Wellcome Collection

Mordechai Zilberman was born in 1934. Here, he's photographed wearing the clothes of the man he loved for 60 years.

When his partner was hospitalised with dementia, the couple hid their relationship, fearing homophobia would affect the care they received.

This extraordinary portrait by Oded Wagenstein features in our new exhibition The Coming of Age.

Credit: Mordechai Zilberman, 2019, by Oded Wagenstein.

Alt text: This photograph shows Mordechai with closed eyes against a background of floral wallpaper. The hand of a caregiver enters the frame from the left, holding a brush to Mordechai's hair. Mordechai wears a mustard-coloured jumper with the sleeves slightly rolled, and a white collar.

Bank holiday plans in a heatwave:

1. If you can't escape the sun, try simply eating it.
2. Climb into a tiny glass orb and achieve a body temperature of 500°C.
3. Pray to the sun god for mercy. Praise His peacock-feather skirts.
4. If all else fails, visit Wellcome Collection and find a cool quiet corner in one of our galleries 😎

Credit: Gerlach, Johann, fl.c.1575
Date: 1572-1576
Reference:
MS.309

Alt text: These wonderful illustrations come from a 16th century manuscript in our collection. The text, largely written in a mysterious coded cypher, describes alchemical secrets including a recipe for the elixir of life.

Sometimes the past can feel like a distant place. But the real moments commemorated in these paintings - a parent protecting their child, or praying over their sickbed - make it feel as close as can be. Votive paintings are made to give thanks to God for protection from harm or recovery from illness. They're often inscribed with the letters PGR: "Per Grazia Ricevuta", or "For Grace Received").

Alt text: The slides here show a number of votive oil paintings, largely dating from the 19th century. The first shows a woman shielding her child as a man attacks her in a bedroom; the others show various scenes of families sitting by the sickbeds of their loved ones in prayer or contemplation.

Credits: A man stabbing a woman with a stiletto. Oil painting, 18--.; Juaquin ? recovering from a wounded leg, 6 (?) September 1861. Oil painting by a Spanish painter, 1866; A child in bed, its parents praying to the Madonna del Parto. Oil painting.

This is an incredibly rare and important book ✨

When we handle books like this, we do so with the utmost care.

Sometimes, we store them in boxes so that the light does not age the ink. And we always ensure that they are kept in cool rooms so that the paper and bindings don’t become brittle.

But try telling all that to a small child with a handful of pencils and a box of watercolours 👨‍🎨

This book from 1836 tells the story of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and was written by Moses Edrehi, a Moroccan-born preacher and teacher.

But at some point before we acquired it, a small person must have decided that it should tell their story too.

A child has used the first few pages to doodle various street scenes. One shows a man sporting a top hat and a few ladies dressed in their Sunday finest strolling past a big blue building.

Towards the back of the book, there are other scrawled drawings of women in their gowns, hats and parasols. As well as a four-legged creature that has been helpfully labelled “dog” 🐶

Alt text: A carousel of pages from an incredibly rare book in our collection, which has also been used as a child’s sketchpad. One page shows a doodle of a girl on a train with what looks like the word “Bible” spelt out with backward B’s. Another shows a minimalist sketch of a dog with stick legs and the word “dog” written on its body.

Credit: An historical account of the ten tribes settled beyond the River Sambatyon in the East; with many other curious matters relating to the state of the Israelites in various parts of the world / Translated from the original manuscript and compiled by M. Edrehi. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark

The eradication of smallpox in 1980 remains one of medicine’s greatest triumphs 🧪

For centuries, smallpox was among the world’s deadliest diseases. It was highly contagious, disfiguring, and often fatal. It began with fever, pain, and crushing fatigue before erupting into blistering rashes that left many scarred or blind for life.

These illustrations are taken from a manuscript called 'The Essentials of Smallpox' (痘疹精要) which reveals the devastating impact of the disease in Edo-period Japan (1603-1867).

The illustrations document different symptoms of smallpox, and some images even have holes gouged into the paper to capture the severity of the scarring.

Long before modern vaccines existed, societies across China, India, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan practiced forms of inoculation by deliberately exposing people to smallpox material to build up their immunity.

