Acts of Mercy by Frederick Cayley Robinson: now back on display

Hmm, these big white walls at the entrance to the Wellcome Library look rather bare and cold.


What does it look like if we try putting a painting up? One with warm colours, like one of the four paintings of the Acts of Mercy by Frederick Cayley Robinson, which the Wellcome Library acquired recently from the Middlesex Hospital?


Suppose we hang them in pairs? Would they fit?

Yes, the space could almost have been designed for them.











Magnificent! One can see how they relate to each other: there is a narrative in the pair that was designed to be seen sequentially, and a symmetry in those which were painted to be seen en face. And different colour schemes: the pair painted in World War I is more sombre, though whether the difference will be so pronounced when the pictures are cleaned cannot be known at present. Now that the paintings are again on display, details which have been overlooked are now visible, such as the pitted surface of the ancient stone steps, or the man with the handcart in the bottom right corner of one of the paintings: it looks as if he is delivering groceries to a Fitzrovia townhouse.

Visit the Wellcome Library to learn more about these paintings, their painter and their history. And if you were ever a patient, visitor or staff member at the Middlesex Hospital in Mortimer Street, London, do revisit these old friends.

Encore catalogue open for tagging

In February the Wellcome Library launched Encore, its new catalogue search tool. Even though it is still being tweaked to best suit the needs of our users, Encore is already making an impact.

Encore offers registered Library users the ability to tag books, journals, multimedia, photos, archival materials and more, with personally relevant keywords and descriptions. The tags then become searchable in the catalogue and appear in a tag cloud for all to see and use. Tags in the catalogue allow you to:

• create a virtual reading list
• use your own preferred terms to organise your research
• discover materials that have been similarly tagged by other members of the Wellcome community
• refine your search and explore new directions through the tag cloud.

We've already tagged hundreds of items for you, including Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL BSc student dissertations, MA student dissertations, and course readings. To locate these course readings and dissertations, simply search for your course number (for example: hmed3006 and hmedg007), bsc student dissertation, or ma student dissertation.

If you're already a Wellcome Library member, you can use your Library card number and PIN to log into Encore. If you are not already a member of the Wellcome Library, please complete the e-registration form. (On your first visit to the Library, you will need to upgrade to full membership.)

Try using Encore and let us know what you think by completing the short online survey, available from every Encore search screen. Your responses will help direct the development of this new service so that it works for you!

Commemorating the Pioneer Health Centre Peckham

Today the Peckham Society hosted the unveiling of an English Heritage Blue Plaque on the site of the house at 142 Queen's Road Peckham in which Drs Innes Pearse and George Scott Williamson set up the first phase of the 'Peckham Experiment' - the Pioneer Health Centre. This was an initiative aimed at uncovering the conditions that would promote health, rather than simply prevent or cure disease, and involved a social club for members as well as regular medical check-ups.

A purpose-built centre, designed by the modernist architect Sir Owen Williamson, was subsequently constructed and opened in 1935. However, although the Centre, which had had to close down for the duration of the Second World War, re-opened in 1946, it could not readily be integrated into the the post-war Welfare State and National Health Service, and closed in 1950. The building has since undergone several changes of use and is now converted into flats.

The event was attended by members of the Peckham Society and officials and board members from English Heritage, as well as members of the Pioneer Health Foundation which preserves and promotes the heritage of the Centre. Pam Elven, a Centre subscriber when it was still in action, was in attendance.

The surviving archives of the Pioneer Health Centre are now held in the Wellcome Library - the catalogue is available via the Archives and Manuscripts online database by putting SA/PHC into the reference field of the search interface. The Library also holds many of the publications produced by the Centre staff during its lifetime and following its closure.

Free workshops at the Wellcome Library

Once again the Wellcome Library's new schedule of workshops is available for spring/summer. The workshops offer introductions to resources and research methods, and are aimed at the general public.

The programme includes:

• thematic workshops such as science in the news and the history of medicine on the internet
• training on specific resources such as the Wellcome Images database and PubMed Central
• introductions to the Wellcome Archives and genealogical research resources at the library.

All workshops are free and available to everyone who joins the library (library membership is also free and open to all). To book a place on any of the workshops, please use the new online booking facility link on the library web site.

