Wellcome Library

New issue of Wellcome News

2012-01-21T02:15:00.000-08:00

The magazine Wellcome News features articles exploring the research the Wellcome Trust supports, its funding opportunities and wide-ranging activities.

The latest issue (Winter 2011) includes a feature on researchers tackling so-called 'neglected tropical diseases', a quick guide to the neuron, and the winning entries of the 2011 Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize.

The magazine's 'From the Archive' feature regularly highlights material from the Wellcome Library's collections: in the spotlight in the latest issue is a rather surprisingly item from our holdings, a pair of sandals produced by the fashion manufacturer Red or Dead. Why are these shoes in our collections? All is revealed on pages 32-33 of the new Wellcome News (PDF).

We're not psychic...

2012-01-18T06:07:00.000-08:00

... so we’re asking you to tell us what you’re thinking*. We mean about the Library, and in particular about your last visit to us. And that's plenty to be getting on with.

We’re coming to the end of our first full year of surveying our Library visitors and we’ve found your feedback enormously useful. We really do appreciate the time you've taken to complete the surveys, and we’ve found your comments and suggestions invaluable.

Last week we sent out the latest survey which we run in partnership with Morris Hargreaves Mcintyre. We’ve edited the survey and reduced the number of questions. We haven’t cut back on the opportunities for you to feed back to us in the free-text sections though, and we really do want you to tell us about the Library. We read every free-text comment, and if something needs addressing we will do our best to fix it.

The surveys are submitted anonymously, so we can’t respond to you directly. But we are listening, and where we can, we’re making the necessary changes.

If you have questions or comments about the survey please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me via email at p.harkins@wellcome.ac.uk

*See Medical Collection WM950 if you fancy having a go.

Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fortinbras/2054841714/

Mesmerism on show

2012-01-17T11:20:00.000-08:00

Mesmeric therapy. Wellcome Library no. 44754i

Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) was the promoter of a form of animal magnetism (named Mesmerism after him), at first in Vienna (1773-1777) and subsequently in France (1778-1784). His unique selling point was the supply of mesmeric fluid that served to rebalance the magnetic polarity of the animal body. His doctrine was one of many that sought to bring the animal body (the microcosm) into harmony with the larger world outside (the macrocosm). Such doctrines have a long history, from Hippocratic aphorisms about the effects of weather on certain temperaments to our contemporaries' warnings about asthma, allergies and air pollution.

As a therapist, Mesmer, like other innovators (James Graham, Edward Jenner, John Brown etc.) offered his therapy outside the established world of academia, the court, and the royal colleges. Indeed, they sometimes came into conflict, as Mesmer did in Paris. Both his popular appeal and the disdain of the establishment brought him publicity of commercial value.

Hence the many depictions of his therapeutic sessions. One of them is shown in an oil painting in the Wellcome Library (above). The patients are seated around Mesmer’s baquet, a large flat drum containing mesmeric fluid. Pipes, tubes and cords emerging from the drum could be applied to the affected parts: one man on the far left is winding a cord doused in mesmeric fluid around his head, while several others are applying the ends of the tubes to their eyes (detail left). A woman in Turkish dress in the centre foreground is treating the eye of a child to a dose of the mesmeric fluid.

While oil paintings were seen by few, prints were seen by many, if only in the shop windows of print-sellers and stationers in the high streets of towns and cities. Among several prints of mesmeric therapy in the Wellcome Library is this coloured engraving of Mesmer in Paris (above), with text below describing the scene (Wellcome Library no. 17918i). It shows one gentleman resting his right foot on the drum so that mesmerism can be applied to his shin. There is also a view through to a second baquet in a room off at the left.

Until today, the catalogue description of this print made no mention of any of the authors (artist, designer, engraver or publisher) of this print: it was by an unidentified hand.However, Sotheby's have in their forthcoming drawings sale in New York a pair of drawings attributed to the artist Claude-Louis Desrais (1746-1816), and one of them (Sotheby's Old master drawings, New York 25 January 2012, lot 123) is the original design for the Wellcome Library's coloured engraving. Indeed Sotheby's say in their catalogue record that this drawing and a similiar one by Desrais were "probably intended for prints or book illustrations as they are reddened on the reverse". However, as the Wellcome Library print is much cruder in execution than the drawing -– Sotheby's drawing has much finer detail -- there may have been an intermediary print or drawing from which the Wellcome Library's engraving was copied. An impression of the same engraving is also in the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland, and no doubt there are others elsewhere.

The attribution to Desrais on stylistic grounds is satisfying because Desrais is known to have produced a portrait of Mesmer (right: Wellcome Library no. 23327i). If he was Mesmer's in-house image-maker, then, although he does not seem to be recorded as an oil-painter, could the Wellcome Library's painting also be by him? It does look like the work of someone unaccustomed to such a cumbersome medium.

The other drawing at Sotheby's (same sale, lot 124) shows a woman standing within a circular knee-high cage surrounded by three men in animated conversation. Another man (left) seems to be turning up a gas light, while on the right a demonstration is taking place of a closed vessel on a column. Perhaps someone familiar with public demonstrations of natural philosophy in Paris at this period can identify the event? It should be dated not later than 1816, the year of Desrais's death.

‘What’s cooking? Food and eating at home’ conference

2012-01-12T05:05:00.000-08:00

Friday 9 March 2012, Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London, 9.30 – 17.00

Jim and JayneTurner at the kitchen table eating dinner with their pet cat ‘Chang’, Pinner,Middlesex, 1962-63 ©The Geffrye Museum of the Home

In association with the Wellcome Library, the Histories of Home Subject Specialist Network will be holding its 4^thannual conference on the theme of food within the domestic setting in the UK.

Papers willexplore the changing feelings and meanings attached to kitchens; gender and identityissues around cooking, feeding and kitchens; the transmission of culinary knowledge;patterns of food consumption at home as well as the impact of design and newtechnologies on the use of virtual and real foodspaces. There will also be a presentationon interpreting food preparation spaces and food consumption within a historichouse setting.

The conference programme reflects the interdisciplinary approachof the Histories of Home SSN and will draw on social geography, foodhistory, sociology, social gerontology, design, digital and social anthropologyas well as artistic and museum practice.

Keynote
Peter Jackson (University ofSheffield): Anxious appetites: researching families andfood

Speakers

Ines Amado (De Montfort University): Story-telling, exchange and observations ofthe everyday

Stephanie Baum (Institute ofEducation): An analysis of cooking from the perspectiveof hegemonic masculinity in transformation

Maria das Graças Brightwell (Royal Holloway,University of London): Food consumption and the practice of everydaylife in two Brazilian mixed households in Harlesden, London

Manpreet K. Janeja (University of Cambridge):Feeding and eating ‘proper meals’ at home andbeyond

Alysa Levene (Oxford BrookesUniversity): Margarine, social class and the home:exploring the ‘margarine mind’ in rationed Britain

Angela Meah (University of Sheffield): “Of course I know that; you told me thatyears ago”: the acquisition of culinary knowledge in British families

Anne Murcott (SOAS & Universityof Nottingham): A century of English cookery books: examiningwhat they can reveal about trends in food preparation, recipes and eating athome

Lida Papamatthaiaki (UCL): Digital symposiakotita @ new foodspaces

Sheila Peace (Open University): Continuity and change: aspects of the foodenvironment across the life course

Sara Pennell (University of Roehampton) & Victoria Bradley (Ham House, National Trust): Foodways in the heritage house

Rachel Scicluna (Open University): Is the kitchen as ‘hub of the household’ amyth? Or is it the hub of politics and social change?

For more informationand booking details, please go to

http://historiesofhomessn.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/whats-cooking-food-and-eating-at-home-conference/

"The flamboyant Mr Chinnery"

2012-01-12T03:02:00.000-08:00

Thomas Colledge with patients in Macao. Aquatint by by William Daniell, 1834, after George Chinnery. Wellcome Library no. 9880i

"The flamboyant Mr Chinnery" is the title of an exhibition on view at Asia House, in the West End of London.* It is a rare chance to see a representative collection of paintings and drawings from private and public collections by the English artist George Chinnery (1774–1852). Though born in Gough Square in the City of London, and baptized at St Bride's church off Fleet Street, Chinnery spent most of his life in Bengal (1812-1825), then from 1825 to 1832 in Canton (Guangzhou), and finally in the Portuguese colony of Macao (Macau), where he died. Since Chinnery was not only well-travelled but also prolific, versatile and long-lived, the exhibition covers a lot of ground, in every sense.

In India and China Chinnery painted portraits and landscapes, and sketched picturesque scenes of Chinese card-players, boat-girls and builders at work. Among the portraits the exhibition includes mezzotints of William Jardine, the Scottish doctor who abandoned medicine to become an opium trader (co-founding the firm of Jardine Matheson & Co.), and of the Rev. Robert Morrison the missionary, who is shown in 1828 with his assistants translating the Bible into a 21-volume Chinese version, which raises the question as to whether the portrait is mentioned in Morrison's papers in the Wellcome Library. Chinnery's portrait of James Holman "The blind traveller", who travelled 250,000 miles recording his experiences with a "noctograph" is on loan from the Royal Society. A masterly pair of contrasting portraits belonging to HSBC shows two Chinese merchants of Canton: Mowqua (plump and relaxed) and Howqua (emaciated and self-controlled).

Group portraits include the aquatint of Thomas Colledge (1796-1879) operating in his eye-surgery in Macao established in 1827 (above and top), and the oil painting On Dent's Verandah (1842-1843, private collection), in which three men (French, American and British) involved in opium trading with Thomas Dent and Co. (rivals of Jardine Matheson) lounge in the humidity of Macao with a prominent opium poppy in the foreground. This will surely end up in one of the great public collections.

The landscapes show the fine Portuguese baroque churches of Macao (São Lourenço and the Jesuit church of São Paulo depicted before and after the fire of 1835) standing above the hustle and bustle of typical Chinese streets. A DVD Chinnery then and now cleverly juxtaposes Chinnery's street scenes with photographs of the same places in Macao as they appear today. A bridge at Honam (Canton) was painted at the request of the physician Thomas Boswall Watson, himself an amateur artist, who as a doctor would later perform an autopsy on Chinnery's body.

However, for any one familiar with Hong Kong, the most heart-stopping moment will be the last item in the exhibition: a drawing of Hong Kong made during a six-months visit in 1846, towards the end of Chinnery's life. After only five years of western ownership, the palatial headquarters of the great trading firms are already in place on the harbour front and are creeping up the hill – the start of the Hong Kong business building boom.

This drawing, like others by Chinnery, is inscribed by him in Gurney shorthand (his father was a teacher of it). At present the Colledge print is the only item in the Wellcome Library catalogue under Chinnery's name, but there are many uncatalogued drawings in the Library, and an eye should be kept open for drawings of East Asian subjects with shorthand annotations using this system – they are likely to be Chinnery's.

In Macao a street is named Rua George Chinnery in his honour, and in 1974 a trilingual inscription in English, Chinese and Portuguese was added to his tombstone to mark his 200th birthday. The exhibition is equally a fitting tribute to Chinnery's talent as a recorder of people and places, and shows that, given the right choice of subject, a modest exhibition space can provide as enriching an experience as any blockbuster.

For more on the exhibition see Brian Sewell's review in the London Evening Standard, 1 December 2011: he reproduces On Dent's Verandah. [1]

[1] http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/review-24016398-the-flamboyant-mr-chinnery-an-english-artist-in-india-and-china-asia-house---review.do

* Open Monday-Saturday 10-6 until Saturday 21 January 2012 at Asia House, 63 New Cavendish Street, London W1G 7LP, admission free. Sponsored by HSBC.

The discovery of insulin

2012-01-11T09:02:00.000-08:00

Today marks the 90th anniversary of the first time insulin was used on a human patient.

A brief summary of this event runs as follows: the insulin was injected into a 14-year old diabetic, Leonard Thompson, at Toronto General Hospital. Insulin had been discovered in 1921 at the University of Toronto by Canadian doctor Frederick Banting and American biomedical scientist Charles Best. Thompson's condition had worsened in late 1921 and when he was admitted to hospital he weighed only 65 pounds. With the risk of him slipping into a diabetic coma, Thompson's father let the hospital try the new pancreatic extract for the first time.

As a biography of Thompson on the Science Museum's Brought to Life website notes:

"The extract was an impure form of insulin. Thompson had an allergic reaction, and it had little effect.

A few days later Thompson was injected with a purer form of insulin. This was extracted by the chemist James Collip. Thompson’s blood sugars gradually returned to normal and his diabetic symptoms began to disappear. News of Thompson’s recovery spread, inspiring people with diabetes and their families to write letters to Banting and Best asking for urgent treatment".

So, a medical breakthrough: treatment for diabetes was revolutionised and a terminal disease became treatable. Banting received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1923 and as a result of these developments, the lives of millions were changed for the better.

What this quick summary skates over, however, were the politics and powerplays that went on behind the scenes, with disagreements over who could claim success for the development of insulin. What role was played by Prof John Macleod, Professor of Physiology at the University of Toronto, who granted Banting a laboratory at the University to conduct his research (it was with MacLeod, not Best, that Banting shared his Nobel Prize)? And what of Collip, who purified the insulin?

The most detailed account of these discoveries is The discovery of insulin by Michael Bliss (2007 ed), but the Wellcome Library also holds a file of papers which casts an interesting light on these debates.

This comes in the form of copies of letters passed on to the Wellcome Library in 1959 by Sir Henry Dale - Chairman of the Wellcome Trust and also one of the most respected scientists of his time. The letters include accounts of the discovery of insulin by both Banting and MacLeod and illustrate their divergent views. The file also includes a summary of its contents written by Dale himself, offering his own perspective on events.

Leaving aside the actual details of these letters, we'd merely like to flag up this file as an example of how medical breakthroughs have rarely been the result of the efforts of one lone scientist, and that disagreements over recognition by both public and peers can cloud the achievements of scientists.

It's also noteworthy that the papers, whilst focusing on the discovery of insulin and setting out the achievements of Banting, MacLeod, Collip and Best, make very little mention of the use of insulin to treat Leonard Thompson.

Image: Leonard Thompson, from the site 'The Discovery and Early Development of Insulin' from Digital Collections of the University of Toronto

Fifty years in clinical and human genetics

2012-01-10T07:58:00.000-08:00

One of the Wellcome Trust’s challenge areas is maximising the health benefits of genetics and genomics.

Relating directly to this are the personal papers of Professor George Robert Fraser, which are now available for consultation in the Wellcome Library. George Fraser has dedicated his career to understanding the role of clinical genetics particularly in relation to inherited disabilities.

Fraser was born into a medical family in Užhorod, a town then in Czechoslovakia, in 1932. In 1939 he came to England with his family and went on to study the Natural Sciences Tripos at the University of Cambridge. Between 1952-1953 he opted to study genetics under R. A. Fisher. He completed his clinical training in medicine at the London Hospital (B.Chir. 1956, M.B. 1957) and was then awarded a Medical Research Council Scholarship in human medical genetics and moved to the Galton Laboratory, University College London to work under L. S. Penrose.

On completion of his Ph.D. in October 1959, Fraser joined the Medical Research Council Population Genetics Research Unit in Oxford. It was here that he began a study of the causes of profound childhood deafness, studying 2,330 children in special schools for the deaf in the UK and Ireland. The work of this and further surveys was published in 1976 as The Causes of Profound Deafness in Childhood. A study of 3,535 individuals with severe hearing loss present at birth or of childhood onset.

In his 1962 paper, 'Our genetical load: a review of some aspects of genetical variation', Annals of Human Genetics, Vol. 25, Fraser identified a multiple malformation syndrome later known as Fraser Syndrome. Fraser Syndrome is commonly characterised by cryptophthalmos, syndactyly and renal defects. There may also be malformations of the nose, ears, throat and genitals and many other organs. In the 1990s the locus responsible for the condition was tentatively identified as being on chromosome 4 and in the early 2000s the gene involved was shown to be at chromosome 4q21 and was named FRAS1 in Fraser’s honour.

In March 1963 Fraser worked on a study of blindness in childhood. This study involved 776 children at schools for the blind, and was a replica of his previous study of childhood deafness. The research was used for his M.D. thesis and was published as The Causes of Blindness in Childhood. A study of 776 children with severe visual handicaps. On the completion of the work, in January 1966, Fraser moved to the University of Adelaide where he undertook further extensive studies of blind children and of both adults and children with profound childhood deafness, in Adelaide and its surroundings.

Throughout his career Fraser held many positions all over the world from Seattle to The Netherlands to Canada, and was involved in different research projects including work on the distribution of blood polymorphisms, genetical load, the concentration of common variable immunodeficiency, and Hodgkin's disease. In 1984 Fraser returned to the UK and was appointed Senior Clinical Research Fellow in the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and Honorary Consultant in Medical Genetics at the Churchill Hospital, Oxford. Fraser established a Registry of Familial Cancer, comprising families with unusual aggregations of common cancers and in 1990 he established the Cancer Genetic Clinic at the Churchill Hospital (ref. PP/GRF/F). He reached formal retirement age in 1997, but continued for two years as an unpaid Honorary Consultant (non-clinical) in the Department of Medical Genetics at the Churchill Hospital.

The papers of George Fraser document his long career in human and clinical genetics and cover his major research activities. As such the collection includes a large amount of medical case files, particularly in sections B and C, the majority of which are closed under the Data Protection Act. This collection has been catalogued by Timothy Powell and Simon Coleman, with the advice of Professor Fraser, as part of a project hosted by Cardiff University’s Special Collections and Archives and funded through a grant from the Wellcome Trust Research Resources in Medical History programme.

Image: Photograph of George Fraser in Chicago (ref. PP/GRF/A.41)

Author: Toni Hardy

Let's talk about the weather...

2012-01-06T05:49:00.000-08:00

Patient: What do you think of a warmer climate for me doctor?
Doctor: Good heavens Sir, That’s just what I am trying to save you from!

Climate and health have been connected since the days of humoural medicine and probably before that, but the spectre of global climate change gives this cartoon from Punch (1901, Vol. 121 p.315) a whole new dimension.

A report produced by the UCL-Lancet Commission in 2009, described climate change as “the biggest global health threat of the 21st Century”. Environment, nutrition and health are also key areas of research interest for the Wellcome Trust: it’s website states that “climate change has major implications for global health and nutrition – with impacts on food security, access to clean water and sanitation, population migration and the threat of an increased number of natural disasters.”

A number of recent additions to the Library collections reflect some of the interesting research that is being done in field of health and climate change. A report by the Institute of Medicine in the USA looked at the effects of climate change on indoor air and public health. Many climate change ‘hot spots’ lie in rural communities, and another new book considers the health of rural children, one of the most vulnerable groups. A book on climate change and human well-being considers the “psychological responses and mental health impacts that accompany gradual environmental change and extreme weather events, and explains how climate change exacerbates existing inequities.” What is striking about much of this research is the multidisciplinary nature of the work being done, which often includes education, policy, and development as well as scientific analyses of medical and health concerns.

Perhaps the multidisciplinary nature of the health related research reflects the wider context of the climate change debate. Some fifteen years after the Kyoto Protocol, certain new publications indicate that people are beginning to look back at the history of climate change. Several scientists have recently published personal accounts of being in ‘the thick of it’ in the climate change debates. Raymond Bradley really was at the centre of the controversy as he, along with Michael Mann and others, published the so-called ‘hockey stick’ graph in the journal Nature in 1998. His book about Global warming and political intimidation relates how he felt politicians and policymakers in the USA sought to discredit him and his colleagues, and shut down their work.

James Powell was a scientist on the ‘inside’ when it came to science policy. He was appointed to the US National Science Board by both Presidents Reagan and George W Bush and remained there for 12 years. His book – The inquisition of climate science addresses the question “why, when the scientific evidence for global warming is unequivocal, does only half the public accept that evidence?”

Inevitably the media had its part to play: Climate change and the media examines the changing nature of media coverage around the world from the USA, UK and Europe to China, Australasia and the developing world.

Several recent contributions to the climate change debate take a more pragmatic approach, and consider how progress on some of the concerns around climate change might be facilitated. A book on social science research looks at the issues around Engaging the public with climate change. This collection of papers make the case for why scientists and policymakers should engage the public on debates and decisions about climate change. Julie Doyle’s book: Mediating climate change looks at “practices of mediation and visualisation” in relation to the visual arts and climate change, and related issues such as meat and dairy consumption, and environmental activism.

Finally, in A perfect moral storm philosopher Stephen Gardiner considers the reluctant response to the challenge of climate change to be a result of various moral failings such as the temptation to ‘pass the buck’ onto future generations, and transfer costs onto the world’s poor. Inaction is facilitated by ignorance about science and international justice.

“When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather”

Samuel Johnson quipped. Judging by this range of books, it seems that these days, in health, science policy, social sciences, arts and philosophy, everyone is talking about the weather, or more accurately the climate.

Wellcome Image No. L0028080 from Punch magazine, published London 1901

Online Resources: ACLS Humanities E-book

2012-01-06T03:09:00.000-08:00

Following the Wellcome Library’s recent successful trial of American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Humanities E-book, we’re delighted to announce that we’re now making this database available to Library readers.

Over 3,300 high-quality monographs in the humanities are included in the collection, and the intention is to add 500 new titles each year. All areas of the humanities are covered, with particular strengths in history - including the history of medicine - archaeology, art history and folklore. The database is a collaboration of the American Council of Learned Societies and over 100 publishers, including the university presses of Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard.

Registered readers can access the database both within and outside the Library. All the books in the database have records in the Library catalogue, so you can either search for specific books, or go to the catalogue record for the database and search within the full-text of all the books included.

Image: Two men and a boy read from a book, one man holds a magnifying glass. Line engraving by N. Cavelli after D. Maggiotto (Wellcome Library no. 16312i).

