Tag: anniversaries

On World Water Day the book Women, Plumbers and Doctors caught my eye. It seems an unusual title for a book from 1885, but when you turn the front cover over it becomes apparent that this quirky title is a manual of household… Continue reading

Lots of people are talking about happiness, and not just because 20 March is International Day of Happiness. Links between health and happiness have been around for a long time, as this 18th century cartoon shows. In the drawing, a… Continue reading

To mark national No Smoking Day, historian Professor Tilli Tansey draws on first hand accounts of how the British medical community responded to emerging evidence of the connection between smoking and health in the 1950s. The link between good health… Continue reading

On International Women’s Day (8 March) we’re looking back to a Wellcome exhibition called Hygieia’s Handmaids: women health and healing. The catalogue for the exhibition, which has been digitised and is available online,  makes a useful resource for the history of… Continue reading

Christmas on the front lines during World War I was a time when military personnel were most likely to get home-sick. While entertainment was provided throughout the year to keep spirits up, Christmas was when the troops most needed cheer.… Continue reading

What does this bottle for holy water, from the Southern Italian port of Bari, have to do with Christmas? It is one of a series of Holy water flasks to be found in the original collections of Henry Wellcome (and… Continue reading

On World AIDS Day (1 December) take some time to look back at how the world responded to the AIDS epidemic by browsing our international collection of over 3000 AIDS posters online. When AIDS gripped the world in 1981, the… Continue reading

As we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, an exhibition catalogue in the Library’s collections takes us back to 1968 and the 50th anniversary of Armistice Day: the official end of the War on 11… Continue reading

On Ada Lovelace Day, medical student Emily Garrett explains why her research into the archival papers of Letitia Fairfield left her so inspired by this pioneering 20th century doctor. I first entered the Wellcome Library just over two years ago,… Continue reading

For World Mental Health Day: Emma Hancox opens up the Mind archive. Over 80 boxes of material from the archive of Mind, the leading mental health charity in England and Wales are now available for consultation in the Wellcome Library.… Continue reading