian of the recent past. How to make sense of the recent past? At what point does an issue or event stop being part of today’s social fabric and… Continue reading

Michael Ashburner is a pioneer of genomics and bioinformatics who has made the study of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster his life’s work. The first three sections of the Michael Ashburner archive (Library reference: PP/MIA) are now available to researchers… Continue reading

The gee-gees, the nags, the horses… no matter your preferred term for them, many a fan of the turf will be turning their attention this afternoon to one of the most famous sporting occasions of the year – the Derby Stakes, or… Continue reading

World Health Day 2014 (7 April) is about raising awareness of vector borne diseases – diseases carried by mosquitos, flies, ticks and bugs. In the 1980s the Wellcome Trust Film Unit produced a series of films about the history of… Continue reading

In 1887, writing under the pseudonym of Aesculapius Scalpel, Hackney GP Edward Berdoe published a frightening novel portraying everyday cruelty and callousness at the fictional St Bernard’s teaching hospital.  Despite being a work of  fiction, the author claimed 75 per… Continue reading