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Stories

  • Article

Fantastic beasts and unnatural history

Find out how a 17th-century compendium of the natural world came to present fantastical beasts –like dragons – as real, living creatures.

  • Article

Bubbles of history

Since the 1960s, scientists have been able to study the air from past centuries by analysing particles in Arctic ice samples. But as the polar ice melts, the future of this research is changing.

  • Article

Hunting lost plants in botanical collections

A bark specimen at Kew recalls the story of a South American man who harvested the most potent source of the only effective malaria treatment available in the late 1800s. Killed for his work and forgotten by history, Manuel Mamani was a victim of the colonial juggernaut.

  • Article

A history of twins in science

For thousands of years, twins have been a source of fascination in mythology, religion and the arts. Since the 19th century, they have also been the subject of scientific study and experimentation.

All stories (17)

Images

  • Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, Wigmore Street, London: the galleried Hall of Statuary. Photograph.
  • Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, Wigmore Street, London: the galleried Hall of Statuary. Photograph.
  • Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, Wigmore Street, London: a head-hunter's hut, south east New Guinea, in the Hall of Primitive Medicine. Photograph.
  • Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, Wigmore Street, London: a head-hunter's hut, south east New Guinea, in the Hall of Primitive Medicine. Photograph.
  • Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, Wigmore Street, London: west wall of the Gallery of Pictures. Photograph.
  • The birth of Julius Caesar from his dead mother. Reproduction, 1933, of a woodcut, 1506.
  • A woman giving birth in an elaborate room aided by a midwife and a nun and surrounded by her husband and family. Engraving by A. Bosse.
  • The birth of the Antichrist from a dying woman via a Caesarean operation. Reproduction, 1933, of a woodcut, 1475.
  • The smith Jan Lutma, designated as a portrait of a member of the Molins family. Oil painting after Rembrandt.
  • An obese midwife on her way to a labour in the early hours of the morning. Coloured etching by T. Rowlandson, 1811.
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Catalogue

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