Wellcome uses cookies.

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

Surviving a flesh-eating disease

| Scott NeillNan Carreira

Nearly dying from a skin infection gave Scott Neill a chance to start again after an early life marked by grief and depression.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

The serious side of historical games

| Julia Nurse

Some games carry a weighty message, from the earliest form of snakes and ladders that led to either heaven or hell, to chess pieces representing the dangerous manoeuvres of unsafe sex in the 80s.

  • Article
  • Article

Robinson Crusoe and the morality of solitude

| Professor Barbara Taylor

Robinson Crusoe, fiction’s most famous castaway, was certainly isolated, but did he suffer the intrinsically modern affliction of loneliness?

  • Article
  • Article

Daniel Regan on using photography to manage emotions

| Daniel Regan

Artist Daniel Regan manages his emotions and stays grounded through photography, allowing him to engage in the world around him.

  • Article
  • Article

The metamorphosis of masturbation

| Dr Kate Lister

Throughout history, medics and campaigners have tried to stamp out masturbation – but is modern science transforming its reputation?

  • Article
  • Article

Graveyards as green getaways

| Allison C MeierJack Seikaly

Stressed city dwellers have been visiting cemeteries in greater numbers since the start of the pandemic. Discover how, despite the constant reminders of death, graveyards bring visitors a sense of renewal.

  • Article
  • Article

“People see the disability but forget the ability”

| Sarifa PatelBenjamin Gilbert

I’m a disabled Asian woman, and mother of four. I’m trying to show people that we have to talk about disability if we want things to change.

  • Article
  • Article

Drawing the human animal

| Allison C Meier

We might try to deny our animal instincts, but this series of extraordinary 17th-century drawings suggests they are only too apparent.

  • Article
  • Article

The bishop’s profitable sex workers

| Dr Kate Lister

How did the Church rake in revenue from 14th-century sex regulations? Kate Lister explores a bishop’s lucrative rulebook.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

A medical history of smoking, from cure to killer

| Matthew Wood

Today smoking is seen publicly as a deadly vice, privately perhaps as more of a guilty pleasure. Follow tobacco’s journey over the centuries from medical remedy to killer carcinogen.

  • Article
  • Article

Domestic titans

| Elvia WilkMichael Salu

Feeling trapped by the idea that an impenetrable carapace of space trash could surround the planet, Elvia Wilk turned to thoughts of the new worlds still to be revealed here on Earth.

  • Article
  • Article

Coasting to catastrophe

| Charlotte SleighGergo Varga

In climate change, everything – and everyone – is connected. The watery process that will gradually cut off the Isle of Thanet from the British mainland has begun, and everyone in the UK needs to pay attention.

  • Article
  • Article

The ‘epileptic’ in art and science

| Aparna NairTracy Satchwill

From scarred outsiders in literature to the cold voyeurism of medical films and photography, people who experience seizures and epilepsy are rarely shown in a compassionate light in popular culture.

  • Article
  • Article

John Walter on ‘Alien Sex Club’

| John Walter

I’m a painter, but I make worlds.

  • Article
  • Article

Are people born violent?

| Laura BuiJessa Fairbrother

Laura Bui explores how the nature vs nurture debate applies to those who commit homicide.

  • 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.

  • Article
  • Article

Drugs in Victorian Britain

| Louise Crane

Many common remedies were taken throughout the 19th century, with more people than ever using them. What was the social and cultural context of this development?

  • Article
  • Article

Inhaling happiness and gasping for a high

| Stevyn Colgan

The rapid, short-lived high we get from whippets, reefers and vapes can be accompanied by long-term health consequences. The search is on for safer ways to get stoned.

  • Article
  • Article

Maladaptive daydreaming, gender myths and me

| Laura Grace SimpkinsTanya Cooper

Can you daydream too much? Excessive daydreamer Laura Grace Simpkins reflects on studies into “maladaptive daydreaming” and asks why so few fellow dreamers seem to be men.

  • Article
  • Article

How electromagnetic therapy inspired me

| Sarah James

Poet Sarah James explores how repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation treated her depression and influenced her art.

  • Long read
  • Long read

Rehab centres and the ‘cure’ for addiction

| Guy StaggJess Nash

Guy Stagg takes us on a brief history of rehab centres and their approaches to addiction and recovery.