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  • Medieval herbal showing plants.

    A medieval medical bestseller: the ‘Circa instans’

    20/02/2017

    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

  • Chinese image of plants and buddha.

    New digital and critical tools for the history of medicine and religion

    13/01/2017

    The next seminar in the 2016–17 History of Pre-Modern Medicine seminar series takes place on Tuesday 17 January. Speaker: Dr Michael Stanley-Baker (Max Planck Institute, Berlin) New digital and critical tools for the history of medicine and religion Abstract: Historians of medicine in… Continue reading

  • Shiny shiny, shiny boots of leather

    07/12/2012

    Forty-five years ago, a New York rock band under Andy Warhol’s patronage released their debut LP. The Velvet Underground and Nico crept out under the radar compared to some of 1967’s other releases – The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts… Continue reading

  • Case notes, coal gas and cocaine

    18/10/2012

    Coal gas, carbolic acid and lysol were the familiar poisons of the day, the household substances that extinguished unhappy lives in the haunted years after the First World War. A less familiar but increasingly notorious poison appears a couple of… Continue reading

  • Turn on, tune, in…investigate your subconscious?

    08/02/2012

    On 19th April 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann accidentally got some of the chemical he was synthesising onto his fingers, resulting in what he described as a dreamlike intoxication that lasted for two hours. His employers, Sandoz pharmaceuticals were quick… Continue reading

  • New Labour’s moral mazes

    05/01/2012

    One August evening in Bolton in 1997 five year-old Dillon Hull was accidentally shot dead by a man seeking to recover a heroin debt from Dillon’s father. Dr Brian Iddon, recently-elected Labour MP for Bolton South East, gave an interview… Continue reading

  • The Cook’s Tour

    22/10/2011

      Fed up of the cold already, and wishing you could get away from it all?  Why not sign up for a free Cook’s Tour on Tuesday 25 October at 3.00-4.30pm, and journey around the world exploring the historical role of… Continue reading

  • Item of the month, July 2011: On this day in Amsterdam …

    11/07/2011

    This print (left) sits in the Wellcome Library among a group of Dutch posters about the use of recreational drugs. It is exceptional for its casual production values: scraps of paper torn out of a notebook, containing incoherent verses which… Continue reading

  • Item of the Month February 2011: Notes on Yagé

    28/02/2011

    Back in July last year, we wrote about some items from our collections relating to Arthur Conan Doyle. We deliberately left one item out from that post, as we wanted to write in more detail about it at a later… Continue reading

  • Last chance to see: ‘High Society’

    25/02/2011

    Wellcome Collection’s current temporary exhibition, High Society, closes this Sunday (27th February), meaning there’s not much time left to sample its stimulating wares. High Society draws upon a range of intoxicating material from the Wellcome Library – a small sample… Continue reading