- Book extract
- Book extract
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.
- Article
- Article
Plant portraits
The beautiful and mysterious illustrations in medieval herbals convey a wealth of knowledge about the plants they portray.
- Article
- Article
Why the world needs collectors
Those who collect play an important role as “facilitators of curiosity”, says Anna Faherty.
- Article
- Article
Printing the body
The 18th century saw multiple technical developments in both printing and medicine. Colourful collaborations ensued – to the benefit of growing ranks of medical students.
- Article
- Article
Mask, ritual and fertility
Today many of us learn about fertility, conception and pregnancy online. But that wasn’t always the way. Discover how masks and rituals played an important educational role.
- Article
- Article
Pain and the power of activism
Today, women with endometriosis have more access to better information than ever before. Jaipreet Virdi applauds the shared stories, online communities and self-help books empowering women in pain.
- Article
- Article
The prostitute whose pox inspired feminists
Fitzrovia, 1875. A woman recorded only as A.G. enters hospital and is diagnosed with syphilis.
- Photo story
- Photo story
The last glass-eye maker in Britain
Meet Jost Haas – the UK’s last artificial-eye maker working exclusively with glass.
- In pictures
- In pictures
The eyes have it
In 1583, eye specialist Georg Bartisch published a book detailing the treatments he’d developed for various eye disorders. Today his approach seems to mix surprising innovation with entirely contemporary religious judgement.
- In pictures
- In pictures
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.
- Article
- Article
Trust me, I’m a patient
Artist Rachel Rowan Olive is an expert in the way her mental health condition affects her. Here she explains how it helps if doctors understand that.
- In pictures
- In pictures
From cacao to chocolate
Discover how chocolate morphed from a prized, spiritually significant commodity to a quasi-medicine, and finally to the sweet treat we eat almost daily.
- Article
- Article
Seeds for the future
Indigenous groups have a key role as guardians of biodiversity, and their knowledge could help us all preserve our world. To survive, we all need to collaborate, reject prejudice, and share what we know.
- In pictures
- In pictures
The healing sun
From ancient sun gods to artificial light, our relationship to our star has morphed over the centuries, but the sun's power to affect our health is more noticeable than ever.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Renaissance women and their killer cosmetics
In this extract from ‘How to be a Renaissance Woman’, Jill Burke delves into a complex world of beauty products, poison and patriarchy – and reveals the impossible contradictions of femininity faced by 16th-century women.
- Article
- Article
Found items
Books leave their traces in our minds, but we leave traces of ourselves in books too, as these fascinating items found inside old works show.
- Article
- Article
Bleeding healthy
For thousands of years, and in many different cultures, people have practised bloodletting for health and medical reasons. Julia Nurse explains where and when bleeding was used, how it was done, and why.
- Article
- Article
The smile catchers
From facial recognition to emojis in apps, find out how the monitoring of emotions is used to get more out of workers.
- Article
- Article
Would you like to buy a unicorn?
The story behind why somebody tried to sell Henry Wellcome a unicorn head in 1928.
- Book extract
- Book extract
You know the drill
Richard Barnett opens wide the true meaning of a healthy mouth.
- Article
- Article
Indian botanicals and heritage wars
Colonial botanical texts, as astonishingly beautiful as they are, may cast very dark shadows.
- Interview
- Interview
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.
- Article
- Article
How Indigenous insight inspires sustainable science
The forest of the Amazon Basin is inextricably bound up with the lives of the Indigenous peoples living there. Find out how they feel about the forest, use what it provides, and try to protect it from aggressive commercial exploitation.
- Book extract
- Book extract
The history of brainwashing
Is it possible to control what other people think? In this abridged extract from his book ‘Brainwashed’, psychoanalyst and historian Daniel Pick offers us a new history of thought control.
- Article
- Article
Caring for our Disabled daughter in lockdown
Jane Holmes talks about the challenges of caring for her Disabled daughter while working and trying to stay safe during the pandemic.