In 1796, the physician Edward Jenner changed the course of medicine by using cowpox to build immunity against smallpox, creating the world’s first modern vaccine and a safer path to protection.

Thanks to vaccinations, smallpox became the first human disease ever eradicated, a testament to science, medicine and human resilience.

[Alt text: Six Japanese illustrations on yellowed parchment depicting the effects of smallpox on the human body. The images show different stages of the disease, from early pink rashes resembling chickenpox to swollen blisters filled with pus, and finally permanent pockmarked scarring. Several illustrations focus on the male torso, with one figure shown scratching his skin, conveying the intense discomfort and pain smallpox caused.]

Credit: MS Japanese 63. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Florence Nightingale, who was born on this day in 1820, didn’t just change nursing; she changed how we think about care itself.

She believed fresh air, light, and clean spaces mattered as much as medicine, shaping new ideas about hospitals and healing that still resonate today.

Nightingale's story isn’t simple. Although she is often perceived as a lone genius, the ideas we associate with Nightingale were built through significant shared knowledge, observation and labour, not all of it fully acknowledged at the time.

To remember Nightingale now is to acknowledge the force of her ideas, while looking at the wider networks and individuals that shaped them.

[Alt text: Florence Nightingale stands beside a hospital bed at night, holding a lamp as she looks down at a wounded soldier lying under white sheets. The dimly lit ward includes other beds and receding figures in the background.]

Credit: Crimean War: Florence Nightingale with her lamp at a patient's bedside. Colour lithograph, 1891, after H. Rae. Wellcome Collection. Reference: 9983i

Your body is a wonder of the world. Well done you!

Alt text: These amazing anatomical illustrations from 1833 show the human body stripped of its outer layers in exquisitely raw detail. We're shown bone, tissue, internal organs, and vascular and lymphatic systems, all lit up in red and blue. The first slide reads: 'POV: You remembered your body is a natural miracle'.

Credit: Anatomia universale ... rappresentata con tavole ... ridotte a minori forme di quelle della grande edizione pisana per Antonio Serantoni / [Paolo Mascagni]. 1833. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Do you talk with your hands?

Sign language has a history as long as any other kind of language, but these images from our collection capture some early ways in which hand-signs were made into formal systems. The first official written record of sign language in English comes from an account of a marriage ceremony in 1576, describing how the Deaf groom, “for the expression of his minde instead of words, of his own accorde used these signs: first he embraced her with his armes, and took her by the hande, putt a ring upon her finger and layde his hande upon her harte.” ❤️

[Alt text: Three images showing historical illustrations of sign language, including versions of French and British alphabetical fingerspelling and an engraving of delicately shaded hands making signs.]

Credits

1. The French sign language alphabet with ornate border, above it, the Abbé C.M. de l'Epée and the Abbé Sicard. Lithograph. Reference: 18015i
2. Hands showing the sign language alphabet. Coloured line engraving.
3. Two hands illustrating sign language with Hebrew characters. Engraving by J.W. Michaelis. Wellcome Collection, Public Domain Mark

Love it when fashion and art history come together 🫶

We clocked the Raja Ravi Varma inspo in this stunning Met Gala look, and we’re obsessed – especially since his work is part of Wellcome Collection. It’s giving culture and couture all in one.

Credits:
Raja Ravi Varma. Reference: 583015i
Raja Ravi Varma. Reference: 26593i
Raja Ravi Varma. Reference: 26530i
Raja Ravi Varma. Reference: 26647i
Raja Ravi Varma. Reference: 26637i

[Alt Text:
Image 1: Karan Johar at the 2026 Met Gala

Image 2: a collage featuring details from Johar’s cape, and two works in our collection: a seated Indian woman playing a sitar next to a garden pond and a second image of a swan telling Damayanti of Nala’s love.

Image 3: Krishna embracing Radha

Image 4: Lakshmi standing on a lotus in the water with a lil pink elephant.

Image 5: King Shantanu proposes to a fisher girl Satyavatī (Matsyagandha).

ManishMalhotra

Manspreaders, loud masticators and anyone named, Jim. Beware.

