Wellcome Collection

Your brain at 2am:

- Oscillating between regret and anxiety
- Planning a new life in Bali as a mermaid / merman
- Wondering if you're the reason your therapist drinks wine
- Cats 🐈
- Sassy comebacks to work emails you'll never send
- Men in finance, but from period dramas. And with sexy top hats.

Alt text: An engraved phrenological chart from the 1800s depicts the pseudoscience of assessing psychological attributes by examining the skull. The chart illustrates a person’s head, dividing the brain into segments representing various personality traits. Each segment is creatively visualised: a mermaid brushing her hair at sea symbolises a belief in divine providence; a blindfolded woman holding scales embodies conscientiousness; a cat stalking a mouse signifies secretiveness; two men fighting depict combativeness; and so on.

Credit: A head marked with images representing the phrenological faculties, with a key below. Coloured wood engraving, ca. 1845, after H. Bushea and O.S. Fowler (?).
Fowler, O. S. (Orson Squire), 1809-1887. Date: [1845?] Reference: 27921i

This is Florence Linton, 13 months old, pictured in 1892. Like many portraits in our collection, this one may have been made as a study of a medical problem: in this case, Florence's skin complaint. Here - like in all the best pictures - the person shines through.

Alt text: This watercolour shows a young child with closed eyes and golden curls wearing a frilly white collar, with some parts of her face slightly speckled with blister-like features.

Credit: Head of a child with closed eyes and skin disease on the face. Watercolour, 1892.
Date: 1892
Reference:
672901i

Endometriosis. Maybe you live with it, or perhaps this is the first time you're hearing about it, but it’s an issue affecting around 1.5 million women and people assigned female in the UK (and possibly 1 in 10 across the world).

Endometriosis is a condition where cells similar to the lining of the womb grow somewhere they aren’t meant to, like the ovaries and fallopian tubes. Each month, these cells build up, break down, and bleed just like a period. The difference, however, is that this blood has nowhere to go.

This can cause agonising pain (especially during periods), difficulties conceiving, fatigue, discomfort and pain using the loo. The impact of living with these symptoms can impact people’s mental health, too.

Diagnosing endometriosis requires a laparoscopy (keyhole surgery) – but reaching that point isn’t always easy or straightforward. People often present with symptoms for months and years before any sort of medical intervention.

Once diagnosed, treatment is largely about minimising and managing symptoms, often starting with hormone therapy like birth-control pills, suppression hormones or high doses of synthetic androgens.

We're curious to know how much people know about endometriosis, and how people and doctors can support folks who might be impacted. Tell us in the comments ⤵️

[Alt text: This is a monochrome watercolour drawing by Walter Percevall Yetts (1878-1957), a British surgeon and sinologist, who – unexpected segue, here – left medicine in the ‘30s to become an expert in Chinese art. The illustration is signed by Yetts at the bottom with the date ‘03’ (likely meaning it was made in 1903), and it depicts a uterus which might depict a uterine fibroid or tumour with secondary vaginal tumours or endometriosis. The artist has mostly painted in white, using the paper’s brown tone to add texture and shadow.]

Online dating: expectation vs reality

Alt text: we're looking at an image of a couple who are clearly infatuated with each other.

The gentleman stares lustily at his beloved, casually draping a leg over her thigh. The woman is coquettishly stroking her lover's chin, flushed by the warm glow of candlelight and perhaps the anticipation of what's to come.

The next image is a very different kind of vibe.

The man seems much more enamoured by the bottle of booze his drinking and looks as if he's about to start singing a sea shanty. The woman is sat stiffly beside him, looking blankly in the distance with an expression that seems to ask, "why did I wash my hair for this?"

Credits: A young couple sit together at a table, the man has his leg across the woman's knees and a glass of wine in his hand: they are laughing and reading by candlelight. Engraving by J. Houbraken after C. Troost.
Troost, Cornelis, 1697-1750.
Reference:
28818i

A woman and man sit at a table drinking as the man raises the bottle in his right hand. Lithograph, 19th century.
Reference:
26796i

Behold - the royal court of His Majesty the jackal Raja. Folklore of the Indian subcontinent records many versions of the story: an ambitious jackal is elected (or appoints himself) as king. It usually doesn't end well for him.

Alt text: This wonderful watercolour drawing from 19th century India is made in the Kalighat style, named for the district in West Bengal from which it originates. With bright colours, plain backgrounds and striking contours, Kalighat paintings often represent scenes from folklore and religious myth. Here, the king of the jackals is shown sitting on throne flanked by his devoted - or tyrannized - subjects (the V&A holds a version of the scene where these figures have very different facial expressions and give much less side-eye). Below, the same king passes his royal judgement on two blue creatures - perhaps foxes - who are brought before him with ropes around their neck by a jackal in a top hat.

Credit: The court of the jackal raja. Watercolour drawing c. 1870. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Smallpox was a highly contagious and deadly infectious disease that had devastating effects throughout history, affecting populations around the world for thousands of years.

Symptoms included fever and a distinctive rash of raised, fluid-filled blisters called pustules that covered the body. Survivors were left with disfiguring scars and, in some cases, even blindness.