Author: Aileen Cook

New Labour's moral mazes

2012-01-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

One August evening in Bolton in 1997 five year-old Dillon Hull was accidentally shot dead by a man seeking to recover a heroin debt from Dillon’s father. Dr Brian Iddon, recently-elected Labour MP for Bolton South East, gave an interview to the BBC and called for a national debate on drug policy. He didn’t think he had said anything earth-shattering - "it all sounded like common sense to me" - but his appeal received extensive media coverage and launched him headlong into the centre of a policy debate that was to occupy much of his attention until he retired from Parliament in 2010. He consistently maintained that the ‘war on drugs’ was futile and proposed in its place a war on poverty and social exclusion. For him, government policy on drug control just shifted the problem, leading to the displacement of controlled drugs by licit alternatives and of public health concerns by an emphasis on security and law enforcement. He was involved with the All-Party Parliamentary Drug Misuse Group which, under his chairmanship, launched a public inquiry into prescription and over-the-counter medicines.

In another equally controversial area of public policy, in June 1999 the BMA published guidance for medical practitioners on Witholding and withdrawing life-prolonging treatment. Brian Iddon disagreed with what he saw as its elision of the feeding and hydration of patients with ‘medical treatment’, to be withheld or withdrawn accordingly. He felt that policy on euthanasia was shifting without any proper debate in Parliament and threw himself into raising awareness of the complex issues involved. He went on to take a keen interest in the legislative agenda on this subject and eventually became Chairman of the Care Not Killing Alliance, established in 2006 to oppose Lord Joffe’s Bill on ‘Assisted Dying’.

When he retired from Parliament, Brian Iddon donated his papers relating to illicit drugs, legislation surrounding health products, euthanasia and ‘assisted dying’, to the Wellcome Library. (Those relating to his work as a constituency MP have been deposited with Bolton Museum and Archive Service). The archive is now available to researchers, along with publications which Brian Iddon collected as a result of his interests.

Anyone seeking an insight into shifting social and cultural attitudes and government policy in these highly-charged areas of public debate during the New Labour administrations of 1997-2010 will find the collection an invaluable resource.

Image: Brian Iddon (BBC news website)

Author: Jenny Haynes

Hermitage and heritage: Augustinians in history

2012-01-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

Austen (the surname of one of England's best-loved novelists and Austin (the capital city of Texas) are both abbreviations of the name Augustine. That name became popular from Saint Augustine of Hippo, Father and Doctor of the Church (354-430), philosopher and theologian (left: Wellcome Library no. 3493i).

In England the name Augustine later acquired added lustre from the Roman missionary Saint Augustine of Canterbury, who re-introduced Christianity to Britain in the 6th century. The earlier Augustine, Saint Augustine of Hippo, was a Roman citizen of the province occupied today by Algeria. At one time a professor of rhetoric in Rome and Milan, he returned to North Africa and died there after writing numerous works of theology and philosophy. His studies of such subjects as time, memory, mind, and magic are still much admired: today the School of Life in London recommends Saint Augustine's Confessions to its students, while a writer in a recent New York Review of Books boldly declared that he was "surely one of the mightiest intellects ever to walk this earth" [1].

The high intellectual standing of Saint Augustine of Hippo underlay the success of the Augustinian Order formed from various groups of hermits, and explains why he and members of his Order are so abundantly represented in the Wellcome Library. By Augustine himself the Library has an incunable edition of his De civitate Dei (Venice 1490), three incunable editions of his sermons, and many other works.

Of his followers, the Wellcome Library has nine editions of works by the Augustinian philosopher Giles of Rome (Aegidius Romanus, ca. 1243-1316), three of which (On the material of the heavens, On possible understanding against Averroes, and a Commentary on Aristotle's Physica) are edited by another Augustinian called Giles, namely Giles of Viterbo (Aegidius Viterbiensis, 1469-1532), also a cardinal and a student of Jewish mystical writings. The Wellcome Library's incunable edition of the work of the two Giles's has the inscription "Egidius in Phis." (Giles on the Physica) written on the bottom edge (above right): before the mid-17th century, books were generally stored with their edges facing towards the room (not their spines, as today), and the owner of this book in the sixteenth century evidently knew who "Giles" would be and what the "Phis" were. [2]

One of Giles of Viterbo's contemporaries north of the Alps was George Ripley (d. ca. 1490), a canon of the Augustinian priory at Bridlington, Yorkshire, whose scrolls of alchemical symbols have recently been discussed on this blog.

Another Augustinian of the same era was Saint Thomas of Villanova (1486-1555), Bishop of Valencia and a professor at the University of Alcalá, after whom many universities and schools are named. In the engraving on the left (Wellcome Library no. 11665i), a young woman finds her leg ulcers relieved after her cheek is brushed with a locket containing a portrait and a relic of Saint Thomas of Villanova.

The Wellcome Library has many writings by the Augustinian satirist and preacher Abraham à Sancta Clara (1644-1709), a famed communicator of his day both in Vienna and internationally. The print below of a man literally dicing with death illustrates one of his popular books on death in the time of the bubonic plague.

Nineteenth-century Augustinians include the experimental gardener Johann Mendel (1822–1884) -- or Brother Gregor, to use his name in religion -- after whom is named the Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic (and, on a smaller scale, a meeting room in the headquarters of the Wellcome Trust in London). He was a member of the Augustinian Abbey of St Thomas in Brno, and from 1868 its abbot. In his horticultural work, Mendel grappled with botanical manifestations of the questions discussed by his predecessor Giles of Rome in the latter's De formatione corporis humani, written around the year 1270. An up-to-date introduction to the work of the Augustinian Order today can be found in the website Augnet.

Wellcome Library no. 47111i (detail)

The most monumental Augustinian work in the Wellcome Library is surely a gigantic etching (approx 145 x 160 cm.) produced on twelve plates in 1614 by the Italian engraver Oliviero Gatti of Bologna (1579-ca. 1648?). It bears the heading Mysticae Augustinensis Eremi sacrum gloriae decorisq. Theatrum ("Sacred display of the mystic glory and distinction of the Augustinian hermitage"); for brevity the work is also called Arbor augustiniana ("The Augustinian tree"). Gatti was commissioned to create this magnificent baroque print by two Augustinian friars, Marc Antonio Viani (from Bologna) and Paulus Vadovita (from Wadowice in Poland). Seven copies are known, not all of them now complete: the Wellcome Library's copy lacks two of the twelve plates. The print exists in two states: one from 1614 dedicated to Pope Paul V and King Philip III of Spain, the other dated 1678 and with updated dedications to their successors, Pope Innocent XI and King Charles II of Spain: the Wellcome Library's copy is of the first state. The print has been cleaned and conserved this year by Amy Junker Heslip in the Wellcome Library's Conservation department; during conservation, the superb quality of the paper and the vigour of the etching were revealed.

Wellcome Library no. 32491i (plate 8 of the Arbor augustiniana)

In the centre of Gatti’s composition, Saint of Augustine of Hippo sits holding the Rule of his Order (above), while around are representatives of the sacred and knightly orders associated with him, saints and martyrs, and eminent Augustinian friars and nuns, including his mother, Saint Monica. Giles of Rome appears no fewer than three times: once as a bishop, once as a cardinal-archbishop (left: Wellcome Library no. 32476i), and once among those who renounced a princely or royal title to become an Augustinian hermit: Giles of Rome was widely believed to be a member of the Roman noble family of Colonna, though the truth of this has been doubted. [3] A full analysis of the work is of course beyond the scope of this posting, but the prints themselves are available in the Wellcome Library to anyone wishes to study them, or indeed just to enjoy the brio of their draughtsmanship.

If we turn back from the Augustinian Order to Saint Augustine of Hippo himself, in addition to the many graphic representations of the saint the Wellcome Library has an oil painting, the subject of which has recently been identified by Mr Roberto Tollo in the course of his studies of Augustinian iconography. The painting is painted on a large sheet of copper (69 x 85.7 cm.) and was acquired by Sir Henry Wellcome in Granada in Spain in 1934.

Wellcome Library no. 44998i

The copper support, the Spanish provenance, and the costumes in the painting (similar to those in paintings by the Antwerp painter Frans Francken II) together suggest that this is a Flemish painting made in Antwerp in the mid-seventeenth century and painted on copper for export to Spain or Latin America. Paintings on copper travelled well, and once exported, could serve as models for larger paintings on wood or canvas for display in the churches, hospitals and convents of Spain and New Spain. [4]

Mr Tollo has now confirmed this by pinpointing the exact source of the composition as an engraving by the Antwerp artist Schelte Bolswert (1586-1659), apparently after his own design. That Schelte Bolswert's prints of Augustinian iconography were popular in the Hispanic world we know from the painted versions of them that have been found in Seville, Madrid, Quito, and Lima: the evidence is given in the Wellcome Library catalogue.

The subject derives from an episode in Carthage in the year 388, described by Saint Augustine himself [5]. The man in bed on the left is Innocentius of Carthage, who suffered from a rectal fistula, and was about to be treated for it by a painful surgical operation: in Augustine's words, "curabatur a medicis fistulas quas numerosas atque perplexas habuit in posteriore et ima corporis parte" (he was being treated by doctors for the many and difficult fistulas which he had on the posterior and lowest part of the body). However, for reasons of propriety, Schelte Bolswert shows the patient instead with a bandaged leg which a surgeon is expecting to amputate.

The surgeon, dressed in early 17th-century clothes, is sitting nearby with a brazier full of cautery irons – red-hot irons for sealing blood vessels -- and, on a table, an amputation knife for cutting the flesh around the bone: the surgeon's instruments are described in Augustine's account as "tremenda ferramenta". In the centre, blessing Innocentius, Saint Augustine is portrayed as a tonsured friar. Beyond him is a group of hermits of Saint Augustine, kneeling in prayer. Innocentius believes himself to be cured by a modern miracle without surgical innovation, and the surgeon almost lets go of his amputation-saw in surprise. On the right, a "marvellous Alexandrian surgeon" mentioned by Augustine as having been called in as a consultant raises his hand in an expression of astonishment, as well he might. He here represents those who assumed that miracles ceased in post-Biblical times, an assumption challenged by Saint Augustine from his own experiences. Augustine's message is that even eminent consultants cannot afford to take anything for granted.

[1] London review of books, 19 May 2011, p. 22. New York review of books, 27 October 2011, p. 54
[2] Questio Egidii Romani Eremite de materia celi. Padua: Hieronymus de Durantis, 1493, fol. B1v "F. Egidius Eremita Viterbiensis castigavit et dedit"
[3] M. Anthony Hewson, Giles of Rome and the medieval theory of conception: a study of the De formatione corporis humani in utero, London: Athlone Press, 1975, pp. 3-4 and 25 (find in the Wellcome Library here)
[4] Isaac van Oosten, Noah leading the animals to the ark, painting on copper 69.5 x 86.8 cm., Sotheby's, London, 6 July 2006, lot 101 (discussion in catalogue entry). Note that van Oosten's painting is very close in dimensions to the Wellcome Library painting. Pablo Escalante Gonzalbo and Martín Olmedo Muñoz, 'De invloed van de Zuid-Nederlandse gravure in Nieuw-Spanje', in Werner Thomas et al., Een wereld op papier: Zuid-nederlandse boeken, prenten en karten in het Spaanse en Portuguese wereldrijk (16de-18de eeuw), Louvain 2009, pp. 212-232
[5] De civitate dei, book XXII, chapter 8 (online at http://www.augustinus.it/latino/cdd/index2.htm)

Item of the Month, December 2011: Sun Yat-sen and Sir James Cantlie

2011-12-29T04:00:00.000-08:00

In March 1912 the provisional president of the newly created Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen, sent this letter to Mrs Mabel Cantlie, wife of the British tropical medicine specialist Dr James Cantlie. In it he surveys the enormous challenge the young republic faced less than three months into its existence. In fact Dr Sun was to play little further part in the immediate consolidation of the Chinese republic, as by the following year he was on the run from the military government of General Yuan Shikai, Sun’s successor as president, and self-appointed ‘Great Emperor of China’.

Dr James Cantlie (1851-1926), an Aberdeen trained physician, went to Hong Kong in 1887 at the invitation of Patrick Manson, whose medical practice he inherited. One of his earliest achievements was to assist Manson in establishing a medical training college for native students, one of the first of whom was the future president of China.

After graduating Sun Yat-sen remained in contact with the Cantlies, periodically appealing to the British government and public for support for democratic China through their good offices. The record of this involvement is reflected in Cantlie’s papers which were later donated to the Wellcome Library by his descendants.

Sun Yat-sen was already a well-known revolutionary agitator as a student, although still an assiduous enough scholar to graduate top of his class in 1892.

In 1895 he was part of small group of revolutionaries who planned to engineer an uprising in Guangzhou (Canton), only for their plot to be betrayed. Not for the last time Sun found himself a wanted man, escaping via Hong Kong to the United States, pursued by a banning order from the Hong Kong authorities. When the Cantlies returned to London the following year Sun Yat-sen moved to England, partly to benefit from the help and protection of his mentor. This was soon called in aid when Sun was kidnapped and imprisoned in the Chinese legation on Portland Place.

A high profile campaign in government and press was orchestrated by Cantlie to secure Sun’s release. The episode marked a turning point in Sun Yat-sen’s career, as it turned him into a celebrity, much in demand on the British lecture circuit, as this show card suggests.

His popularity in the UK was not reflected in Hong Kong, where the colonial authorities, anxious to maintain good relations with Imperial China, continued to warn Sun to stay away.

During the first decade of the twentieth century Sun Yat-sen was based mainly in Japan, one of the main centres of expatriate Chinese revolutionary activity, and Hawaii. There is little evidence of his activities during this period in Cantlie’s papers. In Tokyo Sun founded the party later known as the Kuomintang – the first political party of republican China. When a general insurrection spread across China during 1911 the Kuomintang was able to take power in Guangzhou in a bloodless coup in November.

Following events at a distance Cantlie was moved to upbraid The Times’s correspondent in Beijing, who was slow to comprehend the revolutionary moment.

Sun himself arrived in Shanghai on the 25th of December, setting foot in his homeland for the first time in sixteen years. He was elected provisional president four days later - so, one hundred years ago to this day - and sworn in on New Year’s Day 1912.

Sun Yat-sen, aware that he and his party had ridden to power on the coat tails of a military uprising, ceded the presidency to the military strongman Yuan Shikai, pending elections. When held in late 1912 these returned the Kuomintang as the largest party. Relations between the autocratic Yuan and his democratic opponents deteriorated rapidly; the parliamentary leader of the Kuomintang was assassinated at Shanghai railway station on Yuan’s orders in March 1913, one of the events that precipitated a lengthy, despairing telegram from Sun to Cantlie that was circulated in the press, and which is preserved in his papers.

By late 1913 Sun Yat-sen was again on the run, his party proscribed by Yuan.

Sun Yat-sen’s political career was far from over but the Cantlies had played their part. Their intervention to free him from the Chinese Legation in 1896 had no doubt saved his life. For this reason both Cantlie and London hold an honoured place in the foundation mythology of modern China, and during this centenary year the papers documenting Sun’s connection with his old tutor have been much in demand. They died within barely a year of each other, two lives that came together to change the world.

Images:
- Letter from Sun Yat Sen to Mrs Mabel Cantlie, 12th March 1912 (MS.7934)
- Hong Kong: College of Medicine for Chinese. Examination Papers in Anatomy: answered by Chinese Students. 1887. Page from Sun Yat Sen's examination paper, with
diagrams. (MS.2934)
- Excerpt from letter from Dr James Cantlie concerning Sun Yat Sen's imprisonment by the Chinese Legation in London, dated October 22nd 1886 (MS.7937/13)
- An episode in the revolutionary war in China, 1911: the march of the revolutionary army on Wuhan with two portraits of revolutionary leaders in roundels at top; the right one resembles Sun Yat Sen (Welcome Library no. 645607i)
- Telegram from Sun Yat Sen concerning the murder of Sung Chao-jen, leader of the Kuomintang political party, and the withdrawal of funds from the Peking government. Dated 2nd May 1913. Pages 1 and 2 (MS.7937/21)
- Portrait of Sun Yat Sen from 'Obituary and programme of memo for Dr Sun Yat Sen' (MS.7937/23)
- Sir James Cantlie. Oil painting by Harry Herman Salomon after a photograph (Wellcome Library no. 45529i)

Author: Richard Aspin

If not here, where?

2011-12-28T00:00:00.000-08:00

It was the proud boast of London’s Windmill Theatre that “We never closed”: that throughout the Blitz, as bombs rained down on London, the theatre continued to provide nude tableaux for the entertainment of lonely servicemen and their like. The list of ways in which the Wellcome Library resembles the Windmill is a short one: limited, most of us would think, to being in London and beginning with W. The beauty of the digital age, however, is that we can add a third to this list and say that in a sense we too never close: even if the Library’s doors may be shut, all manner of online resources remain available, 24 hours a day, for as long as our web-servers have power.

In the past various resources such as online journals or the Hospital Records Database have been highlighted in blog posts. A less well-known project whose data can be used via the Library website, was the Medical Archives and Manuscripts Survey, or MAMS.
When the Wellcome Library began collecting modern archival material in the 1970s, it rapidly became one of the first ports of call for researchers trying to locate the papers of particular individuals, or on particular subjects. The Hospital Records Database, a collaborative project between the Library and the National Archives, grew out of the need to answer questions like this. However, as its name suggests it deals only with hospital documentation, and as regular Library users will know the range of material that can be considered “medical” goes far beyond that – beyond the records of practitioners of scientific medicine and into issues such as nutrition, hygiene, demographics, complementary medicine, and so forth. The Medical Archives and Manuscripts Survey began in the latter 1980s by sending questionnaires out to repositories, and then, when it became apparent that the respondents could not be expected to spot the potential medical implications of every possible source in their holdings, moved in the early 1990s to sending Library staff out to survey archives in situ. By the mid-1990s, well over 100 London institutions holding archives had been surveyed: some, like the Royal Colleges, specialising in medicine; some, like the various Borough record offices, covering a wide range of subjects but limited to a specific geographic area; and others still drawn from all manner of specialisms, from the Alpine Club to the Zoological Society of London via the Marx Memorial Library and any number of other points between.

The 1990s, of course, was a time of radical change in information management and presentation. When MAMS began the aim was to publish the results as a printed directory, like a specialised and more detailed version of Janet Foster and Julia Sheppard's British Archives. By the mid-1990s it was apparent, as the infant World-Wide Web took off, that the way forward for these projects was as web-mounted databases rather than print. To recast the data gathered into granularised database fields, however, rather than the freetext reports that were its current form, would have meant a level of editing work almost as lengthy as the initial survey process had been. As the Web developed, too, increasingly direct access to archive catalogues was possible, and although this did not provide the sort of considered bringing together of medical sources that was achieved by the Library’s surveys, it was another factor in reducing the project’s attractiveness to publishers. In the end the Library decided that at the very least it could make all the information gathered available to researchers in a quick and simple fashion by mounting the various survey reports on the Library website, both as single documents – for those interested in sources available at a particular venue – or as one unified searchable listing, for people interested in a particular topic wherever it was to be found.

So, to the data. The terms of reference were simple: material of some medical or health relevance (“relevance” defined as widely as Sir Henry Wellcome would have done: very widely indeed), between the years of 1600 and 1945. 1600 was chosen as the start date reasoning that material before this tended to be used by a more narrowly defined research community (for example, before this date a knowledge of Latin is increasingly important); 1945, since the post-war landscape of health and medicine was radically different, most notably because of the setting up of the National Health Service. Between these two dates, pretty much anything went. The reader should be aware that the reports are now over 15 years old for the most part and that new material will have come in, contact details may have changed and so forth: but at its core the survey records a great tranche of hugely varied material awaiting the medical historian.

There are, of course, long reports for the obvious sources: the National Archives, the various Royal Colleges for the medical specialisms, the Wellcome Library itself (an overview of archive sources necessary at the time because this predated our online catalogue) and London Metropolitan Archives. These hold the riches that the researcher would expect. The beauty of the MAMS project, however, is in the unexpected material it throws up in those repositories that may be off the beaten track for the medical historian. The numerous borough record offices of the capital hold, as well as the expected local government material (administration of drainage and sewerage, Medical Officer of Health reports, and so forth) and local hospital records, a wide variety of other papers, both business and personal. Examples, plucked at random from the typescripts of completed entries, would include: the 1696 probate inventory of a Dorking physician held at the Minet Library, Lambeth; or the Bryant and May Company records that deal with employees’ conditions and phosphorus poisoning, held at Hackney Archives Department. Croydon Archive Service holds the transcripts of a court case brought against Croydon Corporation following an outbreak of typhoid in the borough in 1938. In the same year, the International Union of Local Authorities met at Finchley sewage works, a brochure and menu from the occasion being held by Barnet record office.

One item in Lewisham’s archives department serves as a splendid illustration of the way in which archival material can travel far from its place of creation, making a guide like this necessary: the personal papers of M.H. Hogg, Medical Superintendent of Grove Park Hospital in the borough, include lecture notes taken at Aberdeen University. Similar examples of travelling material, which may or may not be explained by simple administrative or personal links, occur in other borough record offices: descriptive notes about Tooting Bec Asylum at Lewisham, or the 1914 annual report of Enfield Cottage Hospital at Sutton.

Most satisfying was the discovery of relevant material in specialist repositories whose remit was not ostensibly medical: the type of unexpected find that makes a subject survey essential. A historian of medicine might not think to check a repository whose slant is religious, but papers relating to doctors who were religious non-conformists may be found in the archives of the Religious Society of Friends or in Dr. Williams’s Library. The subjects discussed in the extensive correspondence held by the Royal Geographical Society include the health implications of different climates and medicinal plants from around the world. Finally, one can be reasonably certain that a historian of medicine in Bradford would not automatically head for the British Architectural Library at RIBA, yet there one may find a Bradford apothecary’s recipe book.

