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Stories

  • Article

The birth of the public museum

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

  • Article

A brief history of tattoos

The earliest evidence of tattoo art dates from 5000 BC, and the practice continues to hold meaning for many cultures around the world.

  • Article

The hidden history of homesickness

Gail Tolley delves into the history of homesickness and discovers that its rich past holds a clue to how we view the experience today.

  • Article

Heating up and drying out

Menopause doesn’t have to signify old age, but when your body feels like it’s letting you down, it’s hard not to believe that your useful life may be over.

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Images

  • Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History Society.
  • Osmanthus delavayi Franch. Oleaceae Evergreen shrub. Distribution: China. Osmanthus is derived from the Greek for 'fragrant flower', delavayi from its discoverer, the French Missionary with the Missions Étrangères, and plant collector, Pierre Delavay (1834-1895). He sent 200,000 herbarium specimens containing 4000 species including 1,500 new species to Franchet at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. He sent seed of O. delavayi to France (1886), but only one germinated, and all the plants in cultivation until it was recollected 40 years later, arose from this plant (Bretschneider, 1896). The flowers are used to make a tea in China, but the berries (drupes) are not regarded as edible. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Darwin : big idea, big exhibition / Natural History Museum.
  • Darwin : big idea, big exhibition / Natural History Museum.
  • A decade of progress in Eugenics. Scientific
  • Human skulls: three figures showing the skulls of an African, a Native American and a Chinese. Stipple engraving, 1843.
  • Human skulls: three figures showing the skulls of an African, a Native American and a Chinese, seen from beneath. Stipple engraving, 1843.
  • A map of London, with a scale and north point: from Greenwich to Hammersmith east-west, and from Highgate to Stockwell north-south. Wood engraving by J. Dower after himself, 1862.
  • The Natural History Museum, South Kensington: plan, above, and the street elevation, below. Photo-lithograph after M. B. Adams, 1879, after A. Waterhouse.
  • Museum Wormiani Historia 1655
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