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A revealing book: cultural exchanges in 16th century India
The Library holds a rare copy of one of the earliest books printed in India. The Colóquios dos simples is remarkable both as an example of the emergence of printing in India, and for its descriptions of over eighty Indian… Continue reading
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‘One of the great leaders among medical women in India’
We were very excited this summer to be alerted to the existence of surviving correspondence of Margaret Ida Balfour (1866-1945), CBE, MD, CM FRCOG, a medical woman who trained at Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women under Sophia Jex-Blake, qualifying in… Continue reading
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Portrait of a lady in Nizamabad: Isabel Kerr. Wellcome Library Item of the Month.
Photograph by G.M. Kerr, 1926. Wellcome Library no. 726380i. This photographic print is one of the apparently few and elusive portraits of Isabel Kerr (1875-1932), a Methodist missionary who founded the Victoria Treatment Hospital for people with leprosy at… Continue reading
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Approaching Sikandra
Everyone who visits Agra in Uttar Pradesh visits the Taj Mahal, the monument which was built from 1632 onwards by the sorrowful Shah Jahan (1592-1666), fifth Mughal emperor, in memory of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, after her death in childbirth.… Continue reading
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The Sausage follows the Flag
Draw up a list of iconic British foods: menu items that radiate comfort and Britishness to the native and the outsider alike. The chances are that sausages will be somewhere on that list – not, perhaps, as charged with emotional… Continue reading
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A hot night in Bengal
One hundred and seventy years ago, on the 1st of August 1840, a court-martial convened in the East India Company military base of Dinapore (now Dānāpur, in India’s Bihār state). Dinapore was a staging post on the route up the… Continue reading
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A Friday night curry
We are what we eat. This is most obviously true in the physical sense, but also culturally: our diet expresses our society and encodes a wide variety of cultural influences. Not only does our food say who we are now… Continue reading
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Item of the month June 2009: The Jagannāth Triad
Wellcome Library no. 45182i Faced with these striking figures for the first time, one could be forgiven for bemusement: who or what are these goggle-eyed black-and-white minstrels? This and eight related paintings were bought by Sir Henry Wellcome at Stevens’… Continue reading