Less overtly medical material can also be fruitful for the researcher: for example, the papers of the banker Hastings Nathaniel Middleton (1781-1821), held by the City of Westminster Archives Centre, turn out to go into some detail on the mental illness of his mother.

The survey is, of course, the tip of the iceberg. Similarly varied material will exist in repositories outside London: it was the intention to carry MAMS beyond the capital, but the changing technical landscape halted the project before this happened. More material will have arrived at record offices since these surveys were carried out. There will, also be material from outside the date-span of the survey. In this last category comes a favourite example of the sheer unpredictability of medical archive sources: in the London Borough of Hillingdon’s archives at Uxbridge Library is a report, dating from the 1970s, on the movements of foxes in the borough. The medical relevance is that the fox is the main carrier of the rabies virus in continental Europe: the report was prepared to assess the rapidity with which rabies might spread by this means if the virus gained a foothold in Britain. As this illustrates, the medical implications of archive material may not superficially be obvious; but once one’s eyes are opened, almost all repositories will hold something worth recording and worth pointing out to the researcher. There is a wealth of material out there and much of it is recorded in the MAMS reports – we recommend readers to start exploring.

Note: contact details given in the MAMS reports were accurate at the time of the survey but may have changed since: for up-to-date information on addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail and web addresses, etc., readers should consult the National Archives' Archon directory.

Images, all repositories covered by the MAMS project. From top:
1/ Battersea Library, home of Wandsworth Heritage Service. Photograph copyright Christopher Hilton, made available under Creative Commons Licence via the Geograph website.
2/ The Royal College of Surgeons of England, c.1813: painting by George Dance, from Wellcome Images.
3/ Bishopsgate Institute. Photograph copyright David Bradbury, made available under Creative Commons Licence via the Geograph website.
4/ Minet Library, home of Lambeth Archives. Photograph copyright Stephen Craven, made available under Creative Commons Licence via the Geograph website.
5/ Dr Williams's Library, Gordon Square (a near neighbour of the Wellcome Library). Photograph copyright David Hawgood, made available under Creative Commons Licence via the Geograph website.

HMS Beagle's Naturalist

2011-12-27T09:10:00.000-08:00

On the 27th December 1831, one of the most famous expeditions of the nineteenth century was launched, as it was on this day, 180 years ago, that the second voyage of HMS Beagle begun. As such, let's mark this anniversary by briefly highlighting a manuscript we hold, written by the naturalist on board the Beagle at the start of its voyage. Quick question first - what was this person's name?

If your answer is 'Charles Darwin', then the wailing of the klaxons of QI be upon you - the correct answer, and the man who also held the post of ship's surgeon, was Robert McCormick (1800-1890).

McCormick's diary for the years 1830 to 1832, held in the Wellcome Library as MS.3359, helps to elucidate McCormick's relationship with both Robert FitzRoy (the Beagle's captain) and Charles Darwin (who was on board as a gentleman companion to FitzRoy, albeit one with a knowledge of geology and the natural world).

McCormick's diary forms the basis of a recent monograph published by the British Society for the History of Science: 'He is No Loss': Robert McCormick and the Voyage of HMS Beagle by Emily Steel.

The monograph - which also includes a transcription of McCormick's diary - examines McCormick's attitude to Fitzroy and Darwin and why it was McCormick left the Beagle in April 1832.

McCormick's diary may not be as famous as some of our other holdings, but its (relative) unfamiliarity is arguably a virtue: it's one of the manuscripts held by the Wellcome Library that directly reminds us that there can be disputed accounts of 'familiar' historical events.

Abbey Christmas

2011-12-24T03:17:00.000-08:00

Clammy hands? Trouble sleeping? Counting down the hours until Christmas day? Like many of the library staff, you might be suffering withdrawal from medical history docu-drama and all-round national treasure Downton Abbey. That’s right, folks, medical history. Those of you who’ve managed to tear themselves away from Cousin Matthew’s puppy-dog eyes will surely have noticed the show’s preoccupation with all things sickly. The first series saw Lady Crawley’s miscarriage, Mrs Patmore’s cataract surgery, Bates’ ill-corrected limp and Isobel pressurising Dr Clarkson into performing pericardiocentesis on a dropsy patient. (Editor's note: we're drawing a veil over Mr Pamuk and his untimely ending at the erm, hands, of Lady Mary). But it was in the second series, set during the great war, that the medical storylines really started stacking up, with everything from gas-blindness to the poisons register getting a mention. With nine whole months to survive between Sunday’s Christmas special and the promised third series, Downton addicts will be casting around for something to feed their habit. And what better place to start than the Wellcome library?

Downton’s transformation into a convalescent home is evocatively suggested in two albums of photographs. In the series Lady Sybil trains as a VAD (voluntary aid detachment) nurse to tend to injured servicemen. Our albums come from slightly less privileged stock: Grace Mitchell was the daughter of tenant farmers in Theydon bois, Essex, and worked as a nurse during and after the war, in England and France and at casualty clearing stations in Cologne. Dorothy Waller was from a medical family - her brother Wathen was serving as a Surgeon-Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Both Grace and Dorothy took photographs during their time at the 3rd southern general hospital, which included Oxford town hall and the Oxford examination schools. Pictured is Grace with patients in Oxford.

Downton’s shell-shocked Valet Mr Lang’s condition is brought to life in a 1917 film War Neuroses: Netley Hospital which has been digitized and is available on the Wellcome Film youtube channel. The library also holds a collection of reprints of articles by Charles Samuel Myers, who coined the term “shell-shock” as well as diaries and notes made by Charles McMoran Wilson, when he was a medical officer on the Western front, which led to the publication of his The Anatomy of Courage in 1945.

The series climaxed with a perilous outbreak of Spanish flu, with Lady Grantham, faithful butler Carson, and Lavinia Swire all struck down. The 1918 medical officer of health report for Kingsclere, close to Highclere castle where Downton is filmed, reveals how closely art imitates life - the influenza outbreak there ‘increased with the cold damp September till in October and November it was of alarming frequency causing 31 deaths.’ A further 5 deaths were attributed to the resulting pneumonia, against a total of 122 for the year. A public service film and a documentary with archival footage also record the outbreak.

If all of that’s piqued your interest but you’re still too lethargic to leave the house, why spend some of your Christmas book tokens on one of these:

Dismembering the male: men's bodies, Britain, and the Great War by Joanna Bourke

War, disability and rehabilitation in Britain: "soul of a nation" by Julie Anderson

A war of nerves by Ben Shephard

Spike Island: the memory of a military hospital by Philip Hoare

Women in the war zone by Anne Powell

As for “Patrick Crawley”’s amnesia and Matthew’s miraculously cured paralysis? We’re as stumped on those as you are…

Images:

A neo-Gothic building used as a hospital, with an ambulance in the drive. Watercolour by Walter E. Spradbery, Wellcome Library 47357i

Photograph from the album of Grace Mitchell, Wellcome Library 675224i

Compiled by Wellcome library staff and written by Jo Maddocks

Forthcoming attractions

2011-12-22T07:42:00.000-08:00

January 1st in the archives is a time not only for new resolutions and new projects, but for new raw material: at the start of each year, a batch of material that has been closed for Data Protection reasons is opened for readers to work upon. The precise contents of this year's batch, of course, are still secret for a little over a week. We can, however, give at least the bare-bones information from the archive catalogue about these forthcoming attractions. They include:

More material from the papers of Lord Moran, Churchill's physician (PP/CMW), to join that released on 1st January 2011.

Two items from the Queen's Nursing Institute (SA/QNI): a volume of the Queen's Roll, on which inspections of nurses were recorded, covering 1926-1927; and - from the card index that replaced the original bound Roll - a microfilm of nurses' records on cards from 1907 to 1927.

A file from the Brain Research Association (SA/BRA) explaining the Association's position regarding the 1979 Protection of Animals (Scientific Purposes) Bill and the 1979 Laboratory Animals Protection Bill.

Files from the Beit Memorial Fellowship (SA/BMF) on various candidates for a fellowship, discussed in 1927.

A file from the papers of the psychiatrist Donald Winnicott (PP/DWW) relating to a few adult patients whose papers found in a small file of predominantly child patient notes from the 1920s.

The full list is as follows. Only a little while to go....

MS.8155; Christo P. Popoff; 1957; letter to Dr. C. Allen of the Seamen's Hospital, Greenwich, London. Popoff writes about a case of schizophrenia and enquires about the effectiveness of Largactil in stabilising patients suffering from this condition.
PP/CMW/D.9/1; Moran's Notes; 1950-1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/2; 1951 Recommendations; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/2/1; London Teaching Hospitals and Regions 'For meetings, 7/2/52 & 6/3/52'; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/2/2; Index to 1951 recommendations; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/3; 'Notes 1951'; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/3/1; Birmingham I, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/3/2; Wales, Leeds, Sheffield; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/3/3; North East, North West Metropolitan Region; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/3/4; South East, South West Metropolitan Region; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/3/5; Specialities, London Regions and Teaching Hospitals; 1951.
PP/DWW/F/1; Adult Clinical material; 1920s; A few cases of adult patients found in a small concertina file of predominantly child patient notes from the 1920s (now in PP/DWW/E.2/1) and separated out here.
PP/HUN/C/1/23; Cysticercosis; 1932-1943.
SA/BMF/A.2/109; Hacker, Henry Pollard; 1927.
SA/BMF/A.2/110; Winton, Frank Robert; 1927.
SA/BMF/A.2/111; Wooldridge, Walter Reginald; 1927.
SA/BMF/A.2/112; Morgan, Walter Thomas James; 1927.
SA/BMF/A.2/113; Eggleton, Philip; 1927.
SA/BMF/A.2/114; Marrian, Guy Frederick; 1927.
SA/BMF/A.2/115; Fee, Archibald Roderick; 1927.
SA/BRA/C.1/3/2; Brain Research Association response to the 1979 Protection of Animals (Scientific Purposes) Bill and the 1979 Laboratory Animals Protection Bill (Includes papers from the Committee for the Reform of Animal Experimentation, The Physiological Society, the Research Defence Society, The Royal Society, and the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare); 1980-1981.
SA/QNI/J.3/35; The Queen's Roll: 8301-8550; Oct 1926-Jul 1927.
SA/QNI/J.4/1; The Queen's Roll on cards; 1907-1927; 3055-8499.

Image: 19th century wood engraving from the Wellcome Library's Iconographic Collections.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-22T04:00:00.000-08:00

The Wellcome Library closes today for the festive period at 6pm and re-opens at 10am on Tuesday 3rd January 2012.

We would just like to take this opportunity to wish all Library readers and followers of the Library Blog, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Image: A snowballing scene with boys playing in the snow. On the reverse of the picture is an advertisement for Onnen's German Fever and Ague Mixture. 1890s (EPH 348)

Frequent flyers

2011-12-22T01:34:00.000-08:00

If it could collect air miles, then some of the material inthe Wellcome Library would have a pretty impressive stash of them by now. In 2011, Library material travelled a totalof 10,168 miles on its way to and from various different loans to museumsaround the world.

Countries lent to include The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland,Germany (on quite a few occasions), France, the Czech Republic and Canada, aswell as numerous loans within London and the UK. All of these exhibitions have been temporary,lasting on average around 6 months, and the number of items lent has variedbetween 1 and 12. Click on the map belowfor more details:

It’s not just the collections that are well travelled – we send acourier for most of our loans, and Library staff have notched up an impressive 19,928miles this year in round trips carrying out this important role.

So what exactly is involved in lending the Library’scollections? It all starts with aninitial request from the borrowing institution, giving details of theexhibition and what they would like to borrow. Our Conservation department then assess the item(s) to ascertain if theyare robust enough for loan, and what, if any, work needs doing to them in orderto make them safe for travel and display. After final approval from the Library’s Senior Management Team, therethen follows lengthy discussion between the Library’s Exhibition Liaison andthe borrower regarding display and security conditions, any costs involved,transport etc.

Couriering has already been mentioned, and this is the area oflending that many find most interesting. It can seem quite glamorous , and it’s true that it certainly beats aday in the office, but it can also be very tiring with early starts and manyhours of travelling. Professional arthandlers are always used to transport loans,and their preferred method of transport within Europe is usually by truck. Therefore, if accompanying a loan to adestination in Europe, the courier will travel in the truck, spending manyhours, sometimes even days, on the road. If travelling by air, it is necessary to arrive at the airport hours inadvance of the flight in order to witness the crate containing the loan beingloaded up. This involves going behindthe scenes to the cargo shed at the airport, donning a high-vis jacket andhaving your wits about you in order to avoid the many forklift trucks andlorries that work in these areas.

Once the courier reaches their destination with the loan safely intow, they must witness it being unloaded and securely stored into the borrowinginstitution’s premises, and then they will usually return the following day toinstall the item(s). Installationinvolves witnessing the loan being unpacked, condition checking it to ensure ithasn’t been damaged en route, and then supervising its placing in the displaycase or hanging on the wall. Dependingon the number of items being lent, and how complicated they are to install,this process can take anything from an hour to a couple of days. Then it’s back to the UK, with a de-brief onthe trip when the courier returns to work. The whole process then takes place again, but in reverse, when it istime for the loan to be returned.

With requests already received from various museums in the USA,Spain and UK, 2012 looks set to be another busy year for the loan of Wellcome Library material.

Author: Rowan De Saulles

Years in the archives

2011-12-21T08:50:00.000-08:00

When the Library surveys readers to assess their level of satisfaction with our service, a common comment is to highlight the helpfulness of the staff (a comment for which we are extremely grateful). We’d like to think that this begins with recruiting the right people; but it’s also a result of a stable staff, long-serving Library employees building their experience and skills as time passes, and sharing this knowledge with readers and colleagues. On that note, today we’d like to mark twenty years’ service to the Library by Dr Richard Aspin, the Head of Research and Scholarship.

Richard joined us from Lambeth Palace Library in 1991, arriving in a library very different from today’s. His role initially was as Curator of Western Manuscripts, head of a department of just two people looking after pre-1900 archival material: twentieth-century material was looked after by the then Contemporary Medical Archives Centre. Since that time we have seen the merger of those two bodies into today’s Archives and Manuscripts department; the introduction of a database to make archive catalogues visible and searchable online; the refitting of 183 Euston Road not once but twice; and now, the impending transformation of our reader experience by mass digitisation and the collection of born-digital archives. Throughout these changes, one constant has been Richard’s combination of level-headedness, diplomacy and scholarship worn lightly. We, and our readers, have been the beneficiaries.

Author: Chris Hilton

Spades, Hearts, Diamonds

2011-12-21T07:25:00.000-08:00

A game of cards. Oil painting by Stephen Jenner. Wellcome Library no. 47409i

In England in 1840, Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, Charles Dickens published The Old Curiosity Shop, and a certain E. Estridge passed the time by drawing on playing cards. He (or she, but perhaps more probably he) took a complete pack manufactured by the firm of Hardy & Sons, and doodled contemporary scenes on each of the numbered cards, using the pips (the spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs) as human heads. Each of the royal cards carried a letter or number which together spell out "E. ESTRIDGE 1840".

The complete pack was acquired by the firm of Abbott & Holder from whom the Wellcome Library has acquired three cards, thus adding a new and bizarre species to the variety of genres represented in the Wellcome Library's collections. In the Wellcome Library they have the number 780448i and they can be found in the Wellcome Library catalogue here.

The Two of Spades (left) must be either a meeting or a confrontation between two black figures (since Spades and Clubs are black). Estridge has shown them as two black pugilists exercising the science of boxing. Many books had been published about the science of boxing, including Captain John Godfrey’s A treatise upon the science of defence of 1747 and Thomas Fewtrell’s Boxing reviewed; or, the science of manual defence, displayed on rational principles, London, 1790. And at some stage boxing acquired the sobriquet "the sweet science". The Oxford English Dictionary also gives as the meaning of spade “Slang (orig. U.S.) depreciative and offensive. As a term of contempt or casual reference among white people: a black person, esp. a black man. Formerly (among African Americans): a very dark-skinned black person.” But as the earliest quotation given is American and dates from 1928, it would surely be incorrect to read that meaning into this English drawing.

The Three of Diamonds (right) contains three figures: what about two people helping a third? Estridge does that by showing two men carrying an injured person on a stretcher "To Guy’s", i.e. to Guy’s Hospital, then as now in Southwark, near London Bridge. This patient there follows in the tracks of those Southwark residents who had recently been taken to Guy’s and immortalised in the pages of Richard Bright’s Reports of medical cases (1827-1831).

The Ten of Hearts suggests a team game with ten players or a well-ordered ceremony of some sort. Estridge makes it a post-mortem examination (above), conducted by a Georgian surgeon in a wig, in the presence of eight other witnesses. Several other scenes in the pack also show people in Georgian dress, suggesting that Estridge was old enough to recall life from before 1800. His post-mortem examiners are not modern medical coroners of the Thomas Wakley generation, but perhaps members of the old Company of Surgeons, dissecting a body in Surgeons' Hall in the Old Bailey, and living on in folk memory into the reign of Victoria. The subject has certainly given the artist a lot of amusement in turning hearts into heads, with the closed eyes of the deceased contrasted with the staring eyes of the watchers.

'Monkeyana' and the book that never was

2011-12-21T02:30:00.000-08:00

As we come to the close of the year, 2011 saw not one but two films concerned with attitudes to our ancestors - Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Project Nim. Fiction, as well as legislation, has a long history of interest in interspecies relations and the Library contains some classic examples, including The Island of Dr Moreau and Tarzan. Many of these works show the influence of Charles Darwin's notion of evolution and importantly its antithesis - devolution or degeneration.

If humans had developed from apes could some of us occasionally revert to our primitive former selves? This theme lies behind such titles as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (see previous post) and The Time Machine. More recently, films of the 20th century continued to refer to the idea of reverting to a more bestial type (atavism), including Cat People which I have to confess, is one of my favourite movies. The original, by Jacques Tourneur, features a quote in its opening sequence from 'The Anatomy of Atavism' by Dr L. Judd:

Even as fog continues to lie in the valleys, so does ancient sin cling to the low places, the depressions in the world consciousness.

Alas, any search for this intriguing tome will prove fruitless as it, like Dr Judd, the psychiatrist in the film, never existed. Judd, played by Tom Conway lives on in film history because with his pipe, cigarettes and urbane charm he is a great example of early filmic portrayals of this profession. Here are two film clips: one from Cat People in which Judd archly smokes at a wedding party, and this trailer for the sequel Curse of the Cat People which has a Christmas theme (albeit one with threats of infanticide).

Film fans may appreciate our new e-book Icons of Grief (available to registered readers) which examines the work of Val Lewton, writer of both Cat People and the equally wonderful 'I Walked with a Zombie' (a re-working of Jane Eyre set on a tropical island). Lewton was a Russian emigree and the nephew of Hollywood star Alla Nazimova who allegedly coined the term 'sewing circle' to describe the clandestine affairs of tinsel town's bisexual and lesbian actresses.

For books that do exist concerning current legislation readers can see Marie Fox's chapter 'Legislating Interspecies Embryos' inside our new acquisition The Legal, Medical and Cultural Regulation of the Body. Fox highlights how tricky it is coining the right term to express what many consider a contestable area of research: mixing the cells or gametes of human and non-human animals. Terms like 'chimera' and 'hybrid' are often used by journalists and authors as they sound more dramatic.

Illustrations: Fantasy - human-fish hybrid. Fantasy artwork of swimming chimeras with fish heads with human legs. Credit: Diane Harris, 2002 Wellcome Images B0004399
'Monkeyana' satirical cartoon from Punch, 18 May 1861, p.206 Wellcome Images L0031419
A group of cats dressed as gentry dining in a restaurant. Watercolour. Wellcome Images V0021521

Guest Post: Exploring Health and Medicine in Early Modern Wales

2011-12-20T04:00:00.000-08:00

Dr Alun Withey is an academic historian of early modern medicine, technology and the family. Here, he describes the inspiration and contexts of his new book, Physick and the Family: Health, Medicine and Care in Wales, 1600-1750, which includes research carried out in the Wellcome Library.

I never set out to be a medical historian. Whilst studying for my History BA, I was struggling to find a topic for my dissertation. I knew I wanted to do something connected to Wales and the seventeenth century, and settled upon the Civil Wars. I visited a local record office, and was introduced to a source that nobody had done much work on…a commonplace book. Amongst the notes and jottings were several medical remedies that looked interesting to the untrained eye. My curiosity was piqued and I decided to look into it further. Seven years, and a PhD later, I’m still looking!

Welsh medical history, at least in terms of the early modern period, has often been overlooked. In 1975, the editor of a collection of essays on the subject concluded that there were problems caused by a lack of medical sources for Wales. Such work that had been done tended to concentrate on the folkloric and magical elements of medicine in Wales, doubtless an important element of Welsh heritage, with the legendary ‘Physicians of Myddfai’ and their remedies garnering a lot of attention. The problem with ‘folklore’, however, is that it is a loaded term; Although magical remedies, symbolism and the ‘cunning man’ were important components, I felt that they also somehow contributed to a rural caricature, and made Wales seem remote, cut off from the wider world by its language and sometimes awkward terrain.

Physick and the Family, the first academic monograph on early modern Welsh medical history, set out to give what I see as the other side to the story of Welsh medicine. In doing so I not only wanted to write a new medical history of Wales, but also to use Wales as a test-bed to address much broader questions in medical history. In this sense, a new study wouldn’t just fill in gaps, but could provide a credible new investigation of the experience of sickness, health and care in the early modern period.

