Wellcome uses cookies.

Read our policy
Wellcome Collection homepage
All
Stories
Images
Catalogue
Events
35 results
  • Comic
  • Comic

I still know how to fly

| Lesley Imgart

Have you discovered inner strength you never knew you had?

  • Article
  • Article

Why I don’t like prescribing sleeping pills

| The Secret GP

Sleeping pills often seem a simple option for aiding sleep or when dealing with anxiety, but there are many risks, and our anonymous GP is not afraid to say no to patients.

  • Article
  • Article

Dealing with the dead after a nuclear attack

| Taras Young

Cold War-era predictions of death on a vast scale became routine. But the British authorities were less prepared to dispose of the bodies.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Tracing the roots of our fears and fixations

| Kate SummerscaleTim Robinson

Kate Summerscale explores the history of our anxieties and compulsions, and the new phobias and manias that are always emerging.

  • Article
  • Article

Confronting male stereotypes in the classroom

| Okechukwu NzeluRobin Hammond

Sometimes men just don’t like football. Writer and teacher Okechukwu Nzelu decides to be himself in front of his students.

  • Article
  • Article

Devilry and doom in 1666

| Charlotte SleighGergo Varga

Disastrous events and a significant combination of numbers signalled the end – or perhaps a new beginning – in 1666. But for some, this feverish period fuelled unprecedented inventiveness and development.

  • Article
  • Article

Duelling doctors

| Russell Moul

An enduring enthusiasm for 18th-century gentlemen to defend their ‘honour’ by duelling placed doctors in a delicate position. Specially when they faced being shot themselves.

  • Article
  • Article

Would you like to buy a dinosaur?

| Ross MacFarlane

Two remarkable letters and a drawing of a plesiosaur by Mary Anning offer a tantalising portal into the exciting world of fossil hunting and discovery of the 1800s.

  • Article
  • Article

The relationship between science and art

| Victoria Kingston

Often seen as opposites, science and art both depend on observation and synthesis.

  • Article
  • Article

Charged bodies

| Ruth Garde

Electrified humans brought education and performance together with a spark in the 18th century.

  • Article
  • Article

Eels and feels

| Ruth Garde

For Georgian Londoners, the allure of electric animals was both intellectual and sensual.

  • Article
  • Article

Thunderbolts and lightning

| Ruth Garde

Fire in the sky has always exerted a hold on our imagination, even as early scientists unlocked the secrets of atmospheric electricity.

  • Article
  • Article

The side effects of lithium mining

| Laura Grace SimpkinsMatjaž Krivic

Laura Grace Simpkins attempts to untangle some uncomfortable truths about the social and environmental costs of making her medication.

  • Article
  • Article

姜、蒜、葱 Ginger, garlic and spring onions

| Nina Mingya PowlesFaye Heller

Nina Mingya Powles felt adrift in the UK, living thousands of miles from home. But nurturing familiar tastes and smells in her tiny balcony garden helped her roots begin to grow.

  • Article
  • Article

A virtual view of history

| Marina GernerSteven Pocock

Step inside Anne Frank’s house or explore the galleries in a museum destroyed by fire. VR brings history and art satisfyingly close when we’re unable to get there in person.

  • Article
  • Article

An insider’s view of Play Well

| Gwendolyn SmithSteven Pocock

Curator Shamita Sharmacharja offers behind-the-scenes insights into an exhibition about the serious business of play.

  • Article
  • Article

Leaving Mexico and finding refuge in hope

| Laura Morales

In Mexico, violence of all kinds – organised, street, domestic – is accepted as normal. From the UK, Laura Morales speaks out and fights to help those suffering back home.

  • Article
  • Article

Air of threat

| Chloe AridjisMichael Salu

Novelist Chloe Aridjis vividly describes the suffocating atmosphere of Mexico City, as a combination of topography, crowded neighbourhoods, and reckless political diktats create a downward spiral.

  • Article
  • Article

A graveyard of plants for the people I love

| Jennifer NealFoli Creppy

Searching for her own ceremony to acknowledge the passing of her grandmother, Jennifer Neal turned to plants. The ritual she created was personal and loving, and celebrated life as well as acknowledging loss.

  • Article
  • Article

Bringing Braille back to the modern world

| Alex LeeIan Treherne

For anyone who thinks Braille is so last century, read on. New tech is helping dust Braille down and bring it to today’s visually impaired people.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

Portraits, from a distance

| Michelle Sank

Join photographer Michelle Sank on her daily walk around Exeter. Strength, frustration, resilience and eccentricity all show in these candid images portraying life under the constraints of coronavirus lockdown.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Why make-believe matters

| Michael RosenSteven Pocock

Michael Rosen explores the point of play, and reveals why we should all do a little more daydreaming.

  • Article
  • Article

Bringing biotech to the people

| Anna LewisDebbie Loftus

Amateur scientists have inspired all kinds of frightening scenarios, from Frankenstein’s monster to ‘The Fly’ and ‘Breaking Bad’. But it can be a force for good. Today’s DIYbio enthusiasts are having fun – and even making lucrative breakthrough discoveries.

  • Article
  • Article

The blood notebooks

| Rupert Thomson

Novelist Rupert Thomson explores his unusual behaviour during a time of self-imposed isolation.

  • Article
  • Article

When skin bleaching goes wrong

| Ngunan AdamuAmaal Said

Warnings about permanent health damage don’t deter those using skin-bleaching products for years on end. Read the story of one woman who suffered from liver failure after years of striving to be paler.