Discover all of the exhibitions, events and more on offer at Wellcome Collection, a free museum and library exploring health and human experience.

Credit: A century of vaccination and what it teaches / W. Scott Tebb. Source: Wellcome Collection. Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & ...

"Corrigenda and addenda to 'The life of Sir William Osler'" 8 p. (23 cm.) laid in.

A mesmerist using animal magnetism on a seated female patient. Wood engraving, ca. 1845. Date: [approximately 1845] Reference: 11823i ...

Being a lesbian has never been a crime in the UK, but 50 years ago, some psychologists experimented with treatments to try to ‘cure’ women of their orientation. Find out what this involved.

How do you avoid catching the plague? Smoke constantly. Carry a sponge soaked in vinegar. Hang oranges studded with cloves around your house. This was the best medical advice available circa 1665, as ...

Today smoking is seen publicly as a deadly vice, privately perhaps as more of a guilty pleasure. Follow tobacco’s journey over the centuries from medical remedy to killer carcinogen.

In 1950, an American journalist popularised the term ‘brainwashing’, arguing that a new amalgam of technology, medicine and ideology was allowing an onslaught on people’s minds. In this abridged ...

Nymphomania has traditionally been defined as an increased and therefore disturbing sexual drive. It was thought of as a serious medical condition particularly affecting women, who were often given ...

What is the ideal pillow? In Chinese culture, the ideal shifted over time, and views on a good sleep also reveal attitudes about studying, love, food and drink.

Ours is the age of contagious anxiety. We feel overwhelmed by the events around us, by injustice, by suffering, by an endless feeling of crisis. So how can we nurture the parts of ourselves that hope, ...

Laura Grace Simpkins attempts to untangle some uncomfortable truths about the social and environmental costs of making her medication.