In many ways, the sources, dictated what questions could be addressed and answered. Contradicting the earlier view about Welsh sources, it soon became clear that there was actually a wealth of source material – much of it untapped. The book draws upon Welsh remedy collections, of which a good number survive – one especially rich example surviving in the Wellcome Library, known as the ‘Welsh Leech Book’ (MS.417). A study of the types and derivations of Welsh recipes proved insightful into the movement of medical knowledge both into, and within, early modern Wales, and not least in changing medical terminologies in the Welsh language. Diaries and letters yielded much useful information about sickness, the ways in which people described their symptoms, and also important factors such as the social rituals and conventions of sickness and the sufferer.

But the book also uses different types of source material, and it was often this that yielded the most interesting and surprising results. A detailed study of probate inventories, for example, looked at evidence for medical paraphernalia in the early modern home, but also for evidence, in shop inventories, of medicines for sale. From studies of shop inventories in three Welsh counties, it is clear that even small, remote village shops often sold a range of medical goods.

Other records such as those of the Old Poor Law were revealing in matters of care. Who, for example, cared for the sick, and what measures did the parish take to look after its own sick poor? The survival of some astonishingly detailed poor law records for one particular Welsh parish, allows for a detailed case study of the often sophisticated structures of care available to the early modern patient.

The book is intended to have a broad appeal, and not just to those inside the Welsh borders. It has been written to speak to anyone with an interest in medical history certainly, but also in social history more widely, since it is at heart a book about the experiences of ‘ordinary’ people. But as a regional history, it also encourages a more nuanced view of the early modern medical world, and one that takes into account the often important variations that could be caused by topography and geography, as well as language and literacy.

I said earlier that this was the first book of its kind; technically it is. But it is also worth mentioning a hidden gem in the Wellcome Library archive. In the 1920s an eminent physician, Dr David Fraser-Harris, was busy compiling his ‘History and Lore of Kymric Medicine’ – a richly detailed study of Welsh medical history and one in many ways far ahead of its time. Sadly, he died before it was completed and it now survives only in many boxes and unfinished drafts. In seeking to say something new about Welsh medicine we obviously shared a similar goal. I hope that he would have approved of my modest efforts some 90 years later.

Author: Alun Withey

Medical Officer of Health reports to be digitised

2011-12-19T08:51:00.000-08:00

The Wellcome Library has received JISC funding towards the creation of a major free online dataset covering public health in London from the mid-19th century to the late 20th century.

This project is based on the reports of the Medical Officers of Health (MOH) in Greater London between 1848 and 1972. Of all the collections in the Wellcome Library the MOH reports have the greatest research potential for the study of public health history in 19th and 20th century Britain, and are one of the most heavily consulted collections at the Wellcome Library. Online access to this resource will vastly increase their impact on research and would be invaluable to public health researchers, epidemiologists and practitioners, as well as medical and social historians.

The Medical Officers of Health systematically monitored and oversaw the provision of disparate services that contributed to the well-being of local populations. The Officers – individually and as a group – were one of the most influential agents of social and medical reform in Britain over a period of more than a century. Their reports contain a wealth of information (especially statistical data) and there is a long pedigree of advanced research using MOH reports as primary source materials for a wide range of subjects including (but not limited to) food and food safety; maternity and child welfare; housing; pollution; manufacturing (e.g. the inspection of workshops); shops and offices; sanitation; social care; civil liberties; demography; engineering and meteorological conditions.

Digitising these extensive holdings will not only improve access to an important body of research material, but will offer opportunities for new approaches to text and data mining. Digitisation and text encoding will be carried out in 2012, and will be made freely available on the Wellcome Digital Library website in early 2013. For more information you can read the project plan on the JISC website.

Random Edition on BBC Radio 4

2011-12-15T03:50:00.000-08:00

In this week's episode of BBC Radio 4's Random Edition, presenter Peter Snow marked the 150th anniversary of the death of Prince Albert.

The programme focused on how the Prince Consort's death was reported in one issue of the London Daily News, but also featured recordings made at a number of relevant locations to Prince Albert's life and legacy, such as Osborne House, Windsor Castle and the Royal Albert Hall.

One segment of the episode was recorded here at the Wellcome Library, in which Peter Snow came face-to-face with the painting shown above, a vast canvas depicting Prince Albert on his deathbed. The programme concludes with a discussion over competing theories over the cause of the Prince Albert's death.

Random Edition: Prince Albert is available on the BBC iPlayer to listeners in the UK until Wedensday 21st December.

Image: The last moments of HRH the Prince Consort. Oil painting by Oakley under the pseudonym Le Port, ca. 1861. (Wellcome Library no. 47371i).
See also W. Schupbach, 'The Last Moments of H.R.H. The Prince Consort', Medical History, 1982, 26, pp321-324 (free to access PDF)

ALCS and PLS to provide ‘rights identification service’ for book digitisation

2011-12-14T06:33:00.000-08:00

As described in a press release issued today, the Wellcome Library will be working in collaboration with the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) and the Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) to identify rights holders of in-copyright books for digitisation. This project is part of the Wellcome Digital Library pilot programme, focusing on the digitisation of around 1,700 key works relating to the history of modern genetics that are known to be, or likely to be, in copyright.

Dr Simon Chaplin, Head of the Wellcome Library, explains: "As a library that supports the understanding of medicine in culture, providing access to key scientific texts for historians is of paramount importance to our mission. By working with rights-holders and their representatives, we hope to create a robust and sustainable model that meets the needs of researchers, authors and publishers."

The Wellcome Library has published a list of authors online and encourages copyright holders represented on this list to make contact. Rights holders may be added to this list from time to time if and when we add books to the scope for digitisation, or come across new copyright holders during the identification process.

An outbreak of Mad Cow Disease in the archives

2011-12-13T08:52:00.000-08:00

The Wellcome Trust ’s mission is to foster human and animal health. Sometimes these two areas converge. The BSE crisis of the late 1990s was one such occurrence.

Sir John Pattison, former vice-provost of University College London School of Health, and National Health Service Head of Research and Development, was right at the centre of this crisis. As Chairman of the Government’s Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC) from 1995-1999, Sir John had a unique view of the political decisions taken at this time.

SEAC provided advice on a number of issues, including the safe consumption of meat and milk, and the suitable treatment of animal carcasses by slaughterhouses. The committee remained in operation until 30 March 2011, when it was replaced by the ACDP Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy Risk Assessment Subgroup.

In December 2010, Sir John Pattison presented a memoir of his time in charge of SEAC to the Wellcome Library , along with a set of committee minutes, and supporting documentation. The minutes, and the documentation that Sir John used in compiling this memoir are now available to Wellcome Library researchers. The memoir itself will be available in the near future, once we have put in place facilities to allow user access to born-digital archival material.

The supporting documentation includes correspondence with politicians, members of the public, and the families of patients with Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease (CJD). There are also press releases issued on behalf of the committee and other bodies, as well as information on potential tests for, and causes of, CJD.

More information on can be found via the Archives and Manuscripts online catalogue. The reference for this collection is PP/JPN .

The SEAC website can be accessed through the UK Government Web Archive .

Merman resurfaces in Regent's Park

2011-12-13T06:30:00.000-08:00

After a recent sighting in Bromley, a merman once owned by Henry Wellcome, and now in the collection of the Horniman Museum, is making an appearance north of the Thames at the headquarters of the Royal College of Physicians, beside Regent's Park in London.

As part of this loan, next Tuesday 20th December sees a free lunchtime event at the Royal College of Physicians, Fakes, Forgeries and Quacks. The event will consist of two talks: Ross MacFarlane, Wellcome Library, will place the merman in the context of Henry Wellcome's wider collections and Paolo Vascardi, Horniman Museum, will trace the history of mermaids and reveal a tale of fraud, bankruptcy and shipwrecks.

The event starts at 12.30pm and will last just over an hour. No booking is required and directions to the Royal College of Physicians are available from their website.

Image: A grotesque mermaid, amidst luxurious cushions and drapes, and framed by two shells. Coloured lithograph by E. Purcell, 1822 (Wellcome Libary no. 3332i).

Conservation in Action: Ripley Scrolls

2011-12-08T04:00:00.000-08:00

In the first of a new series, Conservator Amy Junker Heslip talks us through the conservation treatment she undertook on some of the Wellcome Library’s alchemical manuscripts.

The Ripley Scrolls are manuscripts which illustrate the pursuit of the Philosopher's Stone. George Ripley was a Augustine Monk from Yorkshire (c.1415-1490) but was additionally renowned as an alchemist. His name is associated with these scrolls as his allegorical poetry is included in many of the versions. There are approximately 21 scrolls worldwide, produced after Ripley’s death, dated from the 16th-17th centuries.

The Wellcome Library holds two of these scrolls, MS.692 and MS.693 and they are listed on the library catalogue as being on restricted access due to their fragile nature. They are dated from the 17th century, copy of a 15th century copy, and are water colour, wash and ink on heavy weight handmade wove paper. Both scrolls are mounted on linen and are stored rolled with wooden rollers at each ends, housed in wooden boxes. They are long with dimensions of 3280 x 400mm.

On closer inspection I was able to assess the physical condition of both objects. While the condition of MS.693 was stable and only required re housing (a new box), MS.692 was in a far worse state. The upper section had sustained a large amount of water damage, resulting in staining to the primary support and multiple losses to this upper section. The verso of this upper, lifting section had been lined with a heavy weight board in an attempt, one can only assume, to support these losses on the verso. Throughout the scroll, there are lifting areas of the primary support. The bottom of the scroll has been detached from the roller and re attached with tabs of paper.

The ink tested positive for iron gall ink and other colours proved very water sensitive upon testing. Although I was reasonably convinced that I could remove the linen backing dry, the relining would involve unnecessary exposure to moisture.

The board attached to the upper layer of the reverse of MS.692 was removed manually with a scalpel and immediately relived the tension added by this support so the upper section could lie flat again. The linen revealed below was heavily degraded and so was relined with a very strong but light weight silk crepeline. On the heavily water damaged areas on the front of the object the lifting areas were adhered using cold gelatin, to avoid unnecessary moisture contact with the iron gall ink, and in filled with a similar toned Japanese paper. The bottom roller of MS.692 was re-adhered more securely, with an extension of a medium weight repair paper added so the scroll could be comfortably opened up to its fullest extent.

Both items have now been rehoused into custom made boxes and are now stable. While they are both accessible again to Wellcome Library readers, it has been decided that their restricted status will be retained (due to the oversize nature of the material), so they can be viewed in an appropriate environment.

Images:
- MS.692 prior to conservation
- MS.692 during conservation (two photographs)
- MS.692 after conservation

Sources:
McCallum, Professor R I, The Ripley Scroll [online] Available at: http://www.rcpe.ac.uk/library/read/collection/ripley/ripley.php [Accessed 7th December 2011]

The Ripley Scroll [online] Available at: http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2009/01/ripley-scroll.html [Accessed 7th December 2011]

Author: Amy Junker-Heslip

New Post: Specialist, Medieval and Early Modern Medicine

2011-12-07T09:00:00.000-08:00

Applications are welcomed for a new post at the Wellcome Library as a Specialist in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine.

Candidates should have a higher degree in History with specialisation in pre-modern medicine or science and must be able to demonstrate the following:

- A strong academic profile
- Knowledge of relevant collections, including those outside the Wellcome Library
- Knowledge of current academic work in fields relevant to the Library's pre-modern collections
- Excellent communication skills, both written and oral, including the ability to engage non-specialist audiences
- Strong influencing and persuading skills
- Good networking skills
- An aptitude for collaboration and team-working
- A reading knowledge of Latin and at least one other relevant foreign language.

Full details of the post - and details on applying - are available from the 'Current Vacancies' section of the Wellcome Trust's website (direct link).

The closing date for applications is 21st December 2011.

Henry's Cats

2011-12-07T08:57:00.000-08:00

In 1936, readers of the Liverpool Echo were intrigued to read of the death of a London millionaire who apparently chose to live in a Portland Place hotel while maintaining a palatial Regents park residence for the sole occupancy of his three beloved cats. This individual was none other than Sir Henry Wellcome.

Over the past year, whilst celebrating the 75th anniversary of Wellcome Trust's foundation, we have learned much about the life, work and achievements of Henry Wellcome. We have been reminded of Wellcome the collector, entrepreneur, philanthropist and even inventor, but this report hints at another side of his character - Henry Wellcome was an archetypal cat owner, with the eccentricities to match.

The claim may seem surprising, implausible even, but a search around in the Wellcome Library's archives quickly unearths more evidence for the great man’s devotion to his feline friends...

With the winter holidays approaching, many of the cat owners amongst us will be contemplating time away from our pets and find ourselves writing novella-length notes for those brave souls entrusted with their care.

Henry Wellcome, it seems, was no different. Nestling in the recesses of his personal papers are page after page of instructions for successive pet-sitters; those whose task it was to keep the little darlings happy had no small job on their hands. One memo notes that the cats were "accustomed to eating cooked beef, ox & lamb liver & kidney, boiled hake and cod, salmon & sardines", and, occasionally, "a little raw beef, if it is finely cut up" (from WA/HSW/PE/A.30).

Fresh meat and fish was delivered to No. 6 Gloucester Gate daily by Wellcome’s butcher and fishmonger (‘NOT from a ‘cats meat’ butcher”) and were cooked there and then by Wellcome’s staff to be enjoyed with fresh milk and water. On Sundays, by which time the patience of the cook was presumably wearing thin, the cats were treated to a tin of salmon. “Under NO circumstances must they be given pork or pork liver or kidney”, demand the instructions. Potatoes were also strictly, if inexplicably, forbidden.

Neither were their sartorial needs neglected: when the cats travelled they took their brushes and beds with them and it was Wellcome’s "special desire" that the cats should be "well cared for and not teased or abused in any way".

As the 75th anniversary comes to a close it’s interesting to discover a heretofore overlooked aspect of Henry Wellcome’s personality and one that helps us relate to the great man on a more personal level. And, whilst you cat owners out there buying Hill’s Science Diet food can take note of Henry’s cat care legacy, the cat-sitters amongst us can gain some comfort from not having to face the terrible responsibility of minding Henry Wellcome’s pampered pets!

Images:
- Cutting from the Liverpool Echo, 1st August 1936 (from WF/M/GB/29/32/02)
- An example of HW’s holiday care instructions
- 'Pip' with one of her kittens

Authors: Jo Maddocks and Sharon Messenger

HIV/AIDS at 30: Spreading the Word

2011-12-01T10:37:00.000-08:00

To mark World AIDS Day (1 December) this year, BHIVA (the British HIV Association) held a World AIDS Day Event in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust on the theme HIV/AIDS at 30: Back to the Future. 2011 is the thirtieth anniversary of the first description of AIDS -- a milestone in the continuing epidemic that has claimed the lives of millions of people worldwide. While reflecting on the experiences and work of the past 30 years, eminent speakers reviewed today's challenges, and looked ahead to consider how the knowledge of the past will inform future strategies.

One aspect of the epidemic that was considered was the way in which health authorities, activists and charities around the world have tried to prevent its spread by publicity, including posters. The Wellcome Library now has over 3,200 AIDS posters from many countries. The exhibition Spreading the Word: AIDS Posters from Around the World is a selection of 24 posters chosen and interpreted by Dr Sarah Graham of Leicester University, and shown earlier this year at the New Walk Museum in Leicester.

The posters emphasize the range of graphic techniques adopted and the variety of ethnic and social groups at which they were directed. Spreading the Word was also on display today at the BHIVA/Wellcome Trust meeting (left) and was much appreciated by those attending.

Below: Wellcome Library no. 778362i

The latest AIDS poster to enter the Wellcome Library catalogue (right) must be one of the most allusive and discreet in the entire collection. It was published on World AIDS Day in 1994 by UNESCO in Paris, for Hispanic populations in which drug use was a source of transmission of the virus. Unlike the crashingly explicit posters (mostly from Germanic and Anglo-Saxon countries), it refers to open discussion within the family and use of counselling to help drug users, with no obvious indication to the casual passer-by that its end-purpose is to save them from contracting HIV through needle re-use.

Among the work publicised at the conference was a recent volume in the series Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, which was published in November 2011. It concerns the controversial National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL) which was launched in 1990. "A proposal that the UK Department of Health would fund it, after scientific scrutiny by the Economic and Social Research Council, was vetoed at government level – some say by Mrs Thatcher herself – on the grounds that this would be an unacceptable intrusion into private lives. This decision hit the headlines (first in The Sunday Times), as did the decision, some four weeks after the story broke, by the Wellcome Trust to step in and fund it instead. There is a similar story to be told of obstruction from the Bush White House,which forbade funding from the National Institutes for Health (NIH) for the American survey" (pp. xxi-xxii).

The phrase "some say by Mrs Thatcher herself" is backed up on p. 67 by a separate statement in the book (Appendix 3, pp. 66-68) by Dr Peter Williams, Director of the Wellcome Trust at the time, who received that account of events in a phone call from the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Donald Acheson. A note by Professor Virginia Berridge (p. 61) suggests that the reality behind the scenes may have been more complicated, but that at any rate Downing Street was happy to go along with the veto. More of the raw materials for this episode are set out in the volume, in the usual Witness Seminar manner: the spoken memories of people who were involved in the events at the time, provided with scholarly commentary and often with competing points of view. It makes compulsive reading. It is available in hard-copy from booksellers and Amazon, and available free of charge on the web as a PDF. [2]

[1] Overy C, Reynolds L A, Tansey E M. (eds) (2011) History of the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles. Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, vol. 41. London: Queen Mary, University of London. ISBN 978 090223 874 9

[2] http://www.history.qmul.ac.uk/research/modbiomed/wellcome_witnesses/index.html

History of Medicine Course at the Society of Apothecaries

2011-11-29T23:30:00.000-08:00

Details are now available of a 3-day introductory course in the History of Medicine, to be held at the Society of Apothecaries, London, on 1st-3rd February 2012.

The programme will cover Ancient, Classical, Eastern and Western medicine and the development of modern medicine from its early roots through to the present world. Speakers will include the Head of Wellcome Library, Dr Simon Chaplin.

More details are available from the Society of Apothecaries website, including the course programme (PDF) and booking details.

Image: Five surgeons participating in the amputation of a man's leg while another oversees them. Coloured aquatint by T. Rowlandson, 1793. (Wellcome Library no. 11636i).

Item of the Month, November 2011: Certificate of attendance at William Hunter's lectures

2011-11-29T23:00:00.000-08:00

One of the pivotal figures in eighteenth century medicine, William Hunter (born on May 23rd 1718 at Long Calderwood, Kilbride, Scotland) was an eminent doctor, surgeon, obstetrician and teacher of anatomy. Educated in Glasgow and Edinburgh, he arrived in London in 1741 and by 1746 had begun to give lectures on anatomy and dissection in Covent Garden. By 1756, Hunter’s esteem had risen to the extent that he became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians.

Hunter regularly published essays and other works and became one of the outstanding physicians of the day, being appointed as physician extraordinary to Queen Charlotte in 1762. He had a school of anatomy built in 1770 in Great Windmill Street, London with an amphitheatre and what became an internationally famous collection. He died in March 1783 of a stroke following a long battle with that most recognisable of 18th Century diseases, gout. Whilst key to understanding the growth of the ‘man-midwife’ during this period, William Hunter’s career arguably now stands in the shadows of his younger brother, John.

The Wellcome Library acquired this certificate in May 2011. It dates from the Spring of 1755 when Hunter was still lecturing in Covent Garden and confirms that one Richard Colmer (surgeon) had satisfactorily completed anatomy and surgery courses under Hunter’s tutelage. The certificate, signed by Hunter, is headed by an engraved portrait of a bust of William Harvey, M.D., classical pillars to either side.

William Harvey was in born in Folkestone, Kent in 1578, educated at Canterbury, Cambridge University and Padua before joining the College of Physicians in 1604 and working at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, being appointed as physician extraordinary to James I in 1618 then physician in ordinary to King Charles in 1631. As many readers of this blog will no doubt be aware, his 1628 publication, Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus presented his discovery of the workings of the heart and the circulation of the blood.

As suggested by the use of his image on this certificate, Hunter was a clear admirer of Harvey. We know that Hunter purchased and read keenly a number of works from Harvey's own Library. Hunter also authored a manuscript – now held in the collections of University of Glasgow – which illustrates this interest: Historical Anecdotes of Dr. William Harvey by Wm. Hunter, collected from family papers, etc., communicated to me by Councillor Eliab Harvey of Lincoln's Inn-fields, from the College book, from his own writings, from writers, from the Records in St. Bartholomew's etc [1].

This certificate now joins the other material held by the Wellcome Library on William Hunter, which includes his classic work of obstetrics, The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus Exhibited in Figures to other certificates of attendance and student notes made at his lectures. Indeed, our MS.2965 – which consists of notes made by William Brougham Monkhouse (later surgeon to H.M.S. Endeavour, 1768-1770 on Captain Cook's First Voyage) - dates from the same period as Colmer’s certificate of attendance at Covent Garden.

Whilst establishing a connection between Colmer and Monkhouse is outwith the purposes of this blog, let’s instead consider the connections between Hunter and Harvey and one man of medicine paying homage to another.

[1] See K Bryn Thomas, 'William Hunter on William Harvey', Medical History, 1965 July; 9(3): 279–286

Author: Stephen Lowther

Music of the blind

2011-11-28T02:46:00.000-08:00

Blind musicians in Paris. Detail of lithograph by Martin Sylvestre Baptiste, 1828. Wellcome Library no. 16519i

An article by Ingrid Sykes in the latest issue of Medical History considers the blind in Paris from an unusual angle: their sound. One might think that the blind would sound the same as the sighted, but no, not in Paris in the years before and after the French Revolution. [1]

There was in Paris a mediaeval institution called the Hospice des Quinze-Vingts, founded by King Louis IX in the thirteenth century. The Hospice was a self-governing community of 300 (quinze-vingts, or 15 x 20) blind and partially sighted men and women, their spouses and their children. The hospice's autonomy and antiquity, its often truculent and anarchic spirit, the fact that it was founded by a king and protected by a cardinal (the Grand Almoner, Cardinal de Rohan), all brought it into conflict with the new spirit of improvement and control in the French Enlightenment.

