Inside Our Collections

The healing powers of different breathing methods are said to help with a range of health challenges, from asthma to PTSD. Effie Webb traces their spiritual origins and explores the modern proliferation of breathwork therapies.

Discover how chocolate morphed from a prized, spiritually significant commodity to a quasi-medicine, and finally to the sweet treat we eat almost daily.

Find out how activists and organisations working on AIDS information campaigns in 1980s Scotland used cartoons, kilts, and candid language to convey their message.

Find out how hydrogen peroxide has been used to do everything from investigate murders and propel rockets to treat teeth and bleach hair.

Having experienced the healing power of plants and gardens, Iona Glen goes in search of present-day “physic gardens” and their origins in history.

Wellcome’s Adrian Plau shares some the stories behind the Asian palm-leaf manuscripts in our collections. He reveals how British colonialism impacted this special form of knowledge transmission and the challenges involved in unearthing each manuscript’s origins and historical journey to Wellcome Collection.

Industrialisation brought visibly polluted air to the world’s cities, captured in various media from the 1800s. Angela Saward explores the methods used, and the messages the images conveyed.

Our centuries-old fear of disease-carrying “bad air” might have been modified by scientific advances, but it’s still liable to re-emerge under the right circumstances, as Kirsten Nicholson explains.

Part science lecture. part public spectacle, thanks to chemist Humphry Davy the 19th-century craze for inhaling nitrous oxide rapidly spread from the science laboratory to fashionable salons and homes of the day, and onto the popular stage.

Five bearded and moustachioed men choose five hirsute archive images to help them reflect on the way facial hair is linked with personality and identity.

The Migraine Art Competition ran for seven years in the 1980s and resulted in over 500 unique and striking works of art that represent what it means to live with migraine.

Our ability to recall facts and experiential detail helps us understand, navigate, and make predictions about the world. Julia Nurse explores some of the techniques we have developed to help us to remember.

Since ancient times, cultures from around the world have used a variety of precious stones, crystals and their substitutes for healing and to ward off misfortune.

Once the ultimate symbol of both sexual virtue and product purity, the milkmaid’s wholesome image gradually became tainted as industrialisation eroded the rural idyll.

When Thomas Parkinson investigated the history of “speech science”, he discovered an unexpected link between empire, elephants and aphasia.

Researcher and zine-maker Lea Cooper explores pandemic zines made by people who were often familiar with “staying at home” because of disability or chronic illness.

Whether it was an abstemious, pious preparation for death or drinking gold in the quest for eternal life, those seeking advice on what best to do in their later years were never short of inspiration.

Two remarkable letters and a drawing of a plesiosaur by Mary Anning offer a tantalising portal into the exciting world of fossil hunting and discovery of the 1800s.