Wellcome uses cookies.

Read our policy
Wellcome Collection homepage
All
Stories
Images
Catalogue
Events

Stories

  • Article

Active pensioners, blooming gardens

To reach your 70s with over 300,000 Twitter followers or running a music festival is not the stereotypical image of retirement. But does this energetic engagement with life equal happiness?

  • Article

The healing power of the physic garden

Having experienced the healing power of plants and gardens, Iona Glen goes in search of present-day “physic gardens” and their origins in history.

  • Article

Building a dream in the garden suburbs

In the late 19th century a ‘garden suburb’ promised a retreat from London’s dirt and crowds. See how this new concept was developed to appeal to the health concerns of the literary classes.

  • Article

Sharing Nature: Parks for people

Paula Broom’s photograph of Sydney’s Centennial Park shows the complexity and joy we find in urban greenery.

All stories (120)

Images

  • An old woman and a visitor in a living room, and two old men in a garden; representing the need for care of elderly people in Wales. Lithograph, ca. 1960.
  • An old woman and a visitor in a living room, and two old men in a garden; representing the need for care of elderly people in Wales. Colour lithograph, ca. 1960.
  • An old man on a bicycle; advertising an award for care of elderly people in Wales. Colour lithograph, 1964.
  • Good food for better health : easy eating for the over sixties / issued jointly by the British Dietetic Association Incorporated... and the National Old People's Welfare Council.
  • Good food for better health : easy eating for the over sixties / issued jointly by the British Dietetic Association Incorporated... and the National Old People's Welfare Council.
  • The North London Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest: elevation view of the garden facade with balconies indicated, people walking among trees at ground level. Process print by Sprague & Co., ca.1879, after A. Howard.
  • Bee keeping at Chelsea Physic Garden, London. Close-up of bees at honeycomb tray. Insect members of the superfamily Apoidea, found almost everywhere, particularly on flowers. Their young are fed honey and pollen rather than animal food. Honey is collected in the form of nectar from flowers and concentrated into honey by evaporation. For most people bee stings are of little significance and are treated locally; other persons, however, react with hypersensitivity putting them in serious danger.
  • Vicia faba L. Fabaceae. Broad beans, Fava bean. Distribution: N. Africa, SW Asia. Culpeper (1650) writes: 'Fabarum. Of Beans. Of Bean Cods (or Pods as we in Sussex call them) being burned, the ashes are a sovereign remedy for aches in the joints, old bruises, gout and sciaticaes.’ The beans are perfectly edible for the majority, but 1% of Caucasians, predominantly among Greeks, Italians and people from the Eastern Mediterranean regions, have a genetic trait in that they lack the ability to produce the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase. As a consequence, eating broad beans or even inhaling the pollen, causes a severe haemolytic anaemia a few days later. This condition is known as favism. The whole plant, including the beans, contains levodopa, a precursor of dopamine, and some patients with Parkinsonism report symptomatic improvement after commencing on a diet that contains these beans regularly. A case of neuroleptic malignant-like syndrome (fever, rigidity, autonomic instability, altered consciousness, elevated creatine phosphokinase levels) consequent on abrupt discontinuation of a diet containing plenty of broad beans, has been described in a patient with Parkinsonism. This is usually seen when patients abruptly discontinue L-dopa therapy. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Sempervivum tectorum L. Crassulaceae Houseleek, Senegreene Distribution: Europe. Sempervivum means 'live forever', tectorum means 'roof', and was apparently grown on house roofs to protect against lightning. Lyte (1578 distinguishes Stonecrops (Sedum) from Sengreene (Sempervivum) for he advises the Sempervivum, alone or mixed with barley meal, applied topically to burns, scalds, St Anthony's fire [erysipelas], ulcers and sores, will cure them and sore eyes. Apropos of stonecrops (Sedum), he describes the redness and blistering that the sap has on bare skin, and how it is good for poisons for if taken with vinegar by mouth it causes vomiting, but only safe to do so in strong people. He seems fairly confused as to which is which. Not approved by the European Medicines Agency for Traditional Herbal Medicinal use. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Sempervivum tectorum L. Crassulaceae Houseleek, Senegreene Distribution: Europe. Sempervivum means 'live forever', tectorum means 'roof', and was apparently grown on house roofs to protect against lightning. Lyte (1578 distinguishes Stonecrops (Sedum) from Sengreene (Sempervivum) for he advises the latter, alone or mixed with barley meal, applied topically to burns, scalds, St Anthony's fire [erysipelas] , ulcers and sores, will cure them and sore eyes. Apropos of stonecrops (Sedum), he describes the redness and blistering that the sap has on bare skin, and how it is good for poisons for if taken with vinegar by mouth it causes vomiting, but only safe to do so in strong people. He seems fairly confused as to which is which. Not approved by the European Medicines Agency for Traditional Herbal Medicinal use. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
All images (130)

Catalogue

All works (16)