The character of the Hospice was expressed in its sound. The musicians of the Quinze-Vingts could be heard in Paris on the streets, at fairs, and at an all-night café. Fiddlers, woodwind performers and vocalists produced a raucous popular sound in which successive members would perform as soloists followed by a chorus in which all performers would join. The results were variously described as "depraved", "threatening", and even as "une scène si déshonorante pour l'espèce humaine" (a scene dishonourable to the human race). The politer sort would give them some small change in order to make them go away. The print above shows one of the Quinze-Vingts bands in their outlandish costume about to have a brawl on the street with a rival amputee musician.

Left, Valentin Haüy,with, far left, his brother, the crystallographer René-Just Haüy. Engraving by the brothers Boilly, Jules and Alphonse; Wellcome Library no. 545537i

A performance by a Quinze-Vingts band made a deep, though not favourable, impression on the reformer Valentin Haüy (1745-1822). It was after hearing a performance of the Quinze-Vingts, described by him as "cette atrocité", that Valentin Haüy decided to found a new institution for the blind, organized along more up-to-date lines. [2] This was the Institut des Jeunes Aveugles (Institute for Blind Youth), a typical Enlightenment institution. Secular, educational, managed by the sighted, run by the state and not by the church, the new organization's nature was signalled by its name: not a mediaeval Hospice but a structured Institut.

Aquatint with etching by Marlé, 1805. Wellcome Library no. 545557i

The character of the Institut was also signalled by its musical performances. Instead of the popular music of the Quinze-Vingts, the blind would be trained in the harmonic system of the composer Rameau: the new system was based on Cartesian mathematics and was published in a book ominously entitled Code de musique pratique (1761).

The Hospice had always existed and was there by Royal fiat. The Institut was an innovation and was there for a purpose. In the 1790s attempts were made by the revolutionaries to suppress the Hospice, invoking the inmates' licentious life-style and spirit of independence. Suppression was avoided, but, despite their disparate characters, the Hospice and the Institut were amalgamated in 1805, largely for financial reasons. The print above recording Pope Pius VII's visit in that year shows the more decorous appearance of the blind, their more harmonious means of music-making, and their more regimented organization under the Institut.

Sébastien Guillié (1780-1865). Left, as a young man: lithograph by C. Motte. Wellcome Library no. 3852i. His initial is given as J by mistake. Right, in later life: photograph by Giraudon, 1865. Wellcome Library no. 12835i

The merger did not last. In 1816 a new director, the despotic doctor Sébastien Guillié (above), determined to rid the Institut of its association with the Quinze-Vingts: he moved it away to a new site where, in the name of progress, he could carry out ophthalmological experiments on the blind children selected as his victims. [3] The Quinze-Vingts musicians continued their performances on the street for some years more, but could not defy change indefinitely: their building is now the site of a modern ophthalmological centre, the Centre Hospitalier National d'Ophtalmologie des Quinze-Vingts à Paris.

There is more to it than that, and more is provided in the article, which is available free online. One last point: the whole story would provide marvellous material for an opera. Richard Strauss and Clemens Krauss wrote Capriccio about different genres of drama and the relation between words and music. Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill included in The Threepenny Opera street songs and conflict with the police. Perhaps the authors of Les Misérables would like to produce a successor to those works, based on the struggles of the Quinze-Vingts? There would be a dramatic conflict between the two types of music, the protagonists on each side would provide plenty of character, and there would be scope for a variety of indoor and outdoor sets. And Victor Hugo himself could have a cameo role: according to the article, he was one of the champions of the Quinze-Vingts in their struggle against bureaucracy.

[1] Ingrid Sykes, 'Sounding the "Citizen–Patient": the politics of voice at the Hospice des Quinze-Vingts in post-Revolutionary Paris', Medical history, 2011 October; 55(4): 479–502. Available free online at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3199644/

[2] Pierre Henri, La vie et l'œuvre de Valentin Haüy, Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1984, pp 37-43 (find in the Wellcome Library here)

[3] Zina Weygand, The blind in French society from the Middle Ages to the century of Louis Braille, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009, pp. 261-267 (find in the Wellcome Library here)

The Giant Ape in the Library

2011-11-26T06:23:00.000-08:00

Quick – what’s the connection between a hundred-foot rampaging gorilla and the Wellcome Library?

Well, it wouldn’t be a common sight in the reading room, and although stepping out onto the Euston Road has its hazards they usually relate to heavy traffic and air quality, not colossal primates. There’s a thread linking the two, however, and it runs through our manuscript 7797.

On the face of it, MS.7797 is an unremarkable little piece of correspondence. The letterhead indicates that was written on an ocean liner – it’s actually dateable from external evidence to the early 1930s, the great heyday of Transatlantic liner travel, the ship being the Empress of Britain belonging to the Canadian Pacific Line. The recipient is addressed only as “Dear Doctor” - one presumes this is the ship’s medical officer. The writer is clearly suffering from problems in the throat – he thanks the doctor for a gargle he has been given, and asks about a nose and throat spray that he has used in the past when suffering from catarrh. His valet, he explains, forgot to pack both his normal supply of the medication, and the atomiser used to administer it, and he is trying to work out what it is that he should ask for to replace this.

So far so good, but where do the giant apes come in? Well, turning the page we see the writer’s identity, and it takes us into the reliably fascinating world of Edwardian pulp fiction: this is the thriller-writer Edgar Wallace (1875-1932). Wallace was born the illegitimate son of actors and had to make his own way in the world: drifting through various jobs in his teens and early twenties, he found his metier when he enlisted in the Army at the time of the Boer War, at the age of 25. Not that he was cut out to be a soldier: he disliked the infantry (he was physically lazy and completely unsuited to a life of square-bashing) and arranged a transfer to the Royal Army Medical Corps, then moved on from here to the Press Corps, where he found his niche. (Our RAMC/1707 documents him at this time of his life, performing at a military entertainment by reciting a Kipling poem.) From here on his career was built around the Fleet Street core skill of producing large amounts of readable text quickly and to deadline: journalism for the Daily Mail and similar middle-brow outlets, and a series of thrillers beginning in 1905 with The Four Just Men. Various apocryphal tales are related about the speed and fluency with which he produced his works: one of these has him dictating an entire novel over the course of a weekend. By the early 1920s, one of his publishers estimated that a quarter of the books read in England that year were by Wallace.

The ability to produce text quickly and in a way that reflected the public’s taste reliably soon had Wallace receiving calls from the film industry, and it is here that our letter comes in. In late 1931 Wallace sailed for the United States, engaged by RKO to work as a “script doctor”. This letter was written on the voyage across the Atlantic (the name of the ship enables us to tie it to this journey) - although he doesn't give us the exact date, we're in November 1931 and thus pretty much exactly eighty years ago. In Hollywood, prolific as ever, Wallace cranked out various scripts to order, including – in a pulp-fiction summit meeting – one for The Hound of the Baskervilles. Most notable, however, was the project on which he worked from December 1931 to February 1932, collaborating on “a gorilla picture” with producer Merian C. Cooper. This was to be King Kong, which of course remains to this day one of the most famous products of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

It was also the culmination of Wallace’s career, although he never lived to see it: by the time the film was released in 1933 he was dead. A lifetime of too much food, several packs of cigarettes every day, lots of sugary tea and as a little exercise as possible (the classic Fleet Street lifestyle, although to do Wallace justice he was a virtual teetotaller, omitting one of the classic journalist’s vices at least) caught up with him in late January 1932, when a doctor identified that he had been suffering from severe diabetes, untreated, for years. As if in response to the diagnosis, Wallace fell into a coma almost immediately and died in Beverly Hills on February 7th.

We see him in MS.7797, then, in the very last months of his life, but at a high point in his career: about to embark on the project that would outlive him and the reputation of his books. Wallace’s novels are still in print (at least, some of them – he wrote over 170 books and many require a search of second-hand bookshops) but although Sanders of the River and The Four Just Men have an honourable and secure place in the history of pulp, they don't have the massive public profile that they did in Wallace’s heyday. King Kong, however, lives on, and has been paid the ultimate Hollywood compliments of remakes and spinoffs. In a sense, having produced the script Wallace’s work was done, his place in history secure. It’s unlikely that the next remake will feature the Wellcome Library, with a screaming Fay Wray held aloft above 183 Euston Road. Still, we like to feel proud of our little foothold in this landmark of popular culture.

Images
MS.7797, front.
MS.7797, back, including signature (and annotation by a previous owner of the letter).
R.M.S. Empress of Britain, passing through the Saint Lawrence River near Quebec. Taken on July 10th in 1937, on the "Ile d'Orléans" by Horace Bélinge, now deceased. Made available under Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ ) through Wikimedia.
Original poster for King Kong, 1933, from Wikimedia, now out of copyright in the USA, EU and many other domains (see Wikimedia page for details of copyright status).

A big push for midwifery history

2011-11-18T03:00:00.000-08:00

The last few weeks have seen two major collaborative projects in the field of midwifery archives come to fruition, opening up exciting new avenues for research and exploration.

Thanks to the Wellcome Library’s own partnership with the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) and the generous support of the ICM for the cataloguing of its archive, this has now been completed and the material is fully accessible to researchers. Further details about this collection are available in a separate blog post.

On 4th November 2011 an event was also held at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) to mark the re-launch of the library and archive collections of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) which are now co-located with the RCOG’s own archive and heritage collections at the RCOG’s headquarters at 27 Sussex Place, London. As highlighted by several speakers at the launch, anyone with even a passing awareness of the history of maternity care in this country will realise that the relationship between the two sets of professionals represented by these bodies has not always run smoothly and that childbirth has always been a highly-contested area, medically, socially, culturally and historiographically. This makes it all the more to be applauded that the RCM and the RCOG have shown the necessary vision to work together to secure a future for their heritage collections. We hope that some of our own users will support the venture by taking a pleasant stroll across Regent’s Park to consult them.

To give you a flavour, an outline catalogue of the RCM archive is now available on-line. There are organisational records going back to the foundation in 1881 of the Matron’s Aid Society. In addition, uniforms, badges, instruments and other objects, photographs, posters and the papers of individual midwives such as case registers, notebooks, and diaries give an insight into the work and experiences of midwives during the 20th century. Printed collections include a complete set of Nursing Notes and Midwives Chronicle. There are obvious synergies with the material held in the Wellcome Library, such as the papers of Rosalind Paget, who was heavily involved with the then Midwives Institute, and which include material relating to the running of the journal and the company Nursing Notes Ltd.

The RCM heritage collections can now be consulted alongside those of the RCOG which include its own institutional records, the personal papers of obstetricians and gynaecologists, and records of related organisations such as the Women's Visiting Gynaecological Club and the Royal Maternity Charity. The College also houses a collection of obstetric, midwifery, surgical and gynaecological instruments and artefacts and around 2000 rare books, including multiple editions of all the major works in the area, such as the obstetric atlases of Smellie and Hunter, and runs of clinical reports from maternity hospitals.

We have already noticed a growing interest in the history of midwifery, including from our friends at de partu, and hope that access to these major collections will give a further impetus to this trend.

Author: Jenny Haynes

Images:
- Midwife teaching at antenatal class c1940 (RCM/PH7/2)
- Midwife providing instruction in breastfeeding c1940 Archive Reference (RCM/PH7/2)
Both from the RCM Archive held at the RCOG. Copyright of the Royal College of Midwives.

Please DO eat in the library

2011-11-17T06:32:00.000-08:00

I know, shocking! But for one weekend only, lucky guests at the Wellcome Collection’s Feast to Cure Melancholy on Friday 11 and Saturday 12 November were invited to break the rules and dine in the library’s Reading Room as part of an edible experiment exploring 17th-century beliefs about the four humours.

Each guest spent the evening in the guise of a new character, from melancholic Prudence (a student suffering from anxiousness due living in city away from her rural family, and uncomfortable with the fast pace of city life) to choleric Rowland (a quick tempered City worker, in a pressured environment on a high salary, finding it difficult to wind down after work).

On hand to offer advice were a Physician, Apothecary and Housewife, each competing with the other to provide the most effective and affordable cures for guests’ physical and psychological humoral imbalances.

But if snail scum and fox’s lungs cures didn’t appeal, the edible remedies created by food artists Blanch & Shock were a delight for both the eye and the palate. How could melancholic Prudence not be put in a better mood by the sanguine treat of wild mallard breast and Jerusalem artichoke?

And now the Reading Room is once again a place of peaceful, food-free study, I can’t help wondering, did it all really happen?

Posted on behalf of Helen

Image copyright Mike Massaro

Flo-Motion: Nightingale in Wellcome Sound and Vision

2011-11-15T08:00:00.000-08:00

Next Thursday (24th November), Wellcome Library Research Officer Ross MacFarlane will be giving a talk at the Florence Nightingale Museum. Flo-Motion: Nightingale in Wellcome Sound and Vision will explore audio visual material from the Library's collections which have a connection to the life and legacy of Florence Nightingale.

From the starting point of a recording of Nightingale's voice, the talk will examine the fascinating origins of this historic audio recording and reveal the curious connection between Nightingale, Henry Wellcome and the dawn of television. The talk will also feature films showing the treatment of injured soldiers from both World Wars and Public Health films from the 1940s.

The talk will be followed by a free glass of wine and an opportunity to view the museum. More details, including booking information, is available from the Florence Nightingale Museum.

The Mystery Correspondents

2011-11-14T01:00:00.000-08:00

Arthur Balfour, politician; Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate; Sir James Crichton Browne, physician and psychologist…

In 2002, the Wellcome Library’s online catalogue of archives and manuscripts went live, replacing various large printed manuscript catalogues and several hundred typed lists of archives. Putting all this data online involved a campaign of retroconversion, the majority as part of a dedicated project and the remainder, as has been noted here before, undertaken over succeeding years by the archives department in odd snatches of time (typically, something to be done on a quiet Saturday morning). Almost all catalogues are now converted, with the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists (SA/CSP) the only major collection still to appear on line in full (this one is on the stocks and approximately two-thirds converted).

Andrew Carnegie, manufacturer and philanthropist; Austen Chamberlain and Neville Chamberlain, politicians; Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury…

Converting a catalogue is (relatively) simple, although the archivist faced with a 1980s word-processed document whose page-layout is generated entirely through the use of tab-stops might snort derisively at that claim! A more difficult issue is how to capture the information that was often held in indices, some many pages long, at the end of the catalogue. Turning a line in a catalogue that tells one that file PP/BAR/C/234 is a file of correspondence from people with surnames A-H, covering the following dates, into a database record, is fairly quick. But how to capture and store usefully the information held in an index of correspondents made up of lines like this one:

Bridges (Robert Seymour), poet. Letters, 1900-29 and n.d. C/234, 316, 367, 391, 502, 1089
Browne (George Buckston), surgeon; Kt (1932). Letters, 1901, 1925. C/396; M/3, f. 17v.

Well, you could simply cut and paste the index into the Notes field at the collection’s top-level record, and get the desired result instantly. For some small collections with short indices this is what we have done. For the very long index, however – forty, fifty, one hundred pages long – this is obviously unsuitable: no-one is prepared to hold the scroll-down button for minutes at a time to reach the desired name. (Indeed, much thinking on web-design suggests that asking readers to scroll down at all loses up to a third of one’s audience.)

In an ideal world, Robert Bridges’ and George Buckston Browne’s names would of course appear on the catalogue records for each of the eight files listed in the sample line. To undertake this, however, would mean embarking on a lengthy process of handcrafting, picking each line apart entry by entry: just think of the two lines above, which would require one to visit and edit eight separate database records, and multiply that by hundreds. Readers would wait years for the information to be made available on that basis. What is needed is something that breaks up the index in at least a partly granular fashion, whilst being relatively quick and, ideally, something that can be done through routine, mechanical processes.

In recent years we have experimented with various processes that take word-processed indices and break them up using search-and-replace commands, splitting data in a way that enables them to be put in a spread-sheet and sorted before returning to word-processed form. We will spare you the details! – the upshot, however, is that with the expenditure of only a little time, many pages of index can at least be broken up into the data that relates to individual sections of the catalogue, thus enabling readers to make a better judgement of which letters relating to an individual are relevant, and which are not. In collections of family papers, in which each section may correspond to a family member, this is particularly useful, as it may be a particular family member, and him/her alone, whose correspondence is of interest. With some thought about the way the data in the original catalogue is shaped, this process can be done in hours or days rather than the months required to handcraft records for individual files: the work of the proverbial quiet Saturday, rather than a long-running process.

This process has been applied to various collections in the past, most notably the Hodgkin family papers (PP/HO). The latest collection to receive this treatment is the papers of Sir Thomas Barlow (PP/BAR), Royal physician, and his family. The Barlow papers span almost a century (Barlow lived a long life, from 1845 to 1945, and the collection continues with the papers of his children), and a large proportion is correspondence, covering a wide range of activities: not merely medicine, but also the arts, philanthropy and personal family letters – the last including letters from his son Basil from hospital after being wounded on the Western Front, wounds from which eventually he died. The range of correspondents, then, is a wide one. All the very varied names set at intervals into this article, in italics, are drawn from the Barlow catalogue’s index. The Barlow catalogue has been available on the online catalogue for some years now, but it is probably safe to say that the inclusion now of the original cataloguer’s hard work indexing the papers virtually doubles the value of the collection to the researcher. The reader is invited to look at the section-level records for the collection (go to the “tree” of the collection here and click the letter next to any of the entries to get into detailed section-level records) or simply to search for a name of their choice to see if it is in there (go to http://archives.wellcome.ac.uk, put the surname into the Any Text box and put PP/BAR into the Reference box). There will be the names listed above in italics and many, many more, including

King Edward VII, Field-Marshal Douglas Haig, Myra Hess DBE, pianist famous for morale-boosting free concerts during World War II…and more…

Image: Sir Thomas Barlow, undated caricature by Spy from Vanity Fair (in Wellcome Library Iconographic Collections, visible at Wellcome Images as image L0008407)

Don’t search our catalogues...

2011-11-11T08:39:00.000-08:00

…search your browser!

Ever wondered if the Wellcome Library held something butcouldn’t really be bothered to check? Ever wanted to have our search just alittle more within your reach?

The Chrome browser’s omniboxgives you that help at your fingertips.

We’ve had information about how to add search engines toyour Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers for a while. This is now updatedwith the instructionsfor adding a Wellcome Library search to Chrome’s omnibox.

It only takes a minute to set up, and will let you searchour catalogues from your workspace instead of having to come to ours.

Armistice Day

2011-11-11T01:32:00.000-08:00

From the papers of papers of Sir Matthew Fell (1872-1959), (RAMC/364), Wireless Press number 58 giving news of the armistice.

The International Confederation of Midwives

2011-11-10T06:52:00.000-08:00

The cataloguing of the records of the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) is now completed and the catalogue is available on-line at the Wellcome Library, reference SA/ICM. The Library is extremely grateful to the International Confederation of Midwives for funding a temporary post to catalogue this extensive collection.

The idea for an international midwives’ organisation started in Belgium in 1919, when many national midwifery associations combined to form an International Midwives Union, which held its first International Congress in 1922 – at that time only representing European countries. Further meetings were held in 1932, 1934, 1936 and 1938; despite the loss of organisational records during the War, reports from these Congresses survive, and can be found in SA/ICM/R/1, Communications of the International Midwives Union. They offer an interesting insight into the issues facing midwives in the context of the 1930s: increasing mass unemployment, urban and rural poverty and poor nutrition, the rise of fascism and latterly, impending war. The 1936 Congress, for instance, was held in Berlin, and hosted and attended by the German government. While the Fuhrer was not able to personally attend, Hitler sent messages and various government ministers gave speeches exhorting the Congress to address the primary issue – in the government’s eyes – of the falling birth rate, and of the need for all countries represented to take urgent action and “promote motherhood”. The issue reporting this Congress includes a rather chilling fold-out photograph taken of the proceedings, showing fully uniformed SS and other Nazi government ministers addressing the Congress, made up of European midwives from Belgium, The Netherlands, France, and Great Britain. The tension created by the drive to war is further reflected in the records of the 1938 Congress in Paris, which concludes with a final resolution calling on Europe’s governments to “make peace, not war”. The next Congress, planned for 1941, did not take place because of the outbreak of war, and subsequently all records of the organisation from 1922, held in Belgium, were lost.

Based in France after the Second World War, the International Midwives’ Union agreed in 1953 that the first ‘World Congress’ of midwives should take place in London in 1954, the culmination of a drive by leading British and European midwives to re-start the international organisation after the upheaval of WW2. At this Congress the ICM adopted its new title and constitution, including a Triennial International Congress and administrative cycle. The ICM Secretariat was based at the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) headquarters in London. The RCM President, Miss Nora Deane, was elected first ICM President and Miss Marjorie Bayes elected Executive Secretary, a post she held until 1975. English, French and Spanish were now the official languages of the Confederation, having been English, French and German prior to the War. Membership of the ICM is of national midwifery associations, not individual practitioners. The RCM is the UK member association.

Records of the 1954 Congress (extensively covered in the collection with reports and photographs of proceedings found in SA/ICM/R and SA/ICM/U respectively) demonstrate the organisational success in ensuring midwives from around the world attended, and the real enthusiasm and drive of the founder members, many senior and renowned midwives in their respective countries, for promoting the role of the midwife as central to improving the standard of maternal and child health globally. Their approach reflected a wider international consensus, in the context of post-war political and economic recovery, of the need to improve maternal mortality and morbidity in resource-poor and developing countries, and to survey the current state of national midwifery training, status and practise in order to develop specific, locally applicable strategies. As the only international midwifery organisation affiliated to the United Nations (UN) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), the ICM played a leading role in international collaborative efforts to improve maternal and child health (MCH) over the following 25 years, and much of the collection relates to these activities.

