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Inside the Machinery of War
Archive cataloguing sometimes unearths some previously unknown gems amongst our collections. This is certainly the case with the papers of father and son Dominique and Félix Larrey (MS.8889), formerly in the autograph letters collection. Dominique Jean Larrey, 1st Baron Larrey… Continue reading
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The Education of Helen Keller
Helen Keller is arguably the most famous disabled person in history. Her extraordinary achievements despite losing both sight and hearing at the age of just 19 months have been the subject of numerous films and books. However, not everyone was… Continue reading
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Sir Michael Stoker’s letters
The recent death of the cell biologist Sir Michael Stoker (1918-2013) prompted me to see if his name appeared in our digital archives. It does. I found a number of letters he wrote to other scientists, including Francis Crick, Jim… Continue reading
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Autograph letters collection: a hidden treasure?
Practically all archives held by the Wellcome Library can be viewed, or at least identified, online, with one exception: the autograph letters collection. Chris Hilton’s recent blog post on Simón Bolívar is one of many which have been based around… Continue reading
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You’ve Goat to be Kidding
Best known for their cantankerous personalities and trouser nibbling traits, it’s not particularly surprising that there haven’t been too many positively memorable goats throughout history. Putting aside the goat that hit the headlines for marrying a man in Sudan, another… Continue reading
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You can check in, but you can never leave
Nowadays technology makes travel to most corners of the globe, for all but those phobic about air travel, swift and relatively cheap. As we enter the twenty-first century, too, ideology is on the side of the traveller: the end of… Continue reading
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60th anniversary of discovery of DNA structure
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of Crick and Watson’s paper on the structure of DNA in Nature. In the published paper their assessment of the discovery was subtle though crucial: It has not escaped our notice that… Continue reading
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The very model of a modern major-general
Sir Henry Wellcome’s deep interest in the archaeology, history and wellbeing of the Sudan is well known. Undoubtedly the event that did more than anything else to spark such fascination – in Wellcome’s mind as in that of so many… Continue reading
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‘I can think of nothing lovelier than owning cattle’
Archives and Manuscripts has recently acquired a letter (MS.8815) from the writer, critic and journalist Dame Rebecca West [Cicely Isabel Andews, nee Fairfield] (1892-1983) to Sir Weldon Dalrymple-Champneys (1892-1980), Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Health at the Ministry of Health (whose… Continue reading
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The Giant Ape in the Library
Quick – what’s the connection between a hundred-foot rampaging gorilla and the Wellcome Library? Well, it wouldn’t be a common sight in the reading room, and although stepping out onto the Euston Road has its hazards they usually relate to… Continue reading