Author: Lalita Kaplish

Unflowering fuchsia: the date of "No walk today"

"No walk today" by Sophie Anderson is a classic of Victorian genre painting, but it has not always been appreciated. The painting's last owner paid only 14 guineas for it after it had failed to reach its reserve of 15 guineas at auction. That auction was held about 1926 in the London rooms of Robinson, Fisher & Harding (a firm much frequented by Henry S. Wellcome), and the buyer was the Foreign Office official David (later Sir David) Montagu Douglas Scott (1887-1986).

As a lover of both Victorian art and gardening, Sir David particularly admired the precision with which the painter had indicated the time of year (July) through the flowers—jasmine in bloom, fuchsia not yet in bloom. After Sir David died at the age of 99, his pictures passed to his widow, and after her death they were sold by Sotheby's to benefit the Finnis Scott Foundation. Sotheby's sale on 19 November 2008 was accompanied by a huge and scholarly catalogue enlivened with photographs of the Scotts' home showing the paintings hanging in corridors, kitchens and sitting rooms, with perceptive hand-written labels stuck to the walls.

"No walk today" is reproduced in standard works on Victorian art and has been lent to several exhibitions, including the Treasure Houses of Britain exhibition in Washington, DC, in 1985. Its subject is the disappointment of a little girl dressed up for a walk which has been cancelled because of rain. Through the window dripping with raindrops we can see that her costume includes some of the very worst materials to wear in wet weather: velvet, ostrich feathers, silk and lace. If her family had the money to dress her up like that, couldn't they have afforded to give her an umbrella or a waterproof coat? The latter rather depends on the date. It was one thing to have the idea of mixing rubber with cloth, as Charles Macintosh did; it was quite another to turn the results into something pleasant to wear, and the technology of waterproof clothing was gradually adapted to the aesthetics of costume throughout the century. But even a macintosh could not protect against cold and wet miasmas which might engender, especially in children, a fever leading to lethal pneumonia.

In any case, what exactly is the date of "No walk today"? It bears no date, but the back is inscribed with the artist's address, 21 Merton Road, Kensington. Sotheby's say "The picture was presumably painted in the late 1850s as Anderson had moved to Lincoln's Inn Fields by 1863. The work's early history is not known."

There is in fact an early document for "No walk today", which suggests a date for its creation.
The Wellcome Library has a print of the painting, lettered with the title "No walk today" and the credit line:
Photographed by Lebbeus Colls from a painting by Mrs Anderson. Engraved on copper by voltaic electricity & printed in the ordinary manner. Published March 1857 by the Photo-Galvano-Graphic Comp.y .

There is also a series statement: Photographic art treasures
(To read the original lettering, please click on the image.)

What does all this mean? It means that this is one of a small number of prints made in London by "a very delicate and complicated process … ambitiously far ahead of its time", patented in 1854 and called photogalvanography by its Austrian inventor, Paul Pretsch [1]. Pretsch, who came to London in 1851 to see the Great Exhibition, was one in a long line of people who wrestled with the problem of turning a tonal image such as a watercolour or photograph into something that the printing press could print [2]. In his process, the image was projected from a negative on to gelatin, and thence replicated on a copper plate by a process using electrolysis (described in the print as "voltaic electricity"). The small number of prints using this process presumably follows from the difficulty of making the plate. Pretsch started the "Photographic art treasures" in December 1856. If this "photogalvanograph" was published in March 1857, and the painting was started at the season identified by Sir David from the unflowering fuchsia, the painting must have been painted between July 1856 and March 1857.

The photographer is named as Lebbeus Colls. He was a London art dealer already in business in New Bond Street by 1852, and was also an early photographer. In both activities he was sometimes associated with his brother, the painter Richard Colls, one of many people sued by Henry Fox Talbot over photographic patents. It is striking that within a year of its production Sophie Anderson's painting was already being described as an "art treasure". Present day opinion agrees, for in 2008 "No walk today" fetched the highest price in the David Scott sale: £1,038,050 (including the buyer's premium). Even after the lapse of 82 years, that must be a good return on a painting bought for 14 guineas.

[1] Bamber Gascoigne, How to identify prints, London 1986, chapter 36

[2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fotogalvanografie

Family History at the Wellcome Library

April’s edition of the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? magazine includes a feature on the best websites for researching medical ancestors in the UK.

Rather pleasingly, the Wellcome Library’s website is chosen as the ‘Best Overall’ site. Our free to download Biographical and family history sources guide is described as "a useful general introduction to family history research, touching on doctors, physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, nurses, midwives and dentists".

