Tag: hygiene

The Secret of Health, with the Story of the Missing Bag is a combined story and lay medical tract that was published by Lever Brothers Ltd. (which later became Unilever) and is essentially an extended advert for Lifebuoy Soap. It… Continue reading

Wednesday November 19th is World Toilet Day. For readers in the developed world, this conjures up images of gleaming white porcelain and a hole down which bodily waste vanishes swiftly to be dealt with, somewhere, by someone else: a machine,… Continue reading

On Saturday 10th January 1863, a few yards from where the Wellcome Library now stands, a short stretch of railway line was opened to the public.  Only a few miles long, running from the Great Western Railway’s Paddington terminus to… Continue reading

It is Global Hand Washing Day today and we’ve chosen to mark the date by highlighting material from a recent library acquisition of African health posters, a number of which remind us all of the importance of hand washing and… Continue reading

1911 was a bumper year for exhibitions. In London there was the Festival of Empire and Imperial Exhibition at the Crystal Palace. In Turin there was the Esposizione Internazionale delle Industrie e del Lavoro. At the Hague in September there… Continue reading

This week’s free Wellcome Library Insight session – on Thursday 8th September – explores how doctors, governments and ordinary citizens in London have struggled against poor hygiene, pollution and dreadful epidemics, developing the themes of the recent Wellcome Collection Dirt… Continue reading

This week’s free Wellcome Library Insight session – on Thursday 4th August – ties in with Wellcome Collection’s current Dirt exhibition. The session will show how doctors, governments and ordinary citizens in London have struggled against poor hygiene, pollution and… Continue reading

The archives of the Royal Society for Public Health are now available at the Wellcome Library. Whilst the current Wellcome Collection exhibition, Dirt, shows the filthy reality of everyday life, this collection demonstrates how people have worked to combat dirt,… Continue reading

Here in central London it’s another warm, sunny day as a record-breaking dry spring shades into summer. The approach of the weekend, of course, gives the British climate the chance to spring a downpour on us all at the time… Continue reading

Among books, journal articles, pamphlets and bound volumes of patents about Victorian toilets (flushing or non-flushing), systems of varying complexity for the disposal (and recycling) of human sewage and many items about personal and household hygiene; we also have in… Continue reading