Wellcome uses cookies.

Read our policy
Wellcome Collection homepage
All
Stories
Images
Catalogue
Events

Stories

  • Article

Cloves to mull, mask and numb

Sweet, pungent, warm, woody: cloves smell and taste like Christmas. But there’s much more to this spice than that.

  • In pictures

Deadly stinks and life-saving aromas in plague-stricken London

In the plague-ravaged London of 1665, could perfume really save your life?

  • Article

There’s more to gingerbread than ginger

‘Bake-Off’ finalist Mary-Anne Boermans treats us to the warm and enticing pleasures of gingerbread over centuries.

  • Article

Getting sexy with cinnamon

Add some flavour to your love life with this spice. It will warm up more than just your buns.

All stories (6)

Images

  • Clove plant (Syzygium aromaticum): stem with flower buds. Watercolour, c.1833.
  • Clove tree (Syzygium aromaticum): flowering and fruiting stem with cloves and parasitic worm. Coloured etching by J. Pass, c. 1808, after J. Ihle.
  • Clove tree (Syzygium aromaticum): flowering stem and separate fruit. Coloured lithograph after M. A. Burnett, c. 1842.
  • Common garlic (Allium sativum): bulb, flower head, single flower and single clove. Coloured lithograph after M. A. Burnett, c. 1850.
  • A plant related to the clove tree (Eugenia species): flowering and fruiting stem and separate flowers, fruit and seed. Coloured line engraving.
  • Dianthus caryophyllus L. Caryophyllaceae Carnation, clove-gilliflowers - Mediterranean Culpeper (1650) writes that ‘Clove-gilliflowers, resist the pestilence, strengthen the heart, liver and stomach, and provokes lust.’ They smell strongly of cloves, and an oil made from the petals is used in perfumery, soaps etc. The petals are sometimes used as a garnish for salads. In herbal medicine they are used to make a tonic. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Above, a sprig of a clove tree, a beetle, two sprigs of a cassia tree bearing leaves from which senna is extracted, a beaver and three different cavies (small rodents); below, two beetles and a mocking creeper. Etching by Heath.
  • Eugenia caryophyllus (Cloves)
  • Clover's chloroform apparatus.
  • Anaesthetics: J.T. Clover
All images (65)

Catalogue

All works (217)