Wellcome uses cookies.

Read our policy
Wellcome Collection homepage
All
Stories
Images
Catalogue
Events

Stories

  • In pictures

War and disfigurement

The fighting methods of World War I brought with them a huge increase in disfiguring facial injury. See how surgeons and sculptors helped injured men face the world again.

  • Article

Public health campaigns and the ‘threat’ of disability

By continuing to represent disability as the feared outcome of disease, public health campaigns help to perpetuate prejudice against disabled people.

  • Article

Beating the bodysnatchers

When a rise in grave robbing called for strong measures, mortsafes became the unassailable solution. Allison C. Meier explores.

  • Article

The ‘epileptic’ in art and science

From scarred outsiders in literature to the cold voyeurism of medical films and photography, people who experience seizures and epilepsy are rarely shown in a compassionate light in popular culture.

All stories (7)

Images

  • Smallpox: its consequences (death, disfigurement, blindness) and prevention through vaccination. Colour lithograph by Kogyi, 1951.
  • A woman's face disfigured by the crisscrossed letters "AIDS/HIV". Colour lithograph after W. Świerzy, 1993.
  • Vaccination against smallpox: a young Turkmen being vaccinated, contrasted with an elderly Turkmen who is blinded and disfigured by smallpox. Colour lithograph, 193-.
  • Uganda: a Lango woman with a disfigured nose, diseased skin and a bandaged hand, possibly suffering from leprosy or yaws. Photograph by Cecil John Hackett, ca. 1937.
  • A photo of a boy wearing a v-necked jumper with one arm leaning on an orange and green-flowered table cloth; his eyes and mouth have been annotated with disfiguring pen marks that are scratched across the surface of the image within a dotted border; advertising the danger of AIDS. Colour lithograph by América Sanchez, ca. 1994.
  • Climbing after frostbite
  • Climbing after frostbite
  • A maid shows an old man his smallpocked face in a hand mirror. Coloured lithograph by Langlumé, 1823.
  • Effects of tertiary syphilis of the tongue
  • Indented tongue
All images (25)

Catalogue

All works (101)