Wellcome uses cookies.

Read our policy
Wellcome Collection homepage
All
Stories
Images
Catalogue
Events

Stories

  • Long read

Primodos, paternalism and the fight to be heard

Journalist Florence Wildblood examines the case of Primodos – a conveniently quick but risky hormone pregnancy test that was prescribed in the 1960s and ’70s – and profiles two women at the story’s shocking heart.

  • Article

The food diary and the power of unhealth

Food diaries might appear to present a strictly factual record of dietary choices, but what they don’t include is the more revealing story, as Virginia Hartley suggests.

  • Article

The soul in the stomach

A 17th-century physician’s controversial theory about the link between the emotions and the stomach reminds us that we shouldn’t ignore our ‘gut feelings’.

  • Article

When you don’t belong, you drink

In the third part of her exploration of belonging, Tanya Perdikou unpicks the addictions that have shaped her past and uncovers the connections that make recovery possible.

All stories (12)

Images

  • Hypertensive heart failure with bundle branch block treated with Ismelin.
  • Hypertensive heart failure with bundle branch block treated with Ismelin.
  • Hypertensive heart failure with bundle branch block treated with Ismelin.
  • Hypertensive heart failure with bundle branch block treated with Ismelin.
  • Cytisus scoparius (L.) Link Fabaceae. Common broom, Genista. Distribution: Western and central Europe. Culpeper (1650) writes: 'Genista. Broom: … clense and open the stomach, break the stone in the reins [kidneys] and bladder, help the green sickness [anaemia]. Let such as are troubled with heart qualms or faintings, forbear it, for it weakens the heart and spirit vital' and in respect of the flowers he writes: 'Broome-flowers, purge water, and are good in dropsies [now regarded as heart failure with fluid retention].' Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Stokesia laevis Greene Asteraceae. Stoke's Aster, Cornflower Aster. Distribution: South-eastern USA. Named by Charles Louis L’Héritier in 1789 for Dr Jonathan Stokes (1755-1831), a member of the Lunar Society and Linnean Society, botanist and physician. Stokes dedicated his thesis on dephlogisticated air [later realised to be oxygen] to Dr William Withering and wrote the preface to Withering’s iconic work On the Foxglove (1785). He also contributed histories on six patients he had treated for heart failure (‘dropsy’) with foxglove leaf, Digitalis, in his medical practice in Stourbridge. He continued at the Lunar Society until 1788
  • The order of the day... : the order of the day is 'Lanoxin' for unfailing control.
  • The order of the day... : the order of the day is 'Lanoxin' for unfailing control.
  • The order of the day... : the order of the day is 'Lanoxin' for unfailing control.
  • The order of the day... : the order of the day is 'Lanoxin' for unfailing control.
All images (44)

Catalogue

All works (235)