Wellcome uses cookies.

Read our policy
Wellcome Collection homepage
All
Stories
Images
Catalogue
Events

Stories

  • Article

The extraction of the excruciating bladder stones

Among those vying to find alternatives to major surgery for bladder stones, young doctor Jean Civiale stood out, painstakingly honing a method that was to become the norm.

  • Article

Coleridge’s hypochondria

An intense focus on his own bodily sensations led poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to self-medicate with narcotics. But this fascination also put Coleridge ahead of the medical sensibilities of his day.

  • Article

Cocaine, the Victorian wonder drug

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.

All stories (3)

Images

  • A surgery and barbershop. Coloured lithograph attributed to C. Mohr.
  • Diagrams illustrating how to perform a mastectomy and cauterise the wound. Pen drawing by ZS (?), 19--, after an engraving, 1603.
  • A surgeon applying the method of cupping to a patient. Etching by A. Brambilla.
  • Surgical instruments used, and operations successfully carried out, by an English travelling operator claiming royal patronage. Line engraving, 16--.
  • Surgical instruments used, and operations successfully carried out, by an English travelling operator claiming royal patronage. Line engraving, 16--.
  • Surgical instruments used, and operations successfully carried out, by an English travelling operator claiming royal patronage. Line engraving, 16--.
  • Surgical instruments used, and operations successfully carried out, by an English travelling operator claiming royal patronage. Line engraving, 16--.
  • Surgical instruments used, and operations successfully carried out, by an English travelling operator claiming royal patronage. Line engraving, 16--.
  • Two physicians applying the method of cauterisation to clearly defined points of the back and side of two patients. Pen drawing after an Anglo Saxon tenth century manuscript.
  • A surgeon treating an elderly man's foot, his wife observes the scene. Pen drawing after D. Teniers, the younger.
All images (47)

Catalogue

All works (266)