[Alt text: a painting of an angry-looking sun rising above a town. In the foreground, there's a countryside landscape rendered in blue hues. And out in the distance there's a town on a hill that looks like it might soon be subject to the wrath of the sun, which is depicted with frowny brows, tightly pursed lips and some deep worry wrinkles on its forehead. Some text overlaid on the image reads: "POV: you woke up in a bad mood and you're looking for something to be mad at.]

Credit: A red-faced sun rises above a city; stunted trees stand in the foreground; representing either the culmination of the alchemical work or the star of hope that inspires the alchemist through his tribulations. Watercolour painting. Wellcome Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Banke Holydaye plans: touchinge grasse for ye sake of mine sanitye 🥴

Alt text: Three details of an illustration of a 15th century French gardener or agricultural worker in lovely mauve tabard clasping the stem of a tree/big leafy plant. The young tree-hugger's face is a picture of spaced-out satisfaction.

Credit: Livre des simples médecines. Date: c. 1470
Reference: MS.626

Many museums have Chinese diagnostic dolls but what were they for?

These dolls tend to be framed as historical medical tools: a way for women to indicate pain or illness to physicians without compromising their ‘modesty’. Instead of exposing their bodies, women patients could point to a n**e figure as a workaround.

The figures were posed to show the entire body and some even reflect social practices of the time like foot binding; small details that offer a window into both medical history and lived experience.

But there’s another, more uncomfortable possibility.

Rather than clinical objects, could these dolls have been made for display (and even desire)?

Might “these ivory dolls, with their erotic poses and their bound feet... be products designed exclusively for European customers to meet their expectations of an exotic representation of the east", asked a 2021 blog post by the Royal College of Physicians.

"This would explain why they mainly exist outside of China and [would suggest] the medical stories behind them, might just be a way to justify their existence among a doctor’s collection.”

So what are we really looking at: instruments of care or artefacts shaped by the Western gaze?

Reference: Questioning the ‘diagnostic dolls’, RCP: https://history.rcp.ac.uk/blog/questioning-diagnostic-dolls

Imagine being born in a time when the best treatment your doctor had to offer was throwing leeches on your body to feast on your blood 🥴

It was one of the most common medical treatments in Europe for over a thousand years, prescribed for everything from fevers to inflammation, even for mental health issues.

Still, despite its widespread popularity, it doesn't look like people enjoyed it.

[Alt text

All scenes you'd absolutely never volunteer yourself for... 😮‍💨

1. A grisly image to kick off with; this hand-coloured 19th-century lithograph depicts a shirtless man slumped in a chair while a nurse applies leeches as part of Broussais’s regimen of bleeding. Blood runs down his body into bowls on the floor, already filled to the brim, as a man in a top hat (the doctor, perhaps?) stands to the side with his arm extended. The scene captures the harsh, indiscriminate treatments used during the 1832 Paris cholera epidemic.

2. Illustration of a king wearing a richly brocaded blue jacket. He has a wiry beard and small, round, apple-like cheeks. His large, fleshy hands are covered with writhing leeches. The king, apparently, is attempting to reduce his body fat through leeching (we're doubtful it worked out for him).

3. A pale, anxious-looking woman in a red bonnet endures leeches applied to her neck by a wigged man and woman in a bonnet. In the foreground, a boy holds a glass container filled with leeches, ready for use (yuck).

Credits:

1. Leeches. Histoires Prodigieuses, Pierrie Boaistuau

2. A medical practitioner administers leeches to a patient. Colour lithograph after L. Boilly, 1827. Louis-Léopold Boilly Date- 1827 Reference- 652845i

3. Broussais instructs a nurse to carry on bleeding a blood-besmeared patient. Coloured lithograph after V.L.

Proof that a bit of confidence can go a long way.

Credit: Acrobats- a woman lying on top of a pole holding on to a boy tied to one end of a rope, while someone in a penguin costume watches a man do a headstand. Gouache painting on mica by an Indian artist. Date- [between 1800 and 1899?] Reference- 581132i

Alt text: an Indian gouache painting of a scene showing a group of acrobats displaying their various talents. Hidden amongst them, in plain sight, is a giant white bird masquerading as a penguin.