Also flagged for attention is the "captivating" Wellcome Images and also our Medical Archives and Manuscript Survey (which gathered information about medical records from 1600-1945, held in Greater London repositories).

Ranked just behind the Wellcome Library’s website is that of the Hospital Records Database (HRD), which is jointly maintained by the Wellcome Library and the National Archives. The HRD holds information on the location of hospital records (as opposed to the actual records themselves), and focuses mostly on records which have been transferred to local record offices or are still administered by health authority archives.

Genealogical researchers have become much more aware of the rich resources that the Wellcome Library can offer and this accolade is the gratifying product of a concentrated campaign to widen our readership in these areas: also of note recently was a large feature in the January 2009 issue of Family History Monthly.

We can also add that as part of our range of user workshops, the Wellcome Library also offers a popular introductory "Hunt the Ancestor" session for those wishing to trace their (medical) family history.

Ada Lovelace Day

The 24th March is Ada Lovelace Day, an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.

Whereas many bloggers will use this opportunity to acknowledge unsung heroines, we've decided to write about one of the most notable and acclaimed scientists of her age, Marie Curie (1867-1934).

Born Marie Sklodowska in Warsaw on 7 November 1867, Marie moved to Paris In 1891, to study physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne. It was there she met Pierre Curie, professor of the School of Physics. They were married in 1895.

Building on the work of Wilhelm Roentgen and Henri Becquerel, the Curies collaborated together in researching radioactivity. In 1898, the Curies announced the discovery of two new chemical elements, polonium and radium. In recognition of their research, the Curies, along with Becquerel, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903.

The Curies research would have direct implications on medicine, in the development of both x-rays in surgery and in radiotherapy. Indeed, during World War One, Marie helped to equip French ambulances with x-ray equipment and even drove some of them to the front lines.

Pierre died in a road accident in 1906, but Marie took over his teaching post, becoming the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne. She would receive a second Nobel Prize, for Chemistry, in 1911.

Pictured is one of the two working notebooks of Marie Curie’s that we hold. It dates from 1899 to 1902 and contains notes of experiments on radioactive substances, with rough pen-drawings of apparatus. It was purchased for Henry Wellcome’s Library collection in 1932.

It has been claimed that other Curie notebooks from this period - held by the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris - are still so radioactive that users have to sign release forms for their own safety before looking at them (other sources even claim that readers can only look at the notebooks after donning protective clothing). There are no such issues over access to the notebooks held in the Wellcome Library - merely the filling in of a Reader's Undertaking form.

New evening events in the Wellcome Library

In April, the Library will launch a new strand of events, held in the Reading Room, to explore how authors have drawn on the resources of the Wellcome Library to inspire and inform their writing.

The Ghosts of Netley, Thursday 23 April, 18.30–20.00
Philip Hoare, author of Spike Island, will use archive images and film to re-imagine the history of Netley Victorian military hospital through its ruins, and the disparate men and women who worked or visited there.

The Atmosphere of Heaven, Thursday 21 May, 18.30-20.00
Author Mike Jay will discuss his new work The Atmosphere of Heaven: The Unnatural Experiments of Dr. Beddoes and his Sons of Genius, to be published by Yale University Press in April. Mike will discuss the chaotic rise and fall of the Pneumatic Institution in Bristol, and reveal for the first time its crucial influence - on modern drug culture, attitudes toward objective and subjective knowledge, the development of anaesthetic surgery, and the birth of the Romantic movement.

Tickets for both events are free but must be booked in advance. You can also telephone on 020 7611 2222.

Lesley Hall on Women's Hour

Dr Lesley Hall, Senior Archivist at the Wellcome Library, appeared on Radio 4's Women's Hour yesterday (Wednesday 18 March), talking about anatomical knowledge of the female reproduction system, including William Hunter's pioneering Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus (1774).

You can listen again through the Women's Hour pages on the Radio 4 website, or from the BBC iplayer.

Prints, photographs, paintings and drawings catalogue hits 65,000!

The Wellcome Library catalogue of prints, photographs, paintings and drawings, and of iconographic documents in general, reached its 65,000th entry today. The numbers are assigned by the computer as the records are made, so there is no particular significance in the item to which this round number was allotted, but it happened to be a propaganda poster issued by the French Communist Party in 1979 protesting against cuts in hospital budgets. Yes, even back then in the days of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing people were complaining about health care budgets.