However, the discovery of the smallpox vaccine was a medical revolution. The vaccine (which derived from the less harmful cowpox virus) provided immunity against smallpox. And mass vaccination campaigns were instrumental in eradicating the disease entirely.

Jenner, an English physician – while not the first to make this observation – noted that milkmaids who had contracted cowpox seemed to be immune to smallpox. This observation led Jenner to conduct an experiment in 1796 where he inoculated an eight-year-old boy with material from a cowpox lesion. He subsequently exposed the boy to smallpox, and the boy did not develop the disease, demonstrating that cowpox could protect against smallpox.

These findings helped lay the foundation for the smallpox vaccine, which ultimately led to the eradication of smallpox worldwide.

Alt text: an illustration of a young person whose face is severely swollen and red on the right-hand side with both of their eyes looking red, too.

Credit: Cow Poxed, Ox Faced Boy - illustration to "Cow-Pox Inoculation No Security Against Small-Pox Infection" by W. Rowley. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

From the psychiatric hospital in England where she lived for decades, Mary Bishop made some of the most moving works of art in all our collections.

Alongside hundreds of other paintings, drawings and sculptures made by her fellow patients at the Netherne Hospital, Mary's art forms part of the Adamson collection: named for the man who founded the supported studio where they were made.

The collection stands as an amazing record of the beauty and creativity to be found even in the context of mental illness and inadequate systems of support.

Read more about Mary Bishop and the context of her work in the 20th century asylum here:

wellcome.info/mary-bishop



Alt text: These portraits in deep indigo, red or black watercolours show Mary Bishop's strikingly bare and direct visual style. The first shows a face, minimally drawn with nothing more than downcast eyes, eyelashes, and a sad little mouth. In the second, a person appears to be bowing their face to their spikily-outlined hands, a wave of brushstrokes enveloping them. In the third slide, a figure - perhaps a young girl - looks out at us with wide, empty eyes. Also shown are a distressed face with wide open eyes and mouth and flaring nostrils; and an intense image of a skull with deep black sockets.

Credits:
Watercolours by M. Bishop, 196-.
Source: Wellcome Collection.
Licence: In copyright

Bank holiday plans on a medieval budget:

1. Search house for loose change
2. Sell your winter clothes
3. Impulsive DIY
4. Step on someone's toes (instant dopamine hack)
5. Go for a lovely swim
6. Replace expensive friends with dolls of your own creation

Alt text: These wonderful coloured woodcuts come from one of our most beloved books, the 1491 encyclopaedia of the natural world 'Ortus Sanitatis'. The illustrations show: someone scraping out residue from the bottom of a barrel, the crack of their bum cruelly exposed; a body-confident individual wearing only shoes putting coins into a pot; another underdressed person wielding a bucket and a knife; a smarmy-looking character standing on the feet of a small balding person (in fact demonstrating a method for testing the authenticity of a particular gemstone); some spaced-out people drowning merrily in a shipwreck; and a person apparently absorbed in the crafting of some creepy dolls.

Credit: Ortus sanitatis. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

We're often asked if we have any monkeys in our collection*.

Here's the top 5 🙊

Alt text:

1. Humanoid monkey from a European manuscript looks directly at us with its eyebrows raised sarcastically.
2. Monkey which looks like a cat glares miserably at a bouquet of leaves it holds in its paws.
3. Another jankily human-faced monkey walks on all fours.
4. An Indian painting shows a group of splendid monkeys - one of them white-coated with a mischievous smile - involved in a violent mythological scene.
5. Two delightful monkeys pictured in a moment of everyday intimacy - one resting paws on the other's knees - against a blue background.

Credits: 1 & 3: Herbal Musa, Antonius Date: Mid 13th Century, Reference: MS.573
2. Bestiary and Fiore de virtu, in Italian. Middle 15th century. Reference: MS.132
4. The death of Ravana, the ten headed demon king of Lanka by Lord Rama, his brother Lakshman and an army of monkeys. Gouache painting by an Indian painter.
Date: [between 1800 and 1899?] Reference: 577829i
5. Two monkeys taken from a Persian manuscript on the natural sciences in Nasta'liq script.4

[*No one ever asks this. Rude.]

LET THERE BE LIGHT.

Alt text: This engraving of a personified sun - with hundreds of finely-drawn rays radiating from its majestic little face - comes from an early 17th century book in our collection. Robert Fludd's 'History of the Two Worlds' is a visionary work of cosmology and religious mysticism. Slide 2, from the same work, represents the infinite dark void that existed in the period before the creation of the universe (AKA October to March).

Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia ... [Tractatus secundus de naturae simia seu technica macrocosmi historia] / [Robert Fludd].
Fludd, Robert, 1574-1637
Date: 1624

Ah the good old days, when even minor medical procedures involved being held down by at least two people.

