Wellcome uses cookies.

Read our policy
Wellcome Collection homepage
All
Stories
Images
Catalogue
Events

Stories

  • Article

The joy of playing hide-and-seek with rats

Playing hide-and-seek with lab rats has shown scientists that joy can be a great motivator for learning and social interaction – and not just for rats.

  • Book extract

My important, ridiculous nose

The nose is a much-maligned appendage, but it’s a powerful organ capable of invoking powerful emotions from past memories and sexual attraction.

  • Article

The tradesman who confronted the pestilence

The City of London, 1665. As the Great Plague hits the capital, John New faces a deadly dilemma.

  • Book extract

Tracing the roots of our fears and fixations

Kate Summerscale explores the history of our anxieties and compulsions, and the new phobias and manias that are always emerging.

All stories (6)

Images

  • Rats, and monsters representing death and diseases attributed to rats. Colour lithograph by O. Nicolitch, 1920.
  • Rats at a port. Drawing by A.L. Tarter, 194-.
  • Rats fighting; the plague spreading. Drawing by A.L. Tarter, 194-.
  • Rats living in the sewers. Drawing by A.L. Tarter, 194-.
  • Rats overunning a dilapidated house, spreading the plague. Drawing by A.L. Tarter, 194-.
  • Rats roaming the sewers, some of them dying, heralding the plague. Drawing by A.L. Tarter, 194-.
  • Rats stowing away in large boxes, carrying the plague to new places. Drawing by A.L. Tarter, 194-.
  • A dying rat, mourned by three other rats; advertising Tord-Boyaux rat poison. Wood engraving, 18--.
  • Humane destruction of rats and mice / by C.W. Hume.
  • Humane destruction of rats and mice / by C.W. Hume.
All images (507)

Catalogue

All works (3.5K)