Record number 1 was created on 21 October 1991. There are still plenty of works to be added to the catalogue from the Wellcome Library collection bequeathed by Henry S. Wellcome in 1936, not to mention new accessions, and new records are being added to the catalogue every day. A rolling list of the new accessions is available: today they include Chinese and German posters on public health, and American press photographs of media events from the past. New records for items already in the Wellcome Library are listed as they are added to the catalogue: they currently feature AIDS posters purchased in 1999 and some remarkable English 18th-century mezzotints.

God’s face in the clouds

One hundred and eighty years ago, on 31st March 1829, a York tanner and preacher (and occasional artist) named Jonathan Martin was on trial for his life. Some eight weeks previously, on 1st February, Martin had hidden himself in York Minster after evensong and set light to the building, causing massive damage to the woodwork of the building including the roof of the choir and the organ. Arson on this scale could carry the death penalty.

This was the culmination of a career of fanatical and eccentric behaviour. Martin was born in the North-East in 1782 and brought up in part by his grandmother, whose Protestantism was of an extreme, hellfire variety; his traumatic childhood also included witnessing the murder of his sister. His younger brother was John Martin, later famous as the painter of huge apocalyptic visions. After some years in the navy, around 1810 when he returned to life on shore, he began to experience violent and marvellous dreams, and in 1814 he experienced a religious conversion, joined the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion and became violently opposed to the Church of England. This period of his life culminated in 1817 with his threatening to kill the Bishop of Oxford and being sent to an asylum. Here he began to paint again, showing what a witness at his trial called “extraordinary marks of uninstructed talent, mixed with frenzy and wildness”. He escaped in 1821 and based himself in York, where the Wesleyan Connexion disowned him and the Primitive Methodists soon banned him from meetings: he was becoming a one-man sect. During the latter part of 1828 and the early weeks of 1829 his behaviour became more and more extreme, including hanging threatening placards on the railings of the Minster, but the warning signs were missed and it was only after the arson attack in February that he was arrested.

On March 31st the judge found Martin not guilty on the grounds of insanity – reversing the verdict of the jury – and committed him to an asylum. Here, a couple of weeks later, Martin drew an image of God’s face and a sword in the clouds, attempting to record two of his religious visions: a document now held in the Wellcome Library’s archives collection as MS.7312/17. This time there was to be no escape and he died in St Mary’s Hospital, London, in 1838.

His younger brother, John Martin, has already been mentioned. Eccentricity ran in the family: their elder brother William Martin became a poet and self-styled philosopher notable for his violent opposition to modern science, Newton being a particular bugbear. Ironically, he was almost as fervent in his support for the Church of England and his opposition to dissent as his younger brother was on the opposite side. Some items related to this self-styled “philosophical conquerer of all nations” are also held in the Library, as MS.7312/18. A witness to the elder Martin’s career described him as “perfectly cracked but harmless”; sadly this could not be said of Jonathan.

The enemies of books

We are currently reviewing our disaster recovery plans, and what we would do in the event of a major incident affecting the collections in London.

This gem of a book from 1888 (The Enemies of Books, by William Blades) reminds us that our forbears had similar concerns - and a shrewd grasp of where disaster might lie!

William Blades' list:
-Fire
-Water
-Gas and heat
-Dust and neglect
-Ingorance and bigotry
-Bookbinders
-Servants and children
-The bookworm
-Other vermin

Wellcome Library Insights

Our Insights sessions offer visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. Sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections from a member of Library staff.

Previous Insights have been held on such topics as Henry Wellcome, Healing Herbs, our film digitisation project and face reading.

Details on our forthcoming Insights:

Francis Crick: DNA and beyond - 19 March

Madness – 2 April and 7 May

Native Americans – 16 April

Caricatures and Cartoons – 21 May

Entrance to an Insight session is free but tickets must be booked in advance.

An Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbets: see the Mary Toft collection online

The Library holds a comprehensive collection of early printed works concerning the notorious case of Mary Toft, a woman who claimed to give birth to rabbits. Around 22 18th century pamphlets and books have been scanned cover to cover and are now available via the Library catalogue.

In November 1726, a woman named Mary Toft was at the center of a public debate that included some eminent physicians of the day. Mary Toft became known as the Surrey Rabbit Breeder, based on the account that after a series of miscarriages, she began to give birth to rabbits. This continued in the presence of a Swiss anatomist connected with the court of George I, Nathanael St. Andre. St. Andre published A Short Narrative of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbets, and other pamphlets and broadsides followed. Toft came to London, where, after the 17th rabbit 'birth', many became convinced the matter was a hoax. Toft then confessed and St. Andre apologized.

