Tag: prints

By their very nature, caricatures (in the sense of graphic works) distort the truth for humorous effect, but not quite enough to make their subjects unrecognizable. Quite how caricature artists have steered between the Scylla of distortion and the Charybdis… Continue reading

  The Wellcome Library has acquired a collection of 600 British posters dating from the 1940s to the 1990s advertising the health-maintenance activities of the British state. Most were produced by the Central Office of Information for the U.K. Ministry… Continue reading

Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) was the promoter of a form of animal magnetism (named Mesmerism after him), at first in Vienna (1773-1777) and subsequently in France (1778-1784). His unique selling point was the supply of mesmeric fluid that served to… Continue reading

Austen (the surname of one of England’s best-loved novelists) and Austin (the capital city of Texas) are both abbreviations of the name Augustine. That name became popular from Saint Augustine of Hippo, Father and Doctor of the Church (354-430), philosopher… Continue reading

To mark World AIDS Day (1 December) this year, BHIVA (the British HIV Association) held a World AIDS Day Event in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust on the theme HIV/AIDS at 30: Back to the Future. 2011 is the thirtieth… Continue reading

Blind musicians in Paris. Detail of lithograph by Martin Sylvestre Baptiste, 1828. Wellcome Library no. 16519i   An article by Ingrid Sykes in the latest issue of Medical History considers the blind in Paris from an unusual angle: their sound.… 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

The Paleofuture blog looks back at past projections into the future, an exercise that is usually instructive in one way or another. A few months ago (17 June 2011) it had a feature on a picture of “Rocket mailmen” which… Continue reading

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

“Blind Granny” with her tankard. Wellcome Library no. 16500i A new exhibition Reframing disability has opened at the Royal College of Physicians in their spectacular building on the south-east corner of Regent’s Park. It includes items selected from a collection… Continue reading