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Ken’s ten: looking back at ten years of Wellcome Collection

Wellcome Collection founder Ken Arnold picks his favourite exhibits.

Death and our digital ghosts

When we die, our data lives on. And as companies are increasingly spotting money-making opportunities from digital legacies, now could be the time to think about – and control – yours.

Enduring taboos and the future of skin bleaching

Many condemn skin bleaching in public while secretly lightening their own complexions. To break away from these taboos, we need honest information and open conversation.

Building a dream in the garden suburbs

In the late 19th century a ‘garden suburb’ promised a retreat from London’s dirt and crowds. See how this new concept was developed to appeal to the health concerns of the literary classes.

Aphasia and drawing elephants

When Thomas Parkinson investigated the history of “speech science”, he discovered an unexpected link between empire, elephants and aphasia.

Humans, animals and the sensory world

Artists and medics through the ages have made links between our discerning human senses and similar traits in animals. Discover how close we are to the earth’s other inhabitants.

Defying deafness through music

Did you know that Beethoven’s profession meant he was ashamed to admit to being deaf? Find out how similar prejudices persist today and how our writer is helping to break them down.

Manipulating the evidence with deepfake technology

How can you be sure that the person speaking on the screen is genuine? Find out how sophisticated digital manipulation is blurring the boundaries between real and ‘deepfake’.

The building as tool of healing

When we’re ill, it’s not just medical care that helps to treat us. Architects have discovered that the right environment can play an important part too.

Thalidomide, a bitter pill

Hear from some of the women who took the drug thalidomide over sixty years ago about the fear, isolation and grief that they experienced as the appalling pharmaceutical scandal unfolded around them.

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.

Interpreting the Ayurvedic Man

A British Sign Language video is the latest interpretation of an unique 18th-century Nepali painting about Ayurvedic medicine.

Going viral in the online anti-vaccine wars

‘Anti-vaxxers’ are taking their message online using powerful images as well as words. But is the pro campaigners’ response any better?

Rocking psychiatry with R D Laing

Turn on, tune in, drop out. Discover how six rock songs from the 1960s and 1970s link the ideas of famous therapist R D Laing with the era’s counterculture.

Bubbles of history

Since the 1960s, scientists have been able to study the air from past centuries by analysing particles in Arctic ice samples. But as the polar ice melts, the future of this research is changing.

The painter, the psychiatrist and a fashion for hysteria

A dramatic painting brings a famous event in medical history alive. But it also tells a tale about the health preoccupations of the time.

How writing helps me manage schizophrenia

The art of scientific glassblowing

Exciting things happen when art, craft, engineering and science collide. Glassblower Gayle Price is proof of that.

Rag mags and monthly issues: Five period zines to stop you seeing red

Using humour, personal experience and political activism to explore the bloody reality of menstruation.

What our facial hair says about us

Five bearded and moustachioed men choose five hirsute archive images to help them reflect on the way facial hair is linked with personality and identity.

Writing in remission

Reading the writings of the lifelong hypochondriac Jacques Derrida during lockdown, Brian Dillon realises his own health anxiety has become unusually subdued.

Inside the mind of George Vasey, co-curator of Misbehaving Bodies

Discover how curator George Vasey honoured the approaches of Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery, who mischievously subvert clichés around illness and death.

When you don’t belong, you drink

In the third part of her exploration of belonging, Tanya Perdikou unpicks the addictions that have shaped her past and uncovers the connections that make recovery possible.

Crime drama and the realistic cadaver

Today we are accustomed to the increasingly realistic look of dead bodies in on-screen dramas. Special-effects expert Hildegunn M S Traa reveals how crime and morgue scenes reflect the social idea of death.

The tower in fiction, film and life

The high-rise estates born of postwar idealism soon became symbols of crime and squalor. But after one terrible tragedy, public bodies are being forced to rethink our towers.