The Library holds the key texts on the case, representing the views of both those who defended Mary’s claims and her sceptics. In particular is a volume (EPB T.347) assembled around 1851 by Edward Hawkins, keeper in the British Museum's department of antiquities. It contains a number of original pamphlets as well as manuscript copies of others, made by Hawkins. The Library also holds a Hogarth print of Mary Toft giving birth to the rabbits.

There are a number of other similar volumes put together in the 19th century, one at the Royal Society of Medicine and another in the Osler Library at McGill University, Montreal.

Author: Julianne Simpson

New electronic resources at the Wellcome Library

The following electronic resources have been added to our existing growing collection. Further description and access details are available when you click on individual resources.

Subscribed resources:
Who's who and who was who (online directory)
BFI screenonline (British film and television)
Film and sound online (access upgraded, available onsite to library users)
TheScientificWorldJOURNAL (articles on biomedicine to environmental sciences)

Freely available resources:
Medpedia (Medical encyclopaedia)
Bioline International (open access bioscience journals published in developing countries)
CERUK Plus (UK research projects on children's services and education)
ERIC (digital library of education research and information)

Or go to our complete A-Z list of all electronic resources available at Wellcome Library.

Author: Yasmin Bokhari

Happy birthday, Paul Ehrlich!

Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) was a leading medical researcher of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries particularly famed for his work in bacteriology and immunology. He won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1908. He is best remembered for 'Dr Ehrlich's Magic Bullet', Compound 606, the arsephanemine drug salvarsan discovered in 1909, which provided a cure for syphilis,.

Shortly after the Second World War, Gunther Schwerin, one of his grandsons, located Ehrlich's copybooks in Germany, and sent them, along with other material, to the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum in London for safekeeping. While they were there, his former secretary Martha Marquardt, who was also his biographer, and the co-editor of the four volumes of his collected papers, one of the few people able to read his handwriting, prepared seven sets of typewritten transcripts. These carbons are the 3rd set (of 4) copies, formerly in the possession of Sir Henry Dale, and presented by him to the Library early in 1958. The originals, and 3 sets of copies, are now held with the Paul Ehrlich archive in the Rockefeller Archive Center, New York, by whose kind permission this particular set of copies is made available in the Wellcome Library

There are 6 series, representing both copies of letters sent by him, and experimental notebooks. There are not complete sets of transcripts for all of these: in some cases the originals themselves appear to no longer exist. According to a letter from Dr E A Underwood, Director of the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, to Gunther Schwerin, 25 Mar 1963 (WA/HMM/CO/Eau/13), there are some misreadings by Marquardt of scientific terms in the originals, as, although she was capable of deciphering Ehrlich's writing, she was not herself a scientist.

Ehrlich's name is one of those on the frieze of names of the most distinguished figures in medical science, created in 1913 for the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum when it was based in Wigmore Street. The frieze is now viewable around the gallery of the Wellcome Library Reading Room at 183 Euston Road

The Future of Medical History Libraries

It is a depressing fact that history of medicine collections in some US libraries are under threat of reduced service provision and/or closure. This is not just a product of the current economic climate (although that does not help), but has been an issue for many years. In order to approach this problem and provide input on these issues, W. Bruce Fye, President of the American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM), has set up an Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of Medical History Libraries.

In his message in the February 2009 AAHM Newsletter, Fye stresses the importance of “physical collections with respect to historical research in medicine and health-related fields in the twenty-first century.” Yet the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the New York Academy of Medicine libraries have both reduced their hours of service and now receive visitors by appointment only. According to Fye, “two of our nation’s biggest institutional collections are confronting uncertain futures. This has important implications for scholarship.”

This is the most recent development of a trend for the dispersion and destruction of books from “most local and state medical libraries” in the US over the past fifty years. Fye also remarks that “medical history (defined broadly) is an under-populated, under-appreciated, and under-funded area” and “medical history libraries, always considered fringy by all but a few, face the prospect of having what little fringe remains trimmed away…” The new Ad Hoc Committee will investigate how this trend will impact on opportunities for research.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea

A new three-part documentary, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, is the latest programme from the BBC’s ongoing Darwin: The Genius of Evolution season.

