Books

Wellcome Collection publishes books that relate to our exhibitions, collections and areas of interest.

Beneath the Skin

Fifteen talented writers each explore a different body part in this funny and moving collection.

Schadenfreude

A hilarious quest to understand life's ultimate guilty pleasure – in a beautiful gift package.

Living with Buildings

One of Britain's finest writers explores the relationship between our health and the buildings that surround us.

This is a Voice

Your voice is a powerful instrument. But do you know how to look after it? Or how to get the best out of it?

Shapeshifters

To be alive is to be in perpetual change. This book considers the transformations in mind and body that span the arc of human life.

Medieval Bodies

Brings together medicine, art and social history to reveal what life was really like in the Middle Ages.

The Institute of Sexology

A lavishly illustrated hardback book accompanying ‘The Institute of Sexology’ exhibition.

A Practical Course in Personal Magnetism

Unleash your charisma the Victorian way through the power of electric currents, with this forgotten precursor to today’s self-help classics.

The Book of Human Emotions

A gleeful and thoughtful collection of 156 feelings, both rare and familiar.

The Voices Within

A wide-ranging consideration of the voices in all our heads, examining how we think and what this means for our sense of self.

Death

Disturbing, macabre and moving, this beautifully illustrated clothbound book examines our enduring desire to make peace with death.

Tibet's Secret Temple Postcard Book

25 large-format cards showcase exquisite details from the murals and key artefacts of Tibet's Lukhang Temple.

Eat Me

A dark, fascinating and endlessly curious exploration of human and animal cannibalism.

Adventures in Human Being

Both user's guide to the body and a celebration of its elegance, this book will transform how you think about being alive.

States of Mind

A collection of literature, science and art delving into the mysteries of human consciousness.

Cures & Curiosities

The Wellcome Library is one of the most extraordinary libraries in the world.

The Sick Rose

A gruesome and strangely fascinating visual tour through disease in an age before colour photography.

Sex by Numbers

An informed, entertaining and eye-opening look at the most enduring of human obsessions.

The Smile Stealers

A gruesome yet captivating look at the evolution of dentistry: from extracting rotting teeth to the pursuit of the perfect smile.

This Way Madness Lies

An evocative exploration of the evolution of the asylum and attitudes towards people with lived experience of mental distress.

Diary Drawings

Winner of the MIND Book of the Year 2011

In Therapy

An insightful and honest account of the process of therapy from the best-selling author and psychotherapist.

Graphic Warnings

25 vintage postcards showcase the wit of 20th-century public health campaigns and their iconic graphic design.

Animal. Vegetable. Mineral.

Celebrates the beauty and strangeness of ordering systems used to classify nature in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Sound

Draws on the extraordinary experience of losing your hearing and, as Bella Bathurst eventually did, getting it back.

Being Mortal

A profoundly important and moving book about the modern experience of mortality.

A Guide for the Incurably Curious

This beautifully illustrated souvenir guide traces the history of Henry Wellcome’s collections.

Madness and Modernity

Sets out to chart the theme of madness across a variety of territories in Vienna in 1900.

Sleeping and Dreaming

A book that takes a fresh look at the apparently simple question of why humans sleep and dream.

Dirt

Dirt is waste, excrement, rubbish – but what then is soil? Is cleanliness next to godliness or sterility?

Medical London

Charts the many roles that diseases, treatments and cures have played in the city's sprawling story.

Skeletons

A 64-page book including all of the burial site photographs commissioned for the exhibition.

Future Face

What makes a face unique? What does a face really tell us, and how can it be transformed by art and science?

The Art of Medicine

For thousands of years artists have played a special role in the human quest to understand anatomy, health and disease.

The Heart

First Prize in the Popular Medicine category for the 2008 Medical Book Awards sponsored by the British Medical Association.

The Phantom Museum

An anthology of stories, true and imagined, inspired by objects from Henry Wellcome's collection.

Pearls of the Orient

This lavishly illustrated book celebrates the variety and beauty of the Asian collections preserved in the Wellcome Library.

Forensics

The book examines the techniques – from DNA analysis to digital evidence – that experts use to solve crimes.

A Heavy Reckoning

Explores the modern reality of medicine and injury in wartime, giving insights into the limits of human life.

Identity & Identification

Explores the philosophical, biological, and sociopolitical issues underlying our idea of self.

Brains

A fully illustrated and fascinating exploration of the brain.

High Society

Explores the spectrum of mind-altering substances across the globe and throughout history.