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Illuminated manuscripts, illuminating medicines

From rare bugs to exorbitantly priced plant parts, find out more about the artistic and medical uses of pigments from the past.

Stories of Asian palm-leaf manuscripts

Wellcome’s Adrian Plau shares some the stories behind the Asian palm-leaf manuscripts in our collections. He reveals how British colonialism impacted this special form of knowledge transmission and the challenges involved in unearthing each manuscript’s origins and historical journey to Wellcome Collection.

Interpreting the Ayurvedic Man

Writing the language of music

The earliest surviving attempts to notate music date from the 10th century, and became increasingly precise and complex over the following millennium. Discover the visual beauty of music manuscripts through the ages, and how they help musicians interpret composers’ intentions.

Beautiful bedding and how to die well

When you are unwell, your bed can be both a refuge and a prison. Discover how artist Poppy Nash created a bed-centred artwork inspired by her own chronic illness and depictions of ill health from history.

A medieval guide to practical magic

With few sources of effective help available when treating an injured patient, the medieval physician could instead stage a healing ceremony using a practical how-to guide he carried with him.

Medieval mobility aids

There are clues in the margins of medieval manuscripts to suggest that disabled people in the past made long pilgrimages, and were helped on their journeys by mobility aids remarkably similar to those we have today.

The eye of darshan

The Hindu concept of darshan means “divine revelation”, but it’s also about the multilayered ways in which we see the world around us. Adrian Plau explains how one image in a Panjabi manuscript relates to darshan, and why it’s so striking.

Guide dogs or good dogs from the Middle Ages

Medieval illustrations often show blind people, sometimes with dogs. But working out whether these were actually guide dogs involves a mix of detailed detective work and expert speculation.

Ten favourites from the stores

Books, sex workers’ cards, a bomb... the Retrieval Team gives us a glimpse behind the scenes.

Book design, dissected

Gwen Smith talks to art director Peter Dyer about imagery, colour, type and staying true to the pages within.

Digitising Audrey

Building digital images of what Audrey created means that her work can be frozen in time – for the digital version, at least, the process of decay is halted, and any number of people can view it without the risk of damaging it.

Inside the mind of Ayurvedic Man’s curator, Bárbara Rodriguez Muñoz

The choices a curator makes – what goes in? what stays out? why? – are often as fascinating as the exhibition itself.

The enigma of the medieval folding almanac

With its combination of rich, portable data and high-end style, this folding almanac could have been the medieval equivalent of the latest iPhone.

In the tracks of Derek Jarman’s tears

Researcher E K Myerson shares her moving encounters with the personal papers of artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman.

Conserving Audrey

Elena describes how specially designed storage allows Audrey’s scrapbooks to retain all traces of her creative process, although their intrinsic fragility means deterioration is almost inevitable.

Sigrid Rausing’s prescription for writing

The Wellcome Book Prize shortlisted author of ‘Stay With Me’ answers five questions on health, inspiration and storytelling.

Meredith Wadman’s prescription for writing

The Wellcome Book Prize shortlisted author of ‘The Vaccine Race’ answers five questions on health, inspiration and storytelling.

Ayurveda: Knowledge for long life

The story of medicine in India is rich and complex. Aarathi Prasad investigates how it came to be this way.

The unexpected parallels between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Wellcome Collection

With the news of a sequel in development, Russell Dornan explores parallels between ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and Wellcome Collection.

Divining the world through an artist’s almanac

Amanda Couch's artists book, 'Huwawa in the Everyday: an almanac' is inspired by the entrail like folds of a medieval folding and its function as a guide for astrological divinations linking the body, health and the heavens. Like the original almanac her work is designed to be carried out into the wider world.

Plant portraits

The beautiful and mysterious illustrations in medieval herbals convey a wealth of knowledge about the plants they portray.

How slums make people sick

A newly gentrified corner of Bermondsey leaves little clue to its less salubrious history. But a few intrepid writers recorded the details of existence in one of London’s most squalid slums.

Tragic artists and their all-consuming passions

Does having a debilitating disease help or hinder creative genius?

You, a thousand years ago

Jack Hartnell argues that, if we were transported into the medieval past, we’d find ourselves somewhere different yet strangely familiar.