The first part aired last week and is available to view through the BBC iplayer.

Keep an eye out for Wellcome Library content, supplied by Wellcome Images, during the series.

Mrs Bennett -- before and after

These two paintings are part of an archive of Georgian paintings and drawings which appear to come from Leeds. Works from this old Yorkshire collection have been appearing in dribs and drabs, from several different dealers, since 2004. This pair of portraits was among the first works from the collection to have been acquired by the Wellcome Library.

The two portraits show the same person, "Mrs Bennett", before and after treatment. The one on the left is inscribed "Mrs Bennett. Disease from 1818 to 1821", and shows Mrs Bennett in a lace cap and night-gown, afflicted with a skin disease (or a skin manifestation of systemic disease) covering most of her face and parts of her neck and chest. The painting on the right, showing her perfectly recovered, is inscribed "Under cure from from 1818 to 1821". These could well be the first clinical Before-and-after pictures in the Wellcome Library. A few others are listed here, though the list is certainly not exhaustive.

These two paintings are also the first items in this archive to have been conserved: when they were acquired, they were both ragged and unstretched pieces of painted canvas. Now they have been cleaned, lined and stretched, and are ready for framing. To see them in greater detail, click on the images above.

Yes, a Georgian Mrs Bennett. And if you are struggling to remember when Pride and prejudice, featuring a Hertfordshire family of Bennetts, was published, the answer is 1813 – not so long before this Yorkshire Mrs Bennett entered into the care of the (as yet unknown) physician, surgeon or apothecary who commissioned these two paintings of her.

Wellcome Library: left no. 603108i, right no. 603109i

Tribulations of Father Bernardo

Etching by Jeremiasz Falck after Bernardo Strozzi. Wellcome Library no. 35207i

Bernardo Strozzi (1581-1644) of Genoa was a painter whose works include this portrayal of an old lady sitting at her dressing table, assisted by two slightly mocking younger women. One of the carers holds upright the heavily-framed mirror while the other sticks a feather in the lady's hair. Strozzi's oil painting of this subject is now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, but in the seventeenth century it was owned by the Reynst brothers in Amsterdam. There it was recorded in this etching attributed to the engraver Jeremiasz Falck (1619-1677) from Gdansk, who sometimes worked in Amsterdam [1].

Falck's print has been discussed as a representation of "the lustful old woman", a type identified in terms of humoral physiology [2]. Women's bodies were phlegmatic because they were cold and wet, whereas men's were choleric because they were hot and dry. In later life, women became either colder or drier, leading them to become "merry widows". While it would be anachronistic to label her "osteoporotic", how appropriate is it even to label her using terms from specialist medical books of her time? Let's come back to this question after considering the life of Bernardo Strozzi.

Strozzi had two occupations: he was both a professional painter and a Capuchin friar. In 1625-1626 this unusual combination brought him into the courts, where he was accused of conduct unbecoming his religious status. His main defense was that he was painting not to acquire riches –- the Capuchins were a mendicant order –- but to support yet a third role in his life, which was as breadwinner for his aged mother and his impoverished sister Ginetta.

An article published in January 2009 reveals new documents in the Genoa archives about Father Bernardo's complicated life [3]. They show that, four years after the trial, Strozzi was still trying to exculpate himself, for he arranged for four witnesses to testify for him before a notary on 8 May 1630. They testified that Bernardo, having obtained temporary exemption from his duties with the Capuchins, was in too poor a state of health to return to them, and still needed to support his relatives by painting.

The third and fourth witnesses were both physicians, and a paraphrase of the newly discovered documents follows. First, Giovanni Agostino Balbano, who had already given evidence for Bernardo in 1625-1626, now stated that he had known Reverend Father Bernardo and been his medical adviser for about 16 years, and had treated him in his infirmities, and knew that he was of weak constitution; that in entering a strict religious order he would not be able to persevere in it, and his life would be curtailed. Moreover he had been found to have an illness of the left leg in the form of a huge varicose vein which increased the gravity of his state of health. Moreover Balbano continued, Ginetta, the sister of Father Bernardo, had also long been in a very bad state of health, and was heading towards a chronic incurable wasting state (etica). He added that Ginetta (who was married, but to a husband who did not provide for her) had a son of four years old who was virtually blind.