Alt text: This delightful painting shows an eye operation done the old-fashioned way. Two brightly-dressed figures in red restrain the patient's arms while a third, in blue, holds him in a tender headlock while raising a sharp instrument to his eye. The surgeon and attendants smile benevolently. The emotions of the patient - their expression obscured by hand and scalpel so that only their poor little eyes are visible - appear to be more mixed. The scene is reproduced from a Persian manuscript, and the operation takes place on a carpet patterned with black and gold arabesques.

Credit: A Persian surgeon performing an eye operation on a man held by two other men. Painting, from a Persian ms. of the XVI. century, reproduced ca. 1900. Reference: 572334i

"I'll be honest, I've had better days."

If you feel like you've come back to work after the long weekend feeling like this, know that you're not alone.

Alt text: We're looking at a drawing of a naked man, who has been stabbed, bludgeoned, maimed and just generally assaulted in all the ways possible in the 15th century. He has been stabbed about seven times by knives and swords of various shapes, sizes, lengths and styles. He's been pierced by at least one spear and about four arrows. And, perhaps the least of his worries, he's also taken a club to the head, upon which sits what appears to be a teeny tiny bowler hat. His facial expression is that of a man who has accepted his fate and is questioning his life choices.

Credit: Wound man, Pseudo-Galen, Anathomia; WMS 290

A team of women quite literally worked themselves sick to produce postcards like these.

This is a hand-tinted postcard, a photographic postcard which was coloured by hand. The artists who tinted them would sit in rows – each one responsible for a single colour – passing the card down the assembly line. It was a laborious job, one that was mostly done by women in France and Belgium.

While working on these small detailed cards, the artists would wet the tip of their brush with their lips. But soon, the lead in the paint made them sick. These hand-tinted postcards did not last long, and were discontinued soon after they first emerged.

Alt text: This Easter-themed postcard was created in Belgium, possibly in the 1920s, and shows a heavily made-up young man with slicked-back hair. He is holding some decorated eggs in a basket in one hand, along with a bouquet of flowers, and an egg with a rooster painted on it in the other.

Reference: 2058853i

Barbie's dreamhouse but make it a q***r surrealist medieval fever dream.

We're lucky to have in our collection this absolute gem by the 20th century painter John Armstrong which does just that. You didn't know you needed it until it's right there in front of you.

Alt text: This colourful painting on crinkled silver foil shows an architecturally-deranged building seen in a cutaway view like a doll's house. Inside, a group of muscular people strike poses in tight red stockings which leave little to the imagination. Some balance plates on their hands theatrically like waiters in a musical. A dog begs at their feet on the pink-and-green tiled floor, and to their left and right, two unclothed figures wash themselves or wring out wet clothes over the void of the surrounding foil.

Credit: A house with a turret: to the left a woman is bathing, to the right another woman is wringing out clothes, and in the centre five men are juggling plates, all in a mediaeval style. Painting on silver foil by John Armstrong.
Armstrong, John, 1893-1973.
Date: [between 1920 and 1929]
Reference:
34783i

Is that...?

Why, yes. That is a picture of a monkey extinguishing the flame of a candle with their fart.

And is there...?

There is indeed a man looking at the picture with a magnifying glass.

And does it...?

Represent the pleasure of sight? Yes. Any further questions?

Alt text: Sometimes, the catalogue description does such a perfect job of capturing an image that further embellishments are simply unnecessary. Here it is verbatim – "A man looking through a magnifying glass at a picture of a monkey, whose flatulence extinguishes the flame of a candle; representing the pleasures of the sense of sight."

Cropped out of this image is a caption which reads, "Seeing so great a pleasure is that by this fellows grinning phiz. He seems so pleas'd he's almost frantick at seeing of his brother antick."

The catalogue description also notes that the first mezzotint (a printmaking technique) by Edward Luttrell actually showed a woman farting out a candle, and that it was very popular. Apparently, no known copy has survived.

Thankfully, this version where the woman has been replaced by a monkey is safely kept in our collection, for all of perpetuity to puzzle over.

Credit: A man looking through a magnifying glass at a picture of a monkey, whose flatulence extinguishes the flame of a candle; representing the pleasures of the sense of sight. Engraving, 17--. Reference: 27128i

Select your fighter - alchemical magic edition. Who are you taking with you on your quest for the Philosopher's Stone?

1. Shrunken King
2. Lactating Queen
3. Baby-Faced Dragon Prince
4. Flask Dangler
5. Falcon Mistress
6. Girl with Snake in Handbag
7. Bacchus the Terrifier
8. Shrunken King (Wet)
9. Tree Pervert
10. Cosmic Giantess

Alt text: These gently deranged colour drawings are found in a 17th century manuscript in our collection which describes the process of making the Philosopher's stone. The drawings show figures, largely unclothed, involved in curious allegorical alchemical scenes: a woman in a crown appears to shoot milk from her ni**le (but is that a second stream coming from her left hand?); a figure dangles or floats upside down in a glass flask; a person with a levitating crown holds up a flask of dragons; a statuesque woman has a large bird perch on her arm; a weedy king-like figure holds some wilting red flowers, apparently imprisoned in another flask; and several other similarly delicately unhinged compositions.

Credit: Alchemy, 17th cent.
Reference:
MS.29