Wellcome uses cookies.

Read our policy
Wellcome Collection homepage
All
Stories
Images
Catalogue
Events

Stories

  • Article

Are you still nursing?

Julia Martins might get the side-eye for breastfeeding a three-year-old in the UK but, as she explains, examples from history, as well as the cultural norms of Brazil, where she grew up, are firmly on the side of extended nursing.

  • Article

A history of gestation outside the body

It’s been over 400 years since a Swiss alchemist theorised that foetuses could develop outside the womb. Claire Horn examines incubator technology past and present, and explores the possibilities recent prototypes might bring.

  • Article

Confusion, guilt, and the battle to breastfeed

Most new mums are told that breast is best. But breastfeeding doesn’t always come as easily or naturally as you might imagine.

  • Article

The father of handwashing

Doctors performing autopsies and then delivering babies – with not a hint of soap in between – was the grim recipe producing a lot of motherless offspring in the 1800s. But one man’s gargantuan efforts to upend accepted medical thinking turned the tide.

All stories (7)

Images

  • Association for promoting registration of midwives
  • Speculum matricis : or, The expert midwives handmaid / catechistically composed by James Wolveridge.
  • Understand your kick chart / produced by midwives on the W.N.B. 998 course in Mid-Glamorgan.
  • The midwives book. Or the whole art of midwifery discovered. Directing childbearing women how to behave themselves / [Jane Sharp].
  • The midwives book. Or the whole art of midwifery discovered. Directing childbearing women how to behave themselves / [Jane Sharp].
  • A directory for midwives: or a guide for women, in their conception, bearing, and suckling their children ... / [Nicholas Culpeper].
  • A directory for midwives: or a guide for women, in their conception, bearing, and suckling their children ... / [Nicholas Culpeper].
  • A directory for midwives: or a guide for women, in their conception, bearing, and suckling their children ... / [Nicholas Culpeper].
  • A directory for midwives: or a guide for women, in their conception, bearing, and suckling their children ... / [Nicholas Culpeper].
  • Man-midwives attempting to deliver a monstrous woman representing the Dutch National Convention. Etching attributed to James Gillray, 1796, after David Hess.
All images (123)

Catalogue

All works (2K)