Then in the evening the fourth and last witness testified: he was Giovanni Battista Schratino, Doctor of Arts and Medicine. He declared that he had visited Strozzi earlier that day, and found that he was troubled with a flux of phlegmatic and melancholy humours in the left thigh and leg, which was manifested in a lesion formed by a very large dilatation of the veins of the whole leg and part of the thigh, so that the limb was damaged by a sore which had not been cured. And if it was not cured, and particularly if greater exercise and movement occurred, it would cause many lesions, incurable ones at that, even more so if he entered a strict order like the Capuchins or similar, who go barefoot or wear rough shoes, that would accelerate the opening up of the sores with danger to his life, since he had a very delicate and weak constitution. And on the same day Dr Schratino said he had visited Bernardo's nephew who was four or five years old, and who was troubled by a disturbance of cold and wet humours in the head, with great weakness in the eyes which made him almost blind. Moreover, the boy's mother was unhealthy and was bleeding with distillation of humours from the brain (catarro), and was running a risk of becoming phthisic (another generic term for a wasting disease). Asked for the grounds of his evidence, he replied that he was a physician and a practitioner, and that that was the truth.

In this case we see traditional western medicine in action. Humoral practice really did exist outside the pages of vellum-bound tomes of Galen! Despite the evidence of the two doctors, the court was not sympathetic, for in 1631 Bernardo was sentenced to eighteen months' harsh confinement in the Capuchin convent in Genoa. However, in July 1633, while allowed out on compassionate leave to visit Ginetta, the Reverend Father did a runner and sought asylum in the rival republic of Venice. There the ex-friar Bernardo continued painting unhindered [4].

Between the trials of 1625-6 and these new witness statements of May 1630, mention of the painter's aged mother disappears. It was she who, many years before, had sent the boy Bernardo to train as a painter. She seems to have died in February 1630. Could she have been the old lady who was shown making up in front of her dressing table mirror – freed at last from the ebb and flow of humours, and the indignities of old age?

[1] Wellcome Library catalogue no. 35207i

[2] Anouk Janssen, Grijsaards in zwart-wit: de verbeelding van de ouderdom in de Nederlandse prentkunst (1550-1650), Zutphen 2007, p. 285, fig. 190 (the same print attributed to Theodoor Matham)

[3] Andaleeb Badiee Banta, 'Trials and tribulations: new documentary evidence for Bernardo Strozzi in Genoa', The Burlington magazine, January 2009: 14-18

[4] Ezia Gavazza et al., Bernardo Strozzi: Genova 1581/82-Venezia 1644, Milan 1995, p. 367.

Pioneer of computing arrives in database

The Wellcome Library's online archive catalogue has just added a new name: Charles Babbage (1791-1871), the mathematician and designer of mechanical computing devices, the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine, that foreshadowed today's information technology. Thirty-five letters and notes by Babbage, spanning forty years, are described in the catalogue as MS.8648.

His correspondents, in many cases people also represented elsewhere in the archive collections, include Sir Roderick Impey Murchison (1792-1871), the geologist and geographer; Sir Marc Brunel (1769-1849), civil engineer and father of the more famous Isambard Kingdom Brunel; the French physicist and astronomer Dominique François Jean Arago (1786-1853) and the British astronomer and banker Sir John William Lubbock (1803-1865); and the sculptor Sir Richard Westmacott (1775-1856).

Babbage was a prickly individual, in many ways living up to the stereotype of the eccentric mathematician. It is noticeable that the letters contain several rejections of dinner invitations, although to do him justice he does also accept some and in another case he does have a very good excuse, being already “engaged to dine with Mr. Darwin.” Tantalisingly, in one undated note to Sir John Lubbock he says that he will not be able to visit Lubbock as he is “so occupied by the drawings of my new engine…”

Heston Blumenthal - do try this at home

Britain's most scientific chef Heston Blumenthal is back on tv this week, with his new Channel 4 series inspired by historic recipes. This week he recreated an amazing array of dishes, including mock turtle soup, Alice's 'Drink Me' potion from her Adventures in Wonderland and an eye-popping absinthe jelly recipe.

Heston used some very intersting source material for his creations. As well as Lewis Carroll, he has found inspiration from a number of Victorian recipe books. The Wellcome Library holds a number of historic cookbooks, including the one he uses for his crispy edible insects, Vincent M. Holt's Why Not Eat Insects? If you are inspired to find out what the Victorians did for us, then feel free to visit the Library and check the recipes out for yourself.