A second image shows the catalogue information that we have on this item, which claims that this penguin-shaped figure is actually a person in a penguin costume, which adds another layer of mystery.

We have a lot of books in our collection. Not all of them are Pulitzer Prize winners. But we love them all the same 🐛🐜🐞



[Alt text: We’re looking at a photo of a book which, at first glance, looks rather dignified. Like it could contain forgotten recipes for ancient cures. Or records of anatomical descriptions, accompanied with painstakingly detailed illustrations.

We do have those books. But this one is not it. This one's called: Insects Mentioned in Shakespeare.]

Did you know over 100,000 Wellcome Collection objects are on permanent loan to the Science Museum?

They’ve been on display there since 1976 and are as dizzyingly huge and varied as our book, art and archive collections are.

Over 68,000 have been digitised and are available on the ’s Collection Online. Browse, search and download this magnificent collection at https://wellcome.info/sciencemuseum

Alt text:
1: An Indian holy man’s sandals studded with nails, worn to show their spiritual power to overcome physical pain. A23375

2: A rather fearsome looking rat trap with spiked jaws. A190745

3: A wooden statue of St Cosmas, likely 19th century and French. He wears a mustard yellow robe and hat and holds a phial of ointment. He and his twin brother Damian won many over to the Christian faith by practising medicine for free. A634946

4: A cyan box and bottle of "'Tabloid' Chloral Hydrate" made by Burroughs, Wellcome & Co.

5: A very creepy collection of phrenological heads made by William Bally in 1831. A642804

6: A bronze model of the skeleton with the jaw jutting out as if in song. Likely an 18th century European teaching tool. A78825

7: A collection of late 18th century English sand timers. 1991-216

Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Team Ta**us, your time has come. May your birthday month bring snacks and naps in abundance 🐂

Sound like someone you know?

Reference: MS.1089
wellcome.info/Basil-Valentine

Alt text: These slides show illustrations from a stunning 18th-century manuscript on alchemy in our Collection. The book has over 600 pages of calligraphic writing and each image appears to focus on balance or fire.

In one slide, a naked figure holding a star balances on an upside-down moon (extra), another naked person lies vertically on the pointy snoot of a dragon (next level balance). Meanwhile someone prepares for an epic battle, only to encounter a sweet green dog.

In other illustrations, fires are extinguished (pesky dragons), fires are adored (silly lion), and a pregnant woman balances on something that looks like (but definitely isn't) a bouncy medicine ball.

Ta**us traits are
1) professional napper
2) loyal to the end
3) overly resilient (for no apparent reason)
4) loves hard
5) always in charge
6) calm in a crisis
7) never judges your main character energy
8) extremely snack motivated

A concern for health and how to improve it is one of the universals of human experiences. As is drawing weird little characters in the margins of your writing it seems…

These illustrations are from a portable little book of medieval medical recipes. Written in Worcestershire in the 15th century, it has 129 recipes detailing how you would treat everything from fever and gout to dog bites, delirium and a woman’s sore breasts.

This object is currently on show at our ‘Expecting: Birth, Belief and Protection’ display which explores the protective practices and beliefs around pregnancy, childbirth and infertility that existed in medieval times and continue through to today.

Entirely free and open until April 19th, plan your visit here: https://wellcome.info/expecting

Live your best monastic scholar life and leaf through the full thing on our website here: https://wellcome.info/medieval

[Alt text:

1: A swaddled medieval baby rocks in its crib.

2: A rather magisterial looking chicken.

3: A rather rustic looking St John the Baptist.

4: An unknown medieval beast with yellow skin and long neck.

5: St James, partially obscured by a stain, seemingly karate chopping an oak tree into pieces with his bare hands.

6: Medieval text bordered by a strange mass of being, a hu**ed bird with the head of a rabbit whose tails spirals off into foliage.

7: A palm like leaf emerging from a “W”

8: The strangest one of all: a strange chicken man wearing a hat and nibbling at his own ivy tail.

9: A very fine initial T, coloured in blue and red.]