Wellcome uses cookies.

Read our policy
Wellcome Collection homepage
All
Stories
Images
Catalogue
Events
32 results
  • Article
  • Article

The birth of Britain's National Health Service

| Cal Flyn

Starkly unequal access to healthcare gave rise to Nye Bevan’s creation of a truly national health service.

  • Article
  • Article

The secret lives of Britain’s first Black physicians

| Annabel SowemimoGergo Varga

Dr Annabel Sowemimo explores the web of connections between early Black British doctors, the role of empire in West Africa and the pernicious reach of scientific racism.

  • Article
  • Article

The unexpected parallels between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Wellcome Collection

| Russell Dornan

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

  • Article
  • Article

Remote diagnosis from wee to the Web

| Christine RoSteven Pocock

Medical practice might have moved on from when patients posted flasks of their urine for doctors to taste, but telehealth today keeps up the tradition of remote diagnosis – to our possible detriment.

  • Article
  • Article

The child whose town rejected vaccines

| Anna Faherty

Gloucester, 1896. Ethel Cromwell is taken ill at the height of Britain’s last great smallpox epidemic.

  • Article
  • Article

Intelligence testing, race and eugenics

| Nazlin BhimaniGergo Varga

Specious ideas and assumptions about intelligence that were born during the great flourishing of eugenics well over 100 years ago still inform the British education system today, as Nazlin Bhimani reveals.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Why the NHS is worth saving

| Gavin FrancisJames Glossop

In this extract from his latest book, ‘Free For All’, Dr Gavin Francis poses challenging questions to be addressed if a health service that’s free for all at the point of use is to remain possible.

  • Article
  • Article

Why the 1918 Spanish flu defied both memory and imagination

| Mark Honigsbaum

The Black Death, AIDS and Ebola outbreaks are part of our collective cultural memory, but the Spanish flu outbreak has not been.

  • Article
  • Article

Graphic battles in pharmacy

James Morison’s campaign against the medical establishment inspired a wave of caricatures mocking his quack medicine.

  • Article
  • Article

Beating the bodysnatchers

| Allison C Meier

When a rise in grave robbing called for strong measures, mortsafes became the unassailable solution. Allison C. Meier explores.

  • Article
  • Article

The making of ‘Quacks’

| Helen Babbs

How do you create a medical comedy that’s authentic and laugh-out-loud funny?

  • Article
  • Article

Cowpox, Covid-19 and Jenner’s vaccination legacy

| Owen GowerSteven Pocock

The well-known story of vaccination pioneer Edward Jenner has at its heart his drive to make vaccines free of charge and available to all. Now his principles extend to the global campaign for a people’s patent-free vaccine for Covid-19.

  • Long read
  • Long read

Healthy scepticism

| Caitjan GaintyAgnes Arnold-ForsterPaul AddaeFranklyn Rodgers

Healthcare sceptics – like those opposed to Covid-19 vaccinations – often have serious, nuanced reasons for doubting medical authorities.

  • Article
  • Article

The birth of the public museum

| Elissavet Ntoulia

The first public museums evolved from wealthy collectors’ cabinets of curiosities and were quickly recognised as useful vehicles for culture.

  • Article
  • Article

Born in the NHS

| Cal Flyn

Despite underfunding, strikes and scandals, the first two decades of the 2000s has seen the British people’s love of and loyalty to the NHS soar.

  • Article
  • Article

In search of the ‘nature cure’

| Samantha WaltonSteven Pocock

Under the competing pressures of modern life, many of us succumb to mental ill health. Samantha Walton explores why so-called ‘nature cures’ don’t help, and how the living world can actually help us.

  • Article
  • Article

When depression is worse than physical illness

| Elly Aylwin-FosterJohn Miers

Chronic physical illnesses can be accompanied by troubling depressive symptoms. Elly Aylwin-Foster urges doctors to treat every aspect of her condition with the same care.

  • Article
  • Article

Manipulating the evidence with deepfake technology

| A R Hopwood

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’.

  • Article
  • Article

The origins and meanings of pharmacy symbols

What have snakes, unicorns and crocodiles got to do with pharmacies? The history of these modern signs goes back to the Greek gods.

  • Article
  • Article

The poor child’s nurse

| Briony Hudson

Charming family scenes in Victorian ads for children’s medicines were at odds with some of the dangerous ingredients they contained.

  • Article
  • Article

Why even plastic surgery can’t hide you from facial recognition

| Sharrona PearlSteven Pocock

Once upon a time, plastic surgery allowed a few notorious criminals to evade the law. But today, sophisticated facial-recognition technology has turned dreams of anonymity to dust.

  • Article
  • Article

London, city of lost hospitals

| Dr Tom BoltonSimon Norfolk

Come on the trail of hundreds of ghost hospitals, whose remnants hold clues to medical treatments of the past.

  • Article
  • Article

The colonist who faced the blue terror

| Anna Faherty

India, 1857. In a British enclave, Katherine Bartrum watches her friend, and then her family, succumb to the deadly cholera.

  • Article
  • Article

Two health centres, two ideologies

| Emily Sargent

Two futuristic, light-filled buildings aimed to bring forward-looking healthcare to city dwellers. But the principles behind each were very different.

  • Article
  • Article

Cocaine, the Victorian wonder drug

| Douglas SmallBenjamin Gilbert

Today, cocaine has a very poor public image as one of the causes of crime and violence. But for the Victorians it was welcomed as the saviour of modern surgery.