Next week's episode will cover Medieval cookery, with a pie containing four and twenty blackbirds - well, pigeons actually - a fruit dish made from bull's testicles, and some nicely fried nerves. Later weeks will cover Tudor England and Ancient Rome. Fabulous.

Donald Winnicott papers - expanded catalogue now online

Early in February a substantial additional tranche of papers of Donald Winnicott was received from the Winnicott Trust to add to the significant transfer they made last summer of the papers of this important figure in child psychiatry and the British school of psychoanalysis. The new material has just been added to the online catalogue.

Besides vastly expanding the number of Winnicott's unpublished papers in the collection, this new accession includes his appointment diaries, additional case-material (most of which is, however, currently closed for reasons of Data Protection), files on his interaction with child psychiatrists and the psychoanalytic community in Finland, and an assortment of documentation relating to his work with the Oxfordshire Evacuee Hostels Scheme during World War II. It was in connection with this scheme, which dealt with evacuees who were too disturbed to be billetted in ordinary households, that Winnicott met Clare Britton, who became his second wife, in her capacity as the project psychiatric social worker.

The catalogue can be viewed online by putting PP/DWW into the reference field of the search interface for the Archives and Manuscripts online catalogue. Clicking on the blue numerals in the lefthand column of the resulting hitlist will provide access to detailed descriptions, and the 'See in Context' link for a hierarchical 'tree' view of the catalogue.

Readers requiring access to the collection must obtain prior permission from the Winnicott Trust: further information available from Archives and Manuscripts

Brought to Life

Today has seen the launch of 'Brought to Life: Exploring the History of Medicine', a new online resource from the Science Museum.

The website showcases more than 2,500 objects, the majority of which were originally collected by or on behalf of Sir Henry Wellcome (1853-1936). Mostly populated by items now held in the Science Museum’s stores, the website also draws on items from the Wellcome Library.

'Brought to Life' places these items in their historical contexts, giving information on practitioners, their techniques, the medical objects they used and the patients they aimed to heal, all wrapped up in a timeline stretching from Ancient Egypt to the present day. There are also ten multimedia games, including a trip to a plague-ridden town in the Middle Ages and an immersive account of battlefield surgery through the ages.

The resource is aimed at schools and university students, but given the richness of the material and the quality of the descriptions, anyone with an interest in the health and history of humans will find something to enjoy here.

Item of the month - March 2009

In the wake of the ‘Frankenstein science’ fears stirred up by last year’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, startling evidence has come to light of a strange hybrid organism genetically engineered in the USA.

A newly-catalogued file in Francis Crick’s archive reveals the existence of Kameelman, a chameleon-human clone created by the ‘evil fertility specialist’ Dr Gor Menchin. Kameelman’s chameleon DNA gives him the power to ‘metamorph bodily characteristics to resemble a different person’. But don’t panic! Kameelman is not a megalomaniac hellbent on destruction but a teenager ‘on a mission to fight social injustice through peer-to-peer mentoring’.

Crick received issues 1-3 of the comic book Kameelman in 2003 along with a request to write the foreword for a book version. On the face if it an unlikely publication to turn up in an eminent scientist’s papers, Kameelman is just one in a bewildering torrent of unusual requests sent to Crick over his career.

Back in 1994, for example, he was offered literary immortality by the science fiction writer Jack McDevitt, who sought Crick’s permission to write him a cameo role in Ancient Shores, his novel about a stargate in North Dakota.

Despite his extrovert personality, Crick was publicity shy and fiercely protective of his own personal ‘brand’ - unlike, in his view, James Watson, his co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. He was also no fan of science fiction. It is no surprise then that he refused McDevitt’s invitation – nor that he slyly suggested instead ‘Why not ask Jim Watson?’.

Kameelman clearly draws on a long science fiction lineage of human/animal hybrids, but the comic also taps into contemporary fears about assisted fertility, genetic research and violence between young people. As for the merits of its graphics and storylines, connoisseurs of the genre have plenty to say – see, for example, TheFourthRail on Kameelman’s ‘help-line altruism meets super-heroics’.

In the end Kameelman fails to tempt Crick into the world of graphic novels. But the very request reflects the power of Crick’s public persona. 50 years after his and Watson’s ground-breaking discovery in 1953, supplicants still came to him in the hope that some of his greatness would rub off on them.

For more information on the Crick archive please see the Archives and Manuscripts catalogue.