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Wellcome Library Insights – September and October
Our popular Insight sessions offer visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. These free sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections. The… Continue reading
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Rev : the Gothic Years
Passing under my nose in the Rare Materials Room this week was a fascinating tome by the Reverend Thomas Price, writing passionately in 1829 about Goths (not the pasty-faced variety clothed in black but the ancient tribe). Wrestling with the… Continue reading
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Behind the smile
One of the more arresting photographs in the library’s collections shows a man undergoing electrical stimulation of his facial muscles to help understand the nature of expressions. Charles Darwin used the original photographs, made by Dr. Guillaume Duchenne, in his… Continue reading
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Wellcome Library Insight – Fascinating Faces
This Thursday afternoon (6th May) offers another chance to explore the provocative idea that faces can be ‘read’, through our free Fascinating Faces ‘Insight’ session. This session will explore face reading, from its origins in Ancient Greece and China up… Continue reading
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Wellcome Library Insights: April – May 2010
Our popular Insight sessions offer visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. These free sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections from… Continue reading
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Wellcome Library Insight: Facing Up to the Past
This week’s free Wellcome Library session – on Thursday 1st April – offers both a chance to explore face reading through the collections of the Wellcome Library and also to learn about the life and death masks collected by Sir… Continue reading
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Identity Exposed
How do you spot a liar? What features do aggressive hockey players have in common? Calling all seekers of the shady secrets of face-reading, this is your chance to delve into a centuries old world of knowledge known to its… Continue reading
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Death of the ‘Criminal Man’
Professor Cesare Lombroso died on this day, one hundred years ago. Ironically his remains became part of his own museum, his head and internal organs joining those of the criminals which he studied throughout his career. The Wellcome Library has… Continue reading
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We’re talking ‘heads’
Last week self-styled ‘Guru of the Gurners’ Danny Rees treated Wellcome Trust staff to a display of rare and unusual library material on the subject of face reading. Items featured included book illustrations from Charles Darwin and phrenologist George… Continue reading
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On me ‘ead..
The Library has recently purchased the only known copy of a German pamphlet from 1785 that still contains two original ‘forehead reading’ templates. Made of cardboard and hand painted, these unique plates fit over the forehead to enable the practise… Continue reading