In 1961, a Joint Study Group (JSG) was formed by the ICM and the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO); the JSG was based at the ICM Secretariat, and Marjorie Bayes, ICM Executive Secretary, acted as Secretary (SA/ICM/M). Its first task was to carry out a 4 year international survey of midwifery and maternal health, the first of its kind, published in 1966 as Maternity Care in the World, providing information and data on 174 countries covering approximately 75% of the world’s population. This survey, later updated in a second edition published in 1976, provided the basis for the JSG’s aims and objectives: to promote family planning (FP) as an integral part of the midwife’s role; the establishment of common training requirements for a minimum international standard and uniformity of licensure regulations for midwives; and later, addressing the role of untrained birth attendants. The JSG developed a programme of Regional workshops, seminars and training for midwives, but was continually hampered by lack of funding; in 1972, its work was supported by a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which established a new ICM/USAID Project enabling the continuation, in close collaboration with FIGO, of the Regional workshop programme (SA/ICM/L).

The ICM records from this period offer a wealth of material relating to country-specific population, health, and economic data, maternal and child health, and the status and practice of midwives and other health care providers, e.g. Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs); and the numerous Workshops and projects organised and/or sponsored by the ICM, including post-project reports and evaluation. The material also reflects the geo-political shape of the world at this time (e.g. the Cold War, prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union), and the political and cultural context in which international MCH programmes, and specifically ICM staff and local midwife organisers, worked to deliver projects and training across countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America (SA/ICM/K, SA/ICM/L, SA/ICM/M). The promotion and provision of family planning in some Latin American countries, for instance, was frequently subject to and in conflict with national health policies concerned with falling birth rates and the promotion of the family, as well as the influence of the Catholic Church on reproductive health legislation. Regional workshops in Africa, often years in planning, could be severely disrupted by local political conflict, or poor communication and travel infrastructure.

The USAID grant was terminated in 1980, and the ICM/FIGO JSG dissolved in 1982, with the creation of a Liaison Group to link the activities of FIGO standing committees with relevant international organisations in the field of MCH. Having adopted the regional structure of the WHO, with representatives at the regional offices in New York, Geneva, Vienna, Manila and Brazzaville, the ICM continued its collaborative work to achieve common goals in reducing maternal mortality, now the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age in developing countries, and to lobby for specific midwife representation at World Health forums and assemblies. The Safe Motherhood Initiative (SMI) launched by the WHO in 1987 built on the work carried out in the 1970s and early 1980s, and became a major focus of ICM cooperation with WHO/UNICEF. The ICM immediately adopted and worked to implement the 1987 WHO Action Statement on Safe Motherhood in support of its programme to improve obstetric care and outcomes for women, and to prevent the huge burden of unwanted pregnancies by increasing access to family planning (SA/ICM/P/1). The global challenge to reduce the MMR by 50% by 2015 was formalised as one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in 2000, and continues to frame ICM policy and activities.

Another key theme during the 1980s and 1990s was the emerging HIV pandemic and its devastating impact on reproductive health in countries with already high maternal mortality, with consequences for midwifery education, training and practice. Material relating to HIV/AIDS can be found in SA/ICM/K, and SA/ICM/P/1 and SA/ICM/P/2.

The ICM communicates with its member associations via a Newsletter (SA/ICM/S), and regular Letters to Members, which include a summary and update of ICM activities, the Triennial Congress and election of Executive Committee, key policy initiatives, membership information, Regional reports. The membership records and correspondence (SA/ICM/G and SA/ICM/H) include fascinating information about local infrastructure, regulation, training, remuneration and status of midwives in respective countries, and also demonstrate the contrast between conditions in developed and developing countries for midwives attempting to organise and participate in professional activities.

The history and records of the Confederation are particularly relevant today: at time of writing, UN reports highlight the challenges of meeting the MDG target to reduce maternal mortality, in the context of the global population increase and failure to significantly reduce fertility rates, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The ICM remains at the forefront of international policy development to influence and promote midwifery at global and national levels, and to pro-actively support international strategies to improve maternal and child health, for the achievement of ‘Safe Motherhood’ for all women.

The ICM held its 29th Triennial Congress this year in June, in Durban, South Africa. For post-Congress reports, and for more information about current activities, see their website: http://www.internationalmidwives.org/.

Author: Deborah Holland, ICM Project Archivist

(We may add as a footnote that there have also been recent additions to our existing catalogue of the papers of the influential worker for global MCH, Cicely Williams (1893-1992)).

Image: midwives at the 1954 ICM founding congress (from the Nursing Times; image copyright The Nursing Times Limited).

Approaching Sikandra

2011-11-08T03:22:00.000-08:00

Everyone who visits Agra in Uttar Pradesh visits the Taj Mahal, the monument which was built from 1632 onwards by the sorrowful Shah Jahan (1592-1666), fifth Mughal emperor, in memory of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, after her death in childbirth.

Not everyone visits nearby Sikandra. Here, those who do will find the magnificent earlier mausoleum of Akbar (1542-1605), the mighty third Mughal emperor, conqueror of northern India, patron of arts and sciences, and grandfather of Shah Jahan. [1] The mausoleum (above) was planned by Akbar himself and built by his son Jahangir (1569-1627) between 1605 and 1613. At Sikandra, the future builder of the Taj Mahal could therefore contemplate the mausoleum of his grandfather, built by his father. One might suppose that the earlier mausoleum would have influenced the later.

The historically-aware visitor would therefore want to view the Taj Mahal in the perspective of Sikandra, inter alia and vice versa. And many people have done so. The views of some of them on the Taj will be the subject of another posting on this blog. The present posting, however, concerns some of the many paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and written accounts of Sikandra that have found their way into historic British collections such as the India Office Library in the British Library, the British Museum, the Wellcome Library and no doubt others. This posting reviews some of the drawings and prints of Sikandra in the Wellcome Library, a repository of (among other things) records of sepulchralia of all kinds, and of Indian history.

Coloured soft-ground etching with watercolour by William Hodges, 1788.
Wellcome Library no. 26689i

We start on the approach road, in the company of William Hodges (1744-1797). Under the patronage of Warren Hastings, Hodges had sketched Sikandra on the spot in the early 1780s, and produced this print in 1788 --a year in which India was in the news in England because Burke, Fox and Sheridan were railing against Hastings at the opening of the latter’s trial in Westminster. The road at Sikandra as seen by Hodges is a broad dirt-track with a couple of donkeys on it, surrounded on either side with dilapidated minor tombs scattered in a park. More inviting than the immediate surroundings is the prospect of fine buildings glimpsed through the trees on the far right.

Coloured etching and aquatint by Thomas Daniell, 1795.
Wellcome Library no. 27432i

We next find ourselves tranported not only to the end of the road but also forwards seven years to the year 1795, when this aquatint by Thomas Daniell was published (above). It shows the leftmost of those buildings glimpsed through the trees: it is one of the gateways leading to the the mausoleum of Akbar. Though only a gateway, it is a grand building of sandstone topped with four white marble minarets. Not so long previously, vandalistic snipers have had some sport shooting the tops clean off those minarets. In the clearing in front of the gateway, a military camp is still in residence: it is a British one, to which the artist Thomas Daniell is attached.

In the early nineteenth century Indian artists also produced views of the building, presumably for purchase in the main by western visitors. These are commonly called Company drawings (after the East India Company), and those in the Wellcome Library are characteristic examples. One watercolour (left: Wellcome Library no. 25209i is small and relatively simplified, though attractive enough to its previous owner to be put into a gold frame.

However, the painter of a larger one (39 x 56.3 cm., below Wellcome Library no. 579856i), spares no effort to do justice to the elaborate flower and leaf motifs realized in pietra dura around the central doorway.

A photograph taken in 2008 (right) shows that the tops of the minarets have been restored. By comparison with the painting above, the photograph vindicates the great care taken by the watercolour artist. The minarets themselves may be called the grandfathers of those which stand at the four corners of the Taj Mahal.

Soft-ground etching by William Hodges. Wellcome Library no. 26823i

The gateway at Sikandra leads to a long walkway at the end of which is the mausoleum of Akbar the Great. Starting again with Hodges in 1788 (above), he shows the building as being obscured by vegetation. There seems to be no picture of the mausoleum by Daniell, but there are plenty of Company drawings by Indian artists, made slightly later and showing the building (actually or ideally) cleared of trees and bushes, perhaps in order to show it as they imagined it to be at the time of Akbar's interment.

Wellcome Library no. 579159i

This view (above), like three others in the Wellcome Library, shows an interplay between a white marble colonnade on the ground floor and three sandstone terraces above adorned at the corners with domes of the Rajasthan type (chhatris).

In current photographs of the building, that interplay no longer exists: the ground floor arcade seems to be painted red. All however show the topmost terrace as of crisply carved white marble, marking by its filigree craftsmanship and costly materials the cenotaph of Akbar, high above his actual tomb directly below in the crypt.

The Company paintings (such as, left: Wellcome Library no 25226i) differ among themselves in showing the setting of the building in varying perspectives in relation to its surrounding char bagh or Persian pleasure garden: the setting provides cooling channels for running water, gardens and pools.

The effect of the setting is to emphasize that even the humblest of the living can here enjoy the created world more than Akbar, for all his power, now that he is dead. One small but highly detailed watercolour (right: Wellcome Library no. 578936i) is taken from a viewpoint so close to the central runnel that the base of the first story is no longer visible, apparently as a gesture to western artistic conventions.

Finally, there is a complete outlier (left: Wellcome Library 575709i) in which the building is condensed so that the long first-storey terrace becomes the same width as the second storey. An inadvertent slighting of His Imperial Majesty! As we do not need to rely on this watercolour alone, we can afford to sympathize with the artist's mistake. The noble resting place of the mighty Akbar, author of this and other admirable buildings, remains for the recreation and inspiration of those lucky enough to visit it.

[1] Irfan Habib (ed.), Akbar and his India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997 (find in the Wellcome Library here)

Further reading
Catherine B. Asher, Architecture of Mughal India, Cambridge 1992 (The New Cambridge history of India, part I, vol. 4), pp. 105-111 (find in the Wellcome Library here )

Mildred Archer, Early views of India: the picturesque journeys of Thomas and William Daniell, 1786-1794, London: Thames and Hudson, 1980 (find in the Wellcome Library here)

Ernest Binfield Havell, A handbook to Agra and the Taj, Sikandra, Fatehpur-Sikri and the neighbourhood, London 1912

Thanks to the following for making their photographs available on Flickr.
Top: by Takehiko Ono at http://www.flickr.com/photos/onopko/529915275
Gateway: by Koshyk at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kkoshy/2252005330.
Detail of mausoleum by Saad.Akhtar at http://www.flickr.com/photos/saad/47375523.
Other images: Wellcome Library.

Brain Season on Radio 4

2011-11-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

This week sees the beginning of BBC Radio 4's Brain Season.

The centrepiece of the season will be a new 10-part series, A History of the Brain, presented by Dr Geoff Bunn. The series airs at 1.45pm, Monday to Friday, for the next two weeks with an omnibus edition on Friday evenings at 9pm. The series will also be available as a podcast. Audio clips of the series are also available on the Radio 4 website, accompanied by an array of historical imagery from our picture libray, Wellcome Images.

Also airing today at 8pm will be The Lobotomists, which explores the controversial history of the lobotomy. As part of the research for the programme, Dr Lesley Hall, Senior Archivist, Wellcome Library, spoke to the makers of the documentary about the Watts-Freeman lobotomy instruments we hold in our collections (the image above shows Dr Hall brandishing one of these tools).

The Lobotomists, A History of the Brain and the rest of the Brain Season will available for listeners in the UK to listen to after broadcast through the BBC iPlayer, for the next seven days. Listeners outwith these shores are able to listen live through the Radio 4 website.

Wellcome Library Insight - From Blue Beads to Hair Sandwiches: Edward Lovett's Folklore Collection

2011-11-07T00:41:00.000-08:00

This week's free Wellcome Library Insight explores the figure of Folkore collector Edward Lovett, whose collection lies at the heart of the current Wellcome Collection exhibition Charmed Life.

Illustrated by personal correspondence held in our archives, the session will seek to explore Lovett's motivations and methods and offer an overview of the huge array of amulets, charms and talismans collected by him during the early years of the 20th Century (the themes of the session were also discussed in a recent article on the Daily Telegraph website).

The event takes place this Thursday (10th November) between 3 and 4pm. Tickets are available from 1.30pm on the day. Please see the Wellcome Collection website for more details.

Image: Sketch made by Edward Lovett, showing districts of London where Lovett had collected blue amulet necklaces, which were thought to protect the wearer from illness (WA/HMM/CO/Ear/532).

Papers of the Eugenics Society to be Digitised

2011-11-05T03:00:00.000-07:00

We are delighted to announce that with the kind permission of the Galton Institute, and as part of our programme to create a Wellcome Digital Library, we will be digitising the papers of one of our most popular archive collections; the papers of the Eugenics Society. The collection will be digitised in full and made freely available online, subject to Data Protection and privacy issues as set out in our access policy (pdf). These images will enable readers to access large amounts of archive material remotely from anywhere in the world.

In order to develop this world-class digital resource access to the collection will be affected. The collection will be digitised in batches between 21st November 2011 and 26th September 2012. Please see the archives digitisation schedule for full details. We regret that we are unable to make any exceptions to allow individual readers access to material, and encourage readers to contact the Archives and Manuscripts team beforehand at archs+mss@wellcome.ac.uk or telephone +44 (0)20 7611 8899 to ensure that material will be available for consultation. Microfilm copies of material in the Eugenics Society collection will not be affected and will remain available for consultation. Access to this collection whilst it is being digitised will continue to be granted only once prior written permission from the Galton Institute has been obtained.

The creation of the Wellcome Digital Library is due to be completed in late 2012. Other Library collections included in this phase of the project are the substantial Francis Crick archive, the papers of Fred Sanger, Arthur Ernest Mourant, the Medical Research Council Blood Group Unit, Honor Fell, and Carlos Paton Blacker. The aim is to provide a documentary record of modern genetics, not only from a scientific perspective, but also from political, economic, technological, social, cultural and personal viewpoints. It will throw open the doors of the Wellcome Library and its unique collections to a worldwide audience, and provide a global resource for the study of the history of medicine and modern bioscience.

Image credit: Photograph of Eugenics Society stand at the Exhibition of Health and Housing, c.1935. Reproduced from the Eugenics Society collection (SA/EUG/G.40) with the kind permission of the Galton Institute.

Author: Toni Hardy

The first antiques roadshow?

2011-11-02T10:47:00.000-07:00

Today has seen the BBC celebrate 75 years since the launch of the world's first regular television service.

Given their current popularity, it's no surprise that the daytime schedules of both BBC1 and BBC2 have today (as on most other days) included a number of antiques shows - Bargain Hunt, Flog It! and Celebrity Antiques Roadtrip.

However, the origin of such BBC antiques shows - and let's not forget the long-running Antiques Roadshow, nor it's forerunner Going for a Song - may have an intriguing Wellcome connection...

The Wellcome Library holds a series of newspaper cuttings, collated by the Wellcome pharmaceutical business after its co-founder Sir Henry Wellcome's death in 1936. These cuttings not only include an array of obituaries from across the globe, but newspaper reports from the next few years on the establishment of the Wellcome Trust and the early sales of objects no longer deemed appropriate to be part of Wellcome's collection.

One such cutting dates from the 13th February and is from the Sunday Observer. "Television Pre-View of Auction - Model Ship Collection", is its title and the article is worth quoting in full:

"For the first time an important auction sale has had a television pre-view.

All three television programmes from Alexander Palace on Thursday included a selection of the 200 ship models collected by the late Sir Henry Wellcome. Tomorrow they will be offered for sale by auction at Alford House, Princes Gate, Knightsbridge.

While Mr M. B. Roberts explained their oddities, models of ships floated down the centuries and across the television screen. There was an Egyptian barge wanting but a thumb-sized Anthony and Cleopatra for perfection. Under the sun-smitten canopy of a Burmese state barge smooth-bronzed royalty sat.

A Chinese houseboat had the carved elaboration that rich merchants seek, but a galleon in silver had less of the spicy East about her. Her longest voyage had been from table-end to table-end, her hull a port decanter.

More curious was the paper filigree boat of no recognisable design, but of most fragile build. An ostrich egg-shell made her hull, hens' eggs her row-boats. Strange me and stranger fishes tramped her decks and frolicked in her little pot of ocean.

Lastly, there were the wooden walls of England reduced to a foreman's length - a stout original dockyard model of a 64-gun late eighteenth century man-o'-war. She had a dignity that made Mr Roberts wish for her a home in some national museum.

Whilst considering when a day's schedule on the BBC could feature only three programmes, let's also ponder whether this was the start of the BBC's auction and antiques broadcasting.

It should also be said that this isn't the only connection between the early days of television and Sir Henry Wellcome - there's a more direct link but it's one we'll save for a future date. Keep watching this space...

Image: Alexandra Palace (Credit: BBC)

Motherhood and apple pie

2011-11-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

Some great graphic novels and comics have come into the library recently on the themes of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood.

Kate Brown’s graphic novel Fish+Chocolate provides three short stories around the theme of motherhood. The third of these, Matryoshka is the most powerful. With beautiful, intense and at times brutal imagery, it is the heart-rending account of a woman struggling to cope with the aftermath of miscarriage. It’s in no way a medical account, but the moving depictions of an alienating encounter with a well-meaning workmate, devastating recollections and hallucinations of loss and grief go some way towards helping an outsider (health professional or otherwise) empathise with the woman’s experience. Here's a stunning example of how graphic art might contribute to narrative medicine. You can see samples of the artwork in a review of all three of the stories at Forbidden Planet.

Entirely different in tone is Francesca Cassavetti’s The Most Natural Thing in the World, a deceptively light-hearted and charming take on a young couple’s journey from deciding to have a baby, trying to get pregnant, pregnancy, child-birth, through to coping with the new baby. It’s deceptive because, despite the comic (pun intended) tone, it doesn’t shy away from the emotional roller-coaster (for both parents) of pregnancy and childbirth, yet still manages not to be so worthy that it alienates non-parents or so scary as to terrify prospective new parents. Even without the great drawing, that’s quite an achievement.

Offering the male perspective on childbirth is the comic Miracleman (issue No. 9), with an episode entitled “Scenes from the nativity”. Miracleman (known as Marvelman in the UK version) is a superhero who was created by a scientist as a result of secret experiments with alien DNA. In this episode Miracleman rescues his heavily pregnant wife from an attack and flies her to an isolated location where he delivers their baby.

During the birth it is the father’s comments and thoughts that are to the fore as he delivers the baby and tries to reassure the mother: “yes… I can see the fontanelle and it doesn’t feel as if the cord’s tangled. Just keep breathing.” As the baby is delivered, he thinks about the scientist who created him in a laboratory: “Did it feel like this when you took the first cell scrapings? Did it feel like this as you watched it divide and replicate as you hauled me dripping from the tank?”. He concludes that for all the trauma, the natural birth of his own child is an act of redemption: “For here is blood. Here is violence… redeemed by love, by this pure act of creation.”

It has been suggested that the poignant quality of the scenes was a result of the writer Alan Moore’s experience of the birth of his own child. This issue of the comic gained some notoriety for the very explicit nature of the birth scenes, which, along with the use of some clinical language certainly suggest an eye witness account of childbirth. The significance of the Nativity is that the baby goes on to become the first naturally born superhero.

From the sublime to the seemingly ridiculous in four easy steps. My final offering is Al’s Baby, which was first published as a comic in serial form in 2000AD with Judge Dredd, but is now available as a graphic novel of the complete story. This is another very male view of pregnancy and motherhood, but with a twist. The violent gangster Al Bestardi, known as Al the Beast, is a hitman for mafia boss Don Luigi, and also married to his daughter, Velma. Al tells Velma that The Don has issued him with an ultimatum: either provide him with a grandson or “he’s gonna fit me up wit’ a pair a’ concrete overshoes!” Unfortunately for Al, Velma’s not willing to comply, she points to a newspaper headline that reads “Florida man gives birth” and suggests that Al could do it himself. At his wit’s end, Al goes for a consultation, where the doctor (held at gunpoint) unsurprisingly agrees to ‘remove a section of your intestine’ to make room for the pregnancy.
Once pregnant, Al goes through all the things involved in pregnancy, he gives up smoking his ‘gangster’ cigars, endures morning sickness, and goes for a scan: “nobody puts the grease on me Lady” he warns the nurse giving the scan. He is advised throughout his pregnancy, not by a recent mother, but by his henchman who reassures him that he has delivered three of his own. None of this stops him going about his hitman duties for Don Luigi. He practises changing diapers, feeding and bathing as a form of humiliation on one of his victims.

The birth itself couldn’t be more different from the naturalistic ‘nativity’ in Miracleman. In a modern operating theatre surrounded by a full medical team, he prepares for a caesarean section. Unfortunately the operation is interrupted by a deranged enemy who cries “Here comes your caesarean” as he hurls an axe and various surgical instruments at the prone figure of Al. In a whirlwind of sharp objects, blood and violence, the attacker is finally brought down by Velma, Al’s wife, and the caesarean proceeds as planned, culminating in the birth of their son. The issue ends with a charming family portrait of Al the Beast, Velma, and Don Luigi and his new grandson, festooned with the words “He’s one mean mother!”

