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  • People viewing medieval manuscripts.

    Close encounters: a manuscripts workshop

    23/04/2018

    A free manuscripts workshop for PhD students at Wellcome Collection, 01 June 2018 Engaging with an artefact from the past is often a powerful experience, eliciting emotional and sensory, as well as analytical, responses. Researchers in the library at Wellcome… Continue reading

  • Last minute plum pudding

    21/12/2016

    Looking to bring something a little out of the ordinary to the Christmas table this year? Mary-Anne Boermans sought inspiration from our historical recipe manuscripts. Here’s her adaptation of a traditional plum pudding recipe: When we think of sweet, festive… Continue reading

  • A rumbustious ode to Buxton

    07/10/2016

    For National Poetry Day, Chris Hilton shares an unlikely offering from our collections. We’ve often said that if the Wellcome Library needed a mission statement, one possibility would be “more than you think”: a collection built around the central organising… Continue reading

  • Woodcut of swimming.

    Health and well-being: Early Medicine’s new theme

    07/06/2016

    The preservation of health and prevention of illness were major preoccupations in the ancient, medieval and early modern worlds. Since medical intervention to combat sickness could be both expensive and dangerous, it was preferable to take steps to avoid becoming… Continue reading

  • Shakespeare’s medical world

    23/04/2016

    Why should a library that specialises in the history and culture of medicine commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death? Dr Anna Maerker, who provides a Shakespeare and Medicine lecture at the Wellcome Library for acting students, kicks off our… Continue reading

  • Spotlight: pass the port, Dr Jenner

    10/08/2015

    When Edward Jenner, the vaccination pioneer, died in 1823, he left over 800 books among his personal effects. They are listed in an inventory preserved in the Wellcome Library (MS 3028). They include, unsurprisingly, a large number of works on… Continue reading

  • The Priory: an elusive asylum

    02/06/2015

    On 26 February 1909 the Coroner’s verdict in the case of the Roman Catholic priest Father George Stacey read as follows: He died from cardiac failure consequent upon exhaustion from having plucked his eyeballs from their sockets, his death being… Continue reading

  • Dastardly Doctor Crippen

    15/05/2015

    The doctor sat at his desk and signed the letter. Not long back after a romantic holiday in France, he was feeling content. Barely three miles away, the dismembered remains of his wife lay decomposing under their floor… Hawley Harvey… Continue reading

  • Spotlight: vanity of vanities, all is vanity

    17/02/2015

    Jodocus Müller, city apothecary of Dresden, was a prominent and presumably wealthy citizen of that town. In a certificate of 1675 he listed the six pursuits to which he had dedicated his life:  To learn the ‘A. B. C.,’ to… Continue reading

  • Spotlight: the power of angels – a charm against the plague

    05/01/2015

    Plague was one of the most feared and dreaded aspects of daily life in 15th century England. Although scholarly medicine attributed the plague to corrupt air, it was also explained in terms of divine punishment. Charms, healing remedies whose power… Continue reading