A Merman comes ashore in Bromley

2011-11-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

This Saturday (5th November), Wellcome Library Research Officer Ross MacFarlane will join Paolo Viscardi, one of the Horniman Museum's Natural History Curators, at the Bromley Musuem, Orpington, Kent, on "a voyage of discovery across oceans, through time and into the realm of the merman".

The free event, which begins at 11.30am, ties in with the temporary loan of the merman to the Bromley Museum from the Horniman. Before entering the Horniman's collections, the Merman was previously owned by the Wellcome, being purchased for Henry Wellcome in 1912.

For those wishing to join Paolo and Ross on their journey into the cultures and contexts of mermen and mermaids, more details on the event are available from the website of the Horniman Museum.

Image: Merman, Horniman Museum. Photograph by Heini Scneebelli.

The Smithfield Ghost

2011-10-31T07:30:00.000-07:00

"The Smithfield Ghost...[who] scared even the stalwart butchers of that neighbourhood in the 17th century, is probably now forgotten".

So wrote the author of The Mystery and Lore of Apparitions, a work from 1930 whose subtitle fulsomely describes its content as containing "some account of ghosts, spectres, phantoms and boggarts in early times".

The Smithfield Ghost certainly still appears to be on of the capital's lesser-known spirits, although his actions as described in The mystery and lore of apparitions deserve deserve recapping, particularly on Halloween.

As related in the book, the ghost apparently took the shape of a lawyer called Mallet - who was well-known in the area - and behaved in a mischevious way, amusing himself by pulling joints of meat off the butcher's stalls at Smithfield as he passed along them.

And even though the Smithfield Ghost was said to keep regular hours - appearing every Saturday evening between the hours of nine and midnight - the butchers couldn't catch him: "Many have ventured", states a contemporary account, "to strike at him with cleavers and chopping knives, but cannot feel anything but aire".

The same contemporary account offers the image shown above (which is reprinted in The mystery and lore of apparitions). However, once we look at that contemporary account, the Smithfield Ghost takes on a slightly different hue.

The account comes from 1654 and issue 85 of a news book called Mercurius democritus, or, A true and perfect nocturnall, communicating many strange wonders out of the World in the Moon, the Antipodes, Magy-land, Fary-land Green-land, Tenebris and other parts adjacent.

What the author of The mystery and lore of apparitions does not mention is the highly politicised nature of Mercurius democritus - published during the Cromwellian regime, it was produced by John Crouch, a pamphleeter of the time who often fell foul of the authorities. With regards to the substance of Mercurius democritus, Crouch's ODNB entry tells us that "The principal aim of Democritus, Heraclitus, and Fumigosus [other titles produced by Crouch] was to parody the lies and exaggerations of the rest of the press by deliberately peddling half-truths and hyperbole". [1]

As such - and is we know of no other contemporary accounts of the Smithfield Ghost - this account of ghostly goings-on in London should perhaps not be taken at the same face-value as it appears the of author of The mystery and lore of apparitions did. And who was this author? A pivotal figure in the growth of Henry Wellcome's collections - and so the development of the Wellcome Library - C J S Thompson. We'll leave for another time more details on Thompson's fascinating career...

[1] Jason Mc Elligott, ‘Crouch, John (b. c.1615, d. in or after 1680)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6814, accessed 31 Oct 2011]

Item of the Month, October 2011: extract from Servetus’ Restoration of Christianity

2011-10-31T03:40:00.000-07:00

This week marks the anniversary of the death of Michael Servetus (1511-1553): theologian, physician, heretic, and author of one of the rarest books in history.

Servetus was one of the most accomplished and controversial scholars of the sixteenth century. Born in Villanueva de Sijena, Spain, he studied law and - later -anatomy and medicine in Paris, where he was a near contemporary of Vesalius. In his own age Servetus was a renowned geographer and astronomer as well as a physician, but his fame among anatomists rests on his claim as the first westerner to describe the pulmonary circulation.

During his studies, Servetus had perceived that blood circulated from the right side of the heart to the left through the lungs, where it was mixed with ‘inspired air’ – a view contrary to the currently held opinion that blood passed through the partition that divides the two ventricles within the heart. Servetus published a description of his discovery in 1553, prefiguring William Harvey’s more complete and detailed explanation by 75 years. Had it been widely publicised, this account could have been one of the most significant breakthroughs in the history of anatomy. But Servetus published his findings not in a medical textbook, but in a religious tract. Not only that, but the medical breakthrough was overshadowed by theological content that was – quite literally - incendiary.

Servetus was a radical and uncompromising anti-trinitarian and this work, Christianismi Restitutio (‘The Restoration of Christianity’), described a religious philosophy that was unacceptable to both catholic and protestant church authorities. Although the work was anonymous, Servetus was denounced to the catholic inquisition in French Vienne - possibly by Calvin, with whom he was corresponding. Servetus was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned awaiting trial for heresy. After three days he managed to escape from jail and flee - just in time, for the court condemned the absent Servetus to death by a slow fire. Meanwhile, Servetus was making his way to protestant Geneva en-route to Italy, where he hoped to find safety. There, whilst attending mass, he was recognised and put on trial once more. This time there was no escape. On the 27th October 1553, with the last copy of the book chained to his body, Michael Servetus was burnt at the stake, reportedly calling out his heretical views to his final breath.

For over 150 years every copy of the Christianismi Restitutio was believed to have been destroyed. Then, in 1706, the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, browsing through the shelves of a friend’s library, recognised a copy of the lost work. This was none other than the same copy used by Germain Collardon, the prosecutor at Servitus’ trial, and containing manuscript notes by him. Leibniz realised at once that his friend, Karl von Hessen-Kassel, had in his possession one of the rarest books in history. There isn’t enough space here to do justice to the history of this copy since its discovery. Through theft, forgery, sale and barter it has passed through some of the most significant collections in the world, and now resides in the French Biblithèque Nationale.

In 1723 an illicit reprint was attempted in London. The exemplar was smuggled to England by a Dutchman, Gysbert Dummer, who delivered it to London printers Samuel Palmer and Issac Dalton. 252 pages had been completed when a schoolmaster named Patrick, who had been employed to correct the proofs, reported the scheme to the Bishop of London. On the 27th May the sheets were confiscated by the authorities and once again - 170 years after Servetus’ death - an attempt was made to eradicate his controversial work.

Servetus’ 1553 printing of Christianismi Restitutio is now known to have survived in two complete copies and one fragment. The 1723 reprint fared a little better – just four copies of the text and one of the proofs are known. Our object of the month, then, is a copy of the 1723 printing of Servitus’ Christianismi Restitutio, known as De Trinitate Divina. A banned copy of a banned work whose author was twice sentenced to death, and which now sits innocuously in the basement of the Wellcome Library.

Author: Jo Maddocks

Image: From William Stirling, Some Apostles of Physiology. London : Priv. print. by Waterlow and sons limited, 1902
Further reading: Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone, Out of the Flames. London: Century, 2003.

The Statue of Liberty's sister and S M Burroughs

2011-10-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

As well as our own small anniversary, today is also the 125th anniversary of one of the world's most famous cultural artefacts, as it was on this day in 1876 that the Statue of Liberty was dedicated.

Furthermore, there's a connection between the statue and the early days of our founder Henry Wellcome's pharmaceutical business - but it relates not to Henry Wellcome and nor to the statue in New York...

Just visible in the top right of this image is a copy of the Statue of Liberty. As indicated, the image is of Burroughs Wellcome & Co's then head office at Snow Hill in London. It references not only the nationality of the company's founders, but also hints at the activities of Wellcome's business partner, Silas Mainville Burroughs.

The statue that stands in New York was - as every good American schoolchild knows - a gift from the people of France in 1886. What's a lesser-known fact is that a smaller replica of the statue stands in Paris on the Île aux Cygnes - facing west in the general direction of her sibling.

The erection of the smaller statue in Paris was paid for by subscription by Americans resident in Europe to commemorate the centenary of the French Revolution and inagurated on 4th July 1889. Silas Mainville Burroughs was a subscriber to the fund. And here's the evidence - preserved in the Wellcome Library's collections - Burroughs's certificate of subscription (WF/E/02/03/05).

Whilst the certificate does not record how much money Burroughs donated, it does add another detail to the life of Wellcome's business partner: a politically motivated individual, who still stands very much in the shadow of Henry Wellcome.

Happy 3rd Birthday Wellcome Library Blog!

2011-10-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

As we've marked our previous birthdays, we thought it would be rather amiss not to mark our third birthday with a post summarising our activities over the last 365 days.

The Library Blog still follows the path we set down back on 28th October 2008: aiming to summarise current activities of Library staff and flag up interesting material from our collections. As in previous years, we've shown the breadth of our collections by tying into anniversaries and special days and weeks: for instance, we marked National Curry Week with an 18th Century Botanist, travelled with a doctor to 19th cenury North American for World Tourism Day and followed a particular 'Victorian paper trail' for World Toilet Day.

Insights into our current digitisation work have also been proffered, drawing out stories from the papers of scientists such as Peter Medawar and Arthur Mourant. Whilst thoughts on the Conservation implications of digitisation projects have also been aired along with the announcement of the launch of Wellcome Arabic Manuscripts Online.

Our Items of the Month have again highlighted the breadth of our collections and the blog has also highlighted major acquisitions, none more important this year than a portrait by Pierre Chasselat of the French surgeon Ange-Bernard Imbert-Delonnes. We're also delighted to have featured more guest posts on the Blog, particularly those by both Dr Duncan Wilson and Dr Vanessa Heggie, describing how they utilised our resources for their recent publications.

Thank you very much to all the people who have contributed their time and energies to the Blog over the last year. The writers of the Blog posts, but more importantly, everyone's who's spared the time to read what we've written. Here's to another year of Wellcome Library Blogging!

Maverick analyst

2011-10-24T07:48:00.000-07:00

Archives and Manuscripts is pleased to announce a new addition to our holdings of personal papers of psychoanalysts, psychiatrist and psychologists. The papers of the noted psychoanalyst Charles Rycroft (1914-1998) are now catalogued and available (apart from certain files closed for reasons of Data Protection).

Rycroft was something of a maverick figure. During his period at Cambridge in the 1930s he became briefly a member of the Communist Party. He was advised by Ernest Jones to train in medicine if he wanted to demonstrate serious commitment to becoming a psychoanalyst, so became a medical student at University College London, while undergoing his first training analysis.

Although in the early part of his career he held a number of influential posts within the British Psycho-Analytic Society, he became bored with the minutiae of administration as well as more generally disillusioned with the institutional organisation of psychoanalysis and the tensions within the Society between the conflicting groups of adherents of Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. He therefore gradually moved away from the Society, and although he withdrew a formal resignation in 1970 (see PP/RYC/B.44), he eventually simply let his subscription lapse in 1978. He continued, however, to see patients up until very shortly before his death

He made significant contributions to the development of psychoanalytic thought, but from 1959 he put much of his energies into reviewing and writing for the serious lay press on analytic and related topics. The collection contains a substantial amount of material relating to the entire range of his writings in PP/RYC/E.

Rycroft’s extensive connections both in the world of psychoanalysis and in the wider sphere of arts and letters are demonstrated in his correspondence (PP/RYC/B).

The Cook's Tour

2011-10-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

Fed up of the cold already, and wishing you could get away from it all? Why not sign up for a free Cook's Tour on Tuesday 25 October at 3.00-4.30pm, and journey around the world exploring the historical role of food, remedies and global interchange in our medical and cultural lives?

As part of our Recipes and Remedies series, this free event will investigate the tensions underlying the contents of the kitchen cabinet, and place 21st-century debates around localism and healthy eating in a historical perspective.

The event will consist of a tour of Wellcome Collection's permanent galleries followed by an illustrated talk in the Wellcome Library, plus a chance to view items from the library's Special Collections.

Speakers:

Richard Aspin, Head of Research and Scholarship, Wellcome Library.
Valerie Brown, Visitor Services Assistant, Wellcome Collection.
Helen Wakely, Archivist, Wellcome Library.

For details of how to attend please see the Wellcome Collection website.

Madeleine Simms (1930-2011)

2011-10-20T06:15:00.000-07:00

We were saddened last week to hear of the death of Madeleine Simms, who had been present earlier this year and on fine form at the Population Investigation Committee Symposium held at the Wellcome in February.

Our contacts with Madeleine go back to the early 1980s at the time when the archives of the Abortion Law Reform Association were transferred to what was then the Contemporary Medical Archives Centre. She gave us a collection of her own papers reflecting her activities as Press Officer and General Secretary of ALRA (supplementing others already in the original accession) during the period after the passing of the 1967 David Steel Abortion Act, when it became clear that the fight was not yet over and that efforts would have to be made to prevent the terms of the Act being restricted.

As well being passionately committed to activism in that cause, she was also (jointly with Keith Hindell) the author of the first and pioneering history of abortion law reform in the UK, Abortion Law Reformed (1971). Although when she became involved with ALRA a number of the original pioneers had died (Janet Chance, Berthe Lorsignol, Stella Browne) there were still a few individuals around who could remember the early days of struggle before the Second World War, such as Dora Russell and Mrs Garrett, as well as Alice Jenkins, the only member of the original Executive Committee still alive when the Act was passed. She thus had access to their memories before these were completely lost to the record.

Madeleine Simms, in her breach with the 'restrained and discreet' stance of ALRA's campaign in at the beginning of the 1960s, brought back some of the fiery radical outspokenness of Stella Browne in her long campaign to get the significant of abortion recognised as an issue not only to do with women's health and well-being but their freedom.

Voodoo panels bring Wellcome Library to 750,000

2011-10-20T01:56:00.000-07:00

It seems appropriate that in the 75th anniversary year of Henry S. Wellcome's death, the Wellcome Library, named after him because it was created by him in his lifetime, has added the 750,000th work to its online catalogue (online at http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk) . That's a myriad's worth of catalogue records for every year that has passed since the Library's founder died in 1936. And since The Wellcome Trust came into being on Wellcome's death, these electronic records have all been created in the 75 years of the Wellcome Trust's stewardship of Wellcome's legacy. In their present electronic form they have been created over the last thirty years, but the essential pre-cataloguing work of identification and arrangement started in Henry S. Wellcome's own lifetime.

Wellcome Library no. 750000i

Work number 750,000 is a set of six paintings in acrylic on wood, which formed the walls of the shack of a voudun healer in Benin, West Africa. A slight detour on terminology: "voudun" is the Benin version, as distinct from the Haitian version "vodou", and the English word "voodoo". That last word has been made familiar in the Anglophone world –- especially for the Louisiana version -- by the tabloid press and through Hollywood films such as White Zombie (1932). It is of course now used in English for irrational beliefs generally, as in "voodoo economics" (over 400,000 hits in Google) and "voodoo neuroscience".

Returning to the paintings, they were found in 2010 in the market-place of Adjarra, near the border of Benin with Nigeria. They were discovered there by Jack Bell, the proprietor of a London gallery specializing in sub-Saharan African paintings and acquired from him by the Wellcome Library in 2011.

Adjarra has a market place about half the size of a football field. Most of the vendors have stalls under a thatched covering, separated by uncovered walkways, similar to the market in nearby Porto Novo shown in this photograph. Alongside dealers in vegetables, clothes and electronic gadgets, there are a large number of sellers of voudun remedies: skulls, wooden fetish figures, dried animal flesh, and talismans in many forms (photograph here).

However, one specialist provider in the market place has his own premises: a corrugated iron shack formerly decorated with what are now the Wellcome Library's paintings.
Inside the shack, the proprietor provided voudun treatments promoting sexual health, by offering animal parts to be used as carriers of spirits against diseases. And on the outside, he advertised, through these paintings, the conditions that he thought would persuade the local populace to seek his services.

The six paintings form three pairs: men, women, and organs, and have text in English – presumably for the benefit of people coming over the Nigerian border, as the main language of Benin is French. (One word, "boile", is in franglais.) The paintings of men show syphilis and gonorrhoea; those of women show pregnancy (desired or problematic) and breast cancer. For both sexes there are graphic depictions of urogenital organs, the eye, and leg-sores. The choice of subjects raises the question as to why only men are shown with sexually transmitted diseases: other factors apart, they may be workers in the trade in oil and petrol across the frontier from Nigeria. Passers-by, even if they did not read English, would be left in no doubt as to the speciality of this healer, and customers would appreciate the ability to have a confidential consultation in the privacy of the healer's shack.

For some people accustomed to different conventions of figuration (not to mention therapy), the painted figures may be disturbing: the outlines are strong but not differentiated in strength, and sometimes seemingly arbitrary: the depiction of the feet for instance, or the thighs of the woman shown above, suggests that a cropping stencil was used. And talking of different conventions: the lettering is in Oxford blue on a background of Cambridge blue, respectable academic associations for our practitioner!

The Wellcome collections differ from many other medically-related historical collections in that they did not arise from a medical institution such as a hospital, a medical school, a college of medical specialists or a university medical department. The Wellcome organizations have never treated patients. Rather they arose from the interdisciplinary research interests of one man, whose collection emphasized the horizontal links across conventional fields of study, unified only as the understanding of mankind. These paintings from Benin arise from an intermixture of cultures, placing English medical illustrations at the service of West African religion and cosmology. What could be more suitable as a 75th anniversary tribute to the memory of that man, Henry Solomon Wellcome?

For copyright purposes, the paintings are orphan works. Rights holders are invited to contact the Wellcome Library.

Louis Wain in Willesden

2011-10-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

Amidst the much-publicised closing-down and boarding-up of some of the public libraries in the London Borough of Brent, there has been a cheering event from Brent Archives and Museum at Willesden Green Library Centre: their exhibition of works by the painter of cats, and sometime psychiatric patient, Louis Wain (1860-1939), who resided on Brondesbury Road in Kilburn (now in the borough of Brent) before his confinement in a series of asylums. The exhibition Communicating through cats: the art and mind of Louis Wain ends on Saturday 29 October 2011 (open Mon.-Sat. 10-4). It contains a good cross-section of Wain's anthropomorphic pictures of cats –- bicycling, cricketing, tea-drinking and so on.
Among the rare and remarkable works on display are two large mirrors painted by Wain for his fellow-patients at Bethlem Hospital at Christmas times (one shown above left), lent by the Bethlem Art and History Collections Trust.

No less surprising are examples of ceramic cats designed by Wain as Cubist pastiches. Their rarity may be explained by the unconfirmed story that the stock of them was sunk by a German torpedo on a cross-Atlantic crossing. Marine archaeologists of the future who are not familiar with Wain will have great difficulty in identifying these works, with their unusual combination of Cubist, Egyptian and Art Deco associations. These two examples are on loan from Chris Beetles Gallery.

Wain also knowingly applied historical and fanciful styles to his paintings, a fact which led a psychiatrist writing in a national newspaper to misinterpret them as evidence of psychosis: the story is well set out in the exhibition. That interpretation is however still accepted by some. [1]

Two drawings from the archives of a psychiatrist, Noel Gordon Harris (1897-1963), are lent by the Wellcome Library.
They are impressively displayed in a showcase to reveal a typically mysterious inscription on the verso of one of them, spoken by a smiling cat: "I have more mouth than I want to open, but don't look, it is very dark inside. But I will send you a pretty message from it." That sums up the title of the exhibition, as interpreted in Wain's idiosyncratic manner. Communicating through cats is simultaneously humorous and sinister. An approachable and rewarding exhibition.

[1] Terry Castle, 'Do I like it?', London review of books, 28 July 2011, pp. 19-23

Early English Books Online: medical content now findable on the Library catalogue

2011-10-19T03:49:00.000-07:00

We are very pleased to announce that over 9,000 records for medical resources in Early English Books Online (EEBO) have been added to the Library Catalogue. EEBO is one of the most popular electronic resources the Library offers, with access to around 100,000 titles covering many subject areas, including English literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, theology, music, fine arts, education, mathematics, and science.

Until now EEBO records could not be cross-searched from the Wellcome Library catalogue. Library staff have identified medical titles in the EEBO database using the subject headings their catalogue records. The records were then loaded into the Wellcome Library catalogue. What this means from a user’s perspective is that links in the catalogue records will now take you directly to the electronic versions where they can view the digitised images of the original pages.

You need to be a registered user to access EEBO materials this way, but joining the Library is very simple

You can still search across all 100,000 records in EEBO. In Encore, search for ‘EEBO’ or ‘Early English Books Online’ and the Resource record for the database appears at the top of the list. The same searches also retrieve the E-book records of every medical resource in the collection with full bibliographic details provided. Click on the ‘View resource’ links to gain digital access to the original works.

'Stories of Psychology' Symposium report

2011-10-17T05:50:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday (11th October) the Wellcome Collection Conference Centre was the venue for the symposium ‘Stories of Psychology: Archives, Histories and What They Tell Us'. The event was held as part of the collaboration between the British Psychological Society (BPS) and the Wellcome Library, which has seen the Society’s extensive psychology archives transferred to the Library (and which we've flagged up in previous posts on this Blog).

The afternoon's proceedings begun with Professor Richard Bentall (University of Liverpool), talking on “How we have changed the way we think about madness”. His lecture offered a broad overview of developments in the field, touching upon such key developments as the classificatory work of Emile Kraepelin, Walter Freeman and psychosurgery and the rise of the treatment of mental illness through psychiatric drugs. Understandably, psychology featured strongly in this narrative, with Bentall discussing the behaviourist influence of B F Skinner, offering a personal recollection of "the token economy" at work in a mental hospital and also an interpretation of the work of Carl Rogers on the value of therapeutic relationships. There were some provocative comparisons to be drawn with other branches of medicine: during the years in which psychology has existed as a discipline, he pointed out, prognosis for diseases such as leukemia has improved beyond all measure in the developed West, whilst the prognosis for psychotic states remains much the same.

For his paper, Dr Peter Hegarty (University of Surrey) re-evaluated the work of sexologist Alfred Kinsey through the prism of Kinsey's early research on Gall Wasps. Hegarty's lecture was particularly interesting for how it interrogated the way that notions of the frontier in American society permeated Kinsey's work, both in how the values of insect society were interpreted, and in his account of the sexual behaviour of American men in rural areas (as a result Hegarty's audience may never watch be able to watch Pixar's A Bug's Life in the same way again).

Prof Michael Billig (Loughborough University) took a more personal approach: his paper, “Archival knowledge versus personal reminiscence: The case of social psychologist Henri Tajfel”, was based around Billig's personal memories of Tajfel (Billig was one of Tajfel's research students). It discussed how Tajfel's work on the social construction of groups was strongly influenced by his experiences in growing up in 1930s Europe, but also spoke of the construction of biography through personal and working papers, and how this differed from an individual's personal memories of a colleague. Particular pertinent views from the perspective of the Library, as with the transfer of the BPS archive we now hold Tajfel's papers.

In “Psychological knowledge and the making of the modern state”, Dr Rhodri Hayward (Queen Mary University) questioned the traditional narrative of understandings of psychiatry in the UK in the 20th century, arguing that in the proto-Welfare State of inter-war Britain there was an increased awareness of psychosomatic illness in discussion of states hitherto seen as “malingering”. His wide-ranging talk included analyses of the condition of "Busman's Stomach" in the 1920s and of how notions of stress and emotion became the basis for industrial negotiation as the century progressed. Pertinent issues, particularly with the importance recent Governments have placed on the "emotional wellbeing" of the British population.

Prof Sally Shuttleworth (University of Oxford) concluded the day with “Studying the child in the nineteenth century”. This paper examined the interplay of literature and research, and how the rich and evocative descriptions of childhood in the literature of the 1840s (e.g. Dombey and Son or Jane Eyre), influenced the growth of child psychiatry in the UK, so much so that by the 1890s, developments in the field were feeding back into literature (e.g. Edmund Gosse's Father & Son). Her talk also spoke of the important role played by women in the development of child studies in the nineteenth century and the present day difficulty in tracking down many of child development journals produced in the period.

This last point was indicative of a symposium which illustrated the variety of areas and issues which research into the history of psychology can explore. One hopes the papers of the BPS now held in the Wellcome Library will inspire and encourage further exploration.

Image: Henri Tajfel (from European Association for Social Psychology).

Global Handwashing Day

2011-10-15T04:30:00.000-07:00

It is Global Hand Washing Day today and we've chosen to mark the date by highlighting material from a recent library acquisition of African health posters, a number of which remind us all of the importance of hand washing and basic sanitation.

For instance, the simple act of washing hands with soap (752738i) and segregation of toilet facilities (756161i) can prevent common ailments in children like diarrhoea associated with cholera (755196i), eye infections (755601i) and since 2000, avian flu (755530i).

Personal hygiene was key to the 2000 Sara Campaign, an initiative aimed at adolescent girls developed in 10 countries of Eastern and Southern Africa with UNICEF assistance. Originally a radio series, the programme branched out into animated films, comic books, storybooks, audiocassettes, guides and posters. (Source: www.unicef.org/lifeskills/index).

Hand washing with soap is said to be the most effective and cheapest way to prevent diarrhoea (associated with cholera and typhoid fever) and acute respiratory infections (like TB and pneumonia). Such infections take the lives of millions of children in developing countries each year, according to the Global Public-Private Partnership for Hand Washing who initiated Global Handwashing Day (GHD) in 2008. Posters are an essential way of promoting the routine which, it appears, is seldom practiced in some areas yet could save more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention. (Source: http://globalhandwashingday.org/).

Apart from basic hygiene issues, the majority of posters from this collection highlight family planning issues (birth control, family size, contraception etc) but, not surprisingly, many other problems are revealed: malaria (755536i), polio (755539i ), TB (752340i), typhoid (755617i) avian flu (752086i), trachoma and blindness (752498i ), diabetes (755362i) and hypoglyemia (755464i).

Less commonly depicted are issues concerning female circumcision (755185i and 755386i ), genital mutilation (752291i), and in 2001, the ‘flying toilet’ problem in Kibera slums (755701i, and 755711i).

Details of our collection of African health posters can be seen in the Wellcome Library catalogue.

Images:

A girl washing her hands in a bowl above a tap in a washing cubicle; health education in Ethiopia. Colour lithograph by Health Education Centre (?), ca. 2000, Wellcome Library ref. 752738i

School children visiting a segregated corrugated toilet and washing their hands: hygiene in Kenya. Colour lithograph by Ministry of Health, Kenya, ca. 2000, Wellcome Library ref. 756161i

Women preparing a chicken and washing their hands: preventing avian flu in Kenya. Colour lithograph by Ministry of Health, ca. 2006, Wellcome Library ref. 755530i

A girl holds a chicken on a plate as a man washes his hands: protecting against avian flu in Kenya. Colour lithograph by UNICEF and Maskew Miller Longman, ca. 2000, Wellcome Library ref. 755918i

Campaign against female genital mutilation in Djibouti. Colour lithograph by A. Rachid and A. Djama for Ministère de la Santé MGF project, ca. 2010, Wellcome Library ref. 752291i

Three toilets in the form of ducks in flight: appeal to improve sanitation in the slums of Kibera. Colour lithograph by AMREF, 2001, Wellcome Library ref. 755701i

Remote Access

2011-10-14T07:51:00.000-07:00

The Library is constantly striving to improve its help pages, downloadable tools and video tutorials. Our latest video tutorial ‘Remote access to full text databases, e-journals and e-books’ (Running time: 2 m 28 s) is now available. You can also read a transcript of the narration.

For more finding aids and ways of making the most of our Library see the ‘Using the Library Catalogues’ or Guides & Video Tutorials . You can find materials in specific subject areas (like Medicine and Art) and then see the 'tabs' for videos and related information.

We provide Wellcome Trust staff and registered readers with remote access to a wide variety of resources. There is plenty to choose from: full-text historical newspapers, databases, digitised eighteenth century books and browsable e-books. Once you have registered, take full advantage of the latest copy of Nature neuroscience, for example, at home with a nice cup of your favourite beverage.

The ‘Spare-part biologist’: Sir Peter Medawar

2011-10-13T07:45:00.000-07:00

"He was a big man. That was the first thing that struck you as he strode into the room. A big man - tall and vibrant with life. His sheer presence communicated a sense of power: not political power, not domination, but physical power, above all intellectual power... It was difficult not to be awe-stricken in the company of Peter Medawar" (1)

Such descriptions of Sir Peter Medawar, the Nobel-Prize winning zoologist whose archive has just been digitised, make browsing through his personal papers somehow more tangible. Not all biologists get to appear in Vogue as Medawar did in 1971 (2).

It is a tragedy that Medawar was plagued by persistent strokes later on in life. First struck down dramatically mid-speech in Exeter cathedral in 1969, he persevered through ever disabling health issues to continue to write seven books until his death in 1987. (3)

Some of the most poignant material from Medawar’s papers is those letters that relate to his strokes: correspondence from 1970 includes a series of self-portrait drawings illustrating his recovery from his seizure: one image is marked 'PBM body image 9 July 1970, Pablo Medawar pixit' with spiky fingers and elongated ears.

Other drawings dated ‘May 16’ shows him with enlarged hands and feet and another dated ‘May 26’ with a third leg (possibly a crutch) and just one overgrown ear like protrusion from his head.

Such drawings were part of his traumatic recovery process as explained in his autobiographical work Memoir of a thinking radish (p.157, Oxford University Press, 1986) and revealed, to Medawar at least, an ‘eye defect’ brought on by the stroke. His confidence in his recovery never abated it seems – despite his evident disability, it is a relief to read a note from '9 May' stating repeatedly 'I am feeling better' (4)

The archive will be available to view from 2012. Further details of the digitisation programme can be obtained from the Wellcome Library digitisation project pages.

References:
1. Dipak Nandy, p.1 of an article for p.1 The Runnymede Trust, 1988, file ref: PP/PBM/F.58

2. The article features a shot of him musing at a desk with a cat out of focus in the front, File ref: PP/PBM/D55

3. A full listing of all books authored by Medawar held in the Wellcome Library.

4. File ref: PP/PBM/A.43

Images:

- Photo of Medawar was apparently intended for use in article by Medawar in "Lying Truths" according to pencil inscription on verso ("Lying truths : a critical scrutiny of current beliefs and conventions, Ronald Duncan and Miranda Weston-Smith, Pergamon Press, 1979.

- Self-portrait drawings are dated 1970 from file ref: PP/PBM/A.43

Forthcoming attractions: Miracles and Charms talks

2011-10-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

Last week saw the opening of Miracles and Charms, two exhibitions at Wellcome Collection - Infinitas Gracias: Mexican miracle paintings and Felicity Powell: Charmed Life - which explore faith, hope and chance.

As part of a season of events to coincide with Miracles and Charms, the following free talks will seek to elucidate the themes of the exhibition through the holdings of the Wellcome Library.

Science and Faith in the Middle Ages - Thurs 20th October, 6pm-7pm
Explore medieval approaches to science through the Wellcome Library's rich manuscript collection.

Edward Lovett's Folklore Collection - Thursday 10th October, 3pm-4pm; Thursday 19th January 6pm-7pm
Discover the world of Lovett - the inspiration for Charmed Life - through his correspondence held in the Wellcome Library.

More details on these and other related events, are available from the Wellcome Collection website.

Image: Sketch made by Edward Lovett, showing districts of London where Lovett had collected blue amulet necklaces, which were thought to protect the wearer from illness (WA/HMM/CO/Ear/532).

Armenian Manuscripts Week

2011-10-12T02:18:00.000-07:00

The next in our series of study weeks, Armenian Manuscripts Week, will run from Monday 7 - Friday 11 November. It has been designed to provide an opportunity to study original Armenian manuscripts from the Wellcome Library’s Asian Collections. This course is the latest in a series of lectures and workshops designed to enable students of Orientalist/Asian studies to learn about the manuscript cultures of Eastern and African peoples, and to examine handwritten works dating back many centuries.

Based upon the rich manuscript holdings of the Wellcome Library, these lectures and workshops will also offer a taste of traditional Asian and African medical teachings. Each session will be led by an experienced tutor who is an authority in the field of manuscript research, or a specialist conservator. The course has been developed in association with the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

The sessions will be led by Dr Gohar Muradyan and Dr Aram Topchyan Institute of Ancient Manuscripts (Matenadaran) Yerevan, Armenia. Topics covered will include an introduction to Armenian manuscript tradition, practical sessions in reading Armenian manuscripts and visits to the exhibition galleries of the British Library.

Handouts and learning packs will be provided, and a certificate of attendance will be issued upon successful completion of the course. Participants should have completed at least two years of Armenian studies; final-year undergraduates, postgraduates and others with a good knowledge of Armenian (Grabar) are welcome.

The course is free, but pre-registration is essential and numbers are limited to 15. Please email Tracy Tillotson to book a place.

For further information about the course, please contact Dr Nikolaj Serikoff.

Image: Manuscript of the Mystery Book or Divine Liturgy, 1714. Copied by the scribe Eghiay Marzvantsi in Marzvan, a small village in historical Armenia Minor.
Frontispiece depicting 'Communion of the Apostles', The Last Supper, and title page with text in letters in the shape of birds 'Oh Jesus Christ our Lord who art clothed' 1714. (Armenian Manuscript 11)

Wellcome Library Insight: Nourishing the Nation

2011-10-11T04:27:00.000-07:00

Think Jamie Oliver's campaigns are new initiatives? This week's free Wellcome Library Insight session - 'Nourishing the Nation' - may make you think again.

Drawing on archives and illustrative materials from our collections, the event will explore the work of the medics and scientists who helped shape and publicise nutritional knowledge in the 20th century.

From the ‘Bran Gang’ and debates over the evils of highly refined foods, to the growth of the modern ‘nutrition media’ in all its complexity, trace the roots of our current anxieties over what is and isn’t good to eat.

The event takes place at 3-4pm this Thursday (13th October) and is part of our current Recipes and Remedies season. The session will also includes time for you to view documents and archives from the Wellcome Library’s special collections.

For more information on attending, see the Wellcome Collection website.

Image: Advertisement for Simpsons Fish Dinner at the Three Tuns, Billingsgate Market, London

How much medical history do you pass every day?

2011-10-08T01:00:00.000-07:00

Every day I walk to my local station to catch the train towork. Every day I pass a plaque on the station wall commemorating an eventwhich has historical significance. And every day I ignore it.

On 8 October 1952, 112 people lost their lives and 340people were injured in the worst peacetime rail accident in Great Britain.Three trains were involved in the collision, which accounts for the very highloss of life (1) (2).

So why should this terrible accident be of interest to themedical historian? Because this was the first time the triage system forassessing casualties was used in the UK:

“By modern standards the fire and ambulance services werehopelessly inadequately equipped, and were untrained to keep trapped peoplealive. All that could be done was a little bandaging and to take people tohospital as fast as possible. Edgware General Hospital learned of the crashwhen a commandeered furniture van arrived with walking wounded. Among thoseresponding to the disaster were US teams from nearby bases, who were trainedin battlefield medicine. They weredisciplined, brought plasma and undertook triage - sorting casualties intothose needing urgent attention, those who could wait and those who were beyondhelp. It was a new experience for the rescue services; they were amazed and full of admiration.” (3)

Contemporary issues of the British Medical Journal, and theLancet, available in the Wellcome Library, talk about the efficient use of thetriage system (4) (5), discuss how to deal with such a large-scale disaster (6),and touchingly allow thanks to be given to all who helped in the aftermath (7).

When I do stop and think about this event it is quitesobering. This is partly due to the large loss of life and number ofcasualties, but also because it happened just at the time of day when I’mgetting on my commuter train to Euston. And what other history am I missing asI go about my usual routine?

It also makes me wonder if there’s something harrowing aboutHarrow. Harrow-on-the-Hill is the site of the first fatal motoring accident inGreat Britain (8). But that’s another medical history story…

References

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrow_and_Wealdstone_rail_crash

2. http://www.harrowtimes.co.uk/galleries/railcrash/view/gallery_29554.Rail_crash/

3. http://nhshistory.net/Chapter%201.htm

4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2021812/

5. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2021819/

6. http://0-www.sciencedirect.com.libsys.wellcome.ac.uk/science/article/pii/S0140673652909471

7. http://0-www.sciencedirect.com.libsys.wellcome.ac.uk/science/article/pii/S0140673652917704

8. http://www.plaquesoflondon.co.uk/page1222.html

Looking good for Friday night...

2011-10-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

Why do some faces set my pulse racing and not others? If this has ever crossed your mind, you are not alone. In the past, many have tried to use science to decode the elusive quality of beauty and many are still trying; see David Perrett's latest book In your Face: the new science of human attraction as an example. This relatively small but important part of our bodies certainly holds a deep fascination whether you are a scientist or simply looking for love. But is beauty just in the eye of the beholder?

This Friday evening 6-10pm 7th October a free event at the National Portrait Gallery, London, (see 'Glamour Factory' for full details) will feature images and curios from the Library. It will take place in Room 16 and is called 'What is Beauty?' as part of the Image is Everthing section. Here the concepts of beauty and physiognomy will be related to film stars of today, will your favourite be there? The night is inspired by classic Hollywood portait photography and features talks, music and activities.

Aided by the judicious use of a kohl pencil I will also be road-testing an eighteenth-century forehead reader to discover if it holds any surprises for a modern-day audience. It will be an informal session ending around 20.45hrs

Are there really rules of beauty all good-looking people conform to? Join the debate and take advantage of other talks by experts such as Semir Zeki (Professor of Neuroaesthetics, UCL) and Dr David Gems (Institute of Healthy Aging, UCL). You can even be photographed like a celebrity too. If you feel like putting on the style, black and white is the theme of this glamourous evening.

Images:
Plate engraving illustrating a personification of 'Beauty' by Isaac Fuller and Pierce Tempest, 1709 from Wellcome Images (image number L0035394)

Natural beauty, digital illustration by Marina Caruso from Wellcome Images (image number B0007013)

Max Klinger at Dresden in 1911: Wellcome Library Item of the Month

2011-09-30T10:42:00.000-07:00

1911 was a bumper year for exhibitions. In London there was the Festival of Empire and Imperial Exhibition at the Crystal Palace. In Turin there was the Esposizione Internazionale delle Industrie e del Lavoro. At the Hague in September there was the Drankweer tentoonstelling (Anti-alcohol exhibition) at the 13th International Congress against Alcoholism. There were many others. Far bigger than any of those mentioned, however, was the international hygiene exhibition in Dresden: the Internationale Hygiene-Ausstellung.

For those who are more familiar with the Wellcome library and museum collections, the best way of describing the Dresden exhibition is to say that the Dresden exhibition makes the exhibitions of those Wellcome collections look small. The catalogue of the historical section at Dresden alone (the equivalent of the handbook of the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, 1913) has 600 pages and lists 20,394 exhibits. [1] The section on amulets alone contains 1,212 items (pp. 375-399). Qualitatively, on the other hand, there were many similarities and links between the two enterprises, which deserve fuller study. Wellcome-watchers will find many familiar names in the Dresden catalogue: to name but three, Eugen Holländer, Edward Lovett, and Ernest Wickersheimer are listed among the lenders to Dresden, and the photographs of the displays there show many resemblances to Wellcome’s first exhibitions in Wigmore Street, London. For instance the collections exhibited included such subjects as housing, bathing, clothing, and childcare: in both institutions, hygiene was defined as preventive medicine practised in the context of evolutionary anthropology. (Of course the Wellcome collections would later grow much larger, but as the holdings expanded, the exhibitions contracted.)

The committee of honour at Dresden included the Berlin museum director Wilhem von Bode; Hermann Diels, who gathered the fragments of the pre-Socratic philosophers and tracked down the manuscripts of Galen and Hippocrates; and the most famous Greek scholar of the day, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf. The president of the historical section was Karl Sudhoff, Director of the Institute for the History of Medicine at Leipzig.

Also contributing to the exhibition was the artist Max Klinger (1857-1920). He will perhaps be known to many through his sequence of etchings The Glove (1879-1881), which might be described as a fetishistic psychodrama (image above from the British Museum). At the Dresden exhibition Klinger exhibited a larger-than-life-sized bronze sculpture of an athlete, and was commissioned to make a large etching on the theme of hygiene to present to VIPs who had helped with the exhibition.

Here is Klinger’s etching (left: Wellcome Library no. 24236i), which he completed in 1912. How to interpret it? The giant can perhaps be seen as a symbol of the struggle for hygiene and sanitation. He has lifted a group of people up above the tumultuous world of nature: they dance and recline in an Italianate landscape, enjoying the delightful consequences of hygiene for all. The warring male figures below may symbolize the people and circumstances which work against hygiene. The three streams of water represent nature channelled into forms conducive to human life.

There is also a racial distinction. The beneficiaries of hygiene, who have learned to master the forces of nature, and are raised up into the sunshine of life, are conspicuously white. The savages in the river, who misguidedly attack the forces of hygiene, are prominently black. They are not dancing among the poplars, but rampaging with harpoons in an unruly river bordered by dark and threatening forests. Nor do they appreciate the three streams of pure clean water that flow from the Europeans’ water jars.

Nothing about this is particularly surprising. Germany had extensive colonies in Africa, the maintenance of which required training and research in many aspects of hygiene. The print may also be compared with the section on racial hygiene in the exhibition. The catalogue of that section, by Max von Gruber and Ernst Rüdin (both of Munich, the former a hygienist and the latter a psychiatrist) is a monograph on eugenics, with an impressive number of charts, graphs and family trees, and a bibliography on heredity, genetics, extinction, population trends, degeneration, and social aspects of hygiene. [2]

It is however remarkable that the Wellcome Library has two impressions of this large and apparently rare etching. One (shown above) was presented to Dr (later Sir) Frederick Walker Mott FRCP, FRS (1853-1926). Mott (portrait right: Wellcome Library no. 15290i) was a neuropathologist, working both in asylums and in academia (at Birmingham University), who is said to have established the syphilitic origins of "general paralysis of the insane". In Mott’s copy of Klinger’s etching, his name is inscribed at the bottom of the plate in the same colour ink as the etching itself, so that it appears to be part of the etching. The other impression (in the Wellcome Foundation archives in the Wellcome Library) was awarded to the "Wellcome Research Laboratories in London", and the name of the recipient is handwritten in grey ink (the rest of the etching is in black). Presumably the Wellcome laboratories had lent items to the exhibition.

Klinger's etchings up to 1909 were catalogued by Hans W. Singer, and those after 1909 by Carl Beyer, but Beyer's work does not appear to have been published. It is a typescript of which a copy is in the library of the Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. [3] The hygiene allegory is no. 416 in Beyer's catalogue, and the Wellcome impressions are of the fourth and final state of which 100 impressions were made. A century later, how many survive from the other ninety-eight? And to whom were they awarded?

[1] Historische Abteilung mit ethnographischer Unterabteilung. I. Historische Abteilung. 2. verb. und illustrierte Aufl., Dresden: Internationalen Hygiene-Ausstellung, [1911]. Wellcome Library catalogue record here.

[2] Fortpflanzung, Vererbung, Rassenhygiene: Katalog der Gruppe Rassenhygiene der Internationalen Hygiene-Ausstellung 1911 in Dresden. Herausgegeben von Max von Gruber und Ernst Rüdin; ... Abbildungen von M. v. Gruber; nebst einem bibliographischen Anhang von Rudolf Allers, München: J. F. Lehmann, [1911]. Wellcome Library catalogue record here.

[3] Carl Beyer, Max Klingers graphisches Werk von 1909-1919: eine vorläufige Zusammenstellung im Anschluß an den Oeuvre-Katalog von Hans W. Singer. Many thanks to Dr Alexander Dückers for information about Beyer's work.