Re-edit medical history film

A new addition to the Wellcome Film project has been made: downloadable videos to keep, edit and watch as you wish from your own computer. The videos are H.264 (MPEG4) format and broadband resolution (2Mbps), easily playable by both Mac and PC users. To download, simply find the title you want in the catalogue searching the Wellcome Film homepage, and click on the 'Download entire title' link in the catalogue record.

All videos on the Wellcome Film website are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commerial 2.0 UK licence, so go ahead and edit away! If you do use any of our videos in one of your projects, please let us know by leaving a comment on our blog or on our YouTube channel - we'd love to see them!

In other Wellcome Film news, our YouTube channel was featured on Wired's website bringing a new audience to these medical films. The most popular video as a result of this is now Prefrontal Tuberculoma, a 1933 surgical film showing the removal of a brain tumour caused by tuberculosis (not for the faint of heart - see below).

Author: Lucy Smee

Free workshops at the Wellcome Library

Our team of library and archive professionals are offering a series of short practical sessions to help you to discover and take advantage of the variety of Wellcome Library resources.

The new Autumn programme of workshops begins on October 13th 2009.

There are workshops introducing resources in the medical humanities, visual resources (including the Wellcome Images database), contemporary themes such as science in the news, and training on specific resources such as electronic journals and PubMed.

You can also pick up expert tips on researching our collections at workshops about the Library catalogues.

The workshops last approximately one hour and are open to all, with membership of the Library.

Places are limited and booking is essential. Use the calendar to find out more, or book a place on any of the workshops.

Author: Lalita Kaplish

Wellcome Library Insight - Medi-cinema

This week's free Wellcome Library Insight session, 'Medi-cinema' - on Thursday 1st October, 3pm - explores our Moving Image and Sound Collections.

The session offers an opportunity to find out how our curators preserve film and video, and also to view some of the fascinating films in our holdings.

17th Century Recipe Book project completed

As we mentioned some time ago in a previous blog post, the Library has digitised 76 medical recipe books from its collections, and has now made available all the transcriptions of the recipe titles (transcriptions were created by Backstage Library Works). These titles are searchable via the Archives and Manuscripts catalogue. There are now tens of thousands of recipe titles containing original spelling and associated Library of Congress or MeSH subject headings to enable researchers to search within the text of these fascinating manuscripts. Individual pages and entire manuscripts are also available online in PDF format.

The following is MS 1, a manuscript of medicinal and culinary recipes (including a recipe for roast peacock, and another to cure bedwetting), from 1621. You can use Scribd to download this PDF as well. For best results, go to "More - View Mode - Slide mode" and view full screen.

MS1Acton_Grace

Congratulations to Catherine Draycott

Catherine Draycott, Head of Wellcome Images, has been selected by the Royal Photographic Society for its Combined Royal Colleges Medal for 2009.

The award was established in 1958 with the Royal College of Physicians of London, the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and is given to recognise an outstanding contribution to photography and its application in the service of medicine or surgery.

Catherine will be formally presented with the medal later this year at the Royal Society, and for now is deserving of a big “Congratulations” from us all for this fantastic accolade which rewards both herself and the success of Wellcome Images.

Author: Louise Crane

Item of the Month - September 2009

Laudanum, Sago and Glue for the Father of his Country

Two hundred and fifty years ago, on September 20th 1759, a young member of the landed gentry in Virginia sent an order for supplies to London.

The document, now held in the Wellcome Library as WMS/Amer.91, is an interesting indication of the degree to which the colony, although now well over a century old, still relied heavily on imports from the (then) mother country. Medical supplies rub up against hardware, veterinary supplies and cookery ingredients. Adding particular interest to the shopping list is the identity of its author: the young gentleman farmer is George Washington, and twenty years later he will be embarking on his first term as President of the newly-independent United States.

Of this, of course, Washington could have no inkling at the time: he could have been forgiven for believing that the dramatic chapters of his life were over and he was now settling down. Born into the Virginia gentry in 1732, in the early 1750s he was beginning a career as a planter in an economy driven by large slave-worked tobacco plantations. He was also an officer in the Virginia militia. During the 1750s, tensions between the French and British settlements in North America, over who would control the Ohio valley beyond the Appalachians, erupted into war, and the young Lieutenant-Colonel Washington had distinguished himself: in 1755 General Braddock’s Monongahela offensive ended in disaster and Braddock’s death, but his aide Washington rallied the remaining forces to minimise damage and effect an orderly retreat. In 1758 British forces returned to the Ohio valley, with Washington - now a General – taking part in the expedition that expelled the French forces and turned their Fort Duquesne into the new British base of Pittsburgh.

After these wars in the Ohio valley Washington, now 26, resigned his commission and settled down. In January 1759 he married Martha Custis, a wealthy widow, whose dowry, combined with lands he had been granted beyond the Appalachians, made him a wealthy man: the newly-married couple settled at Mount Vernon, overlooking the Potomac downstream of the recently-founded town of Alexandria (and downstream of the site of the capital city that was to bear his name, years later). The order for supplies held at the Wellcome Library dates from the early months of their life at Mount Vernon and demonstrates the pattern of trade from the Virginia plantations: luxuries and infrastructural supplies imported from Britain, paid for from the proceeds of a cash crop (tobacco at this stage, although in the mid 1760s Washington moved over to cultivating wheat).


The order Washington sent out nine months after his marriage is a long and detailed one, and the sheet held at the Wellcome Library may not even be the whole of it. There is a long list of tools at the start, for surveying, joinery and so forth. Items plucked from the list include "2 long plains [planes]", "1 handsaw, 1 Pannel ditto, 1 Tenant ditto…", "6 dozen steel compasses", "1 dozen augers sorted from 2 Inches to ½ ditto", "25 lb Glew [glue]" and "12 inch chizzels". It is an indication of the equipment needed on the plantation and of the way that the colony was not yet able to match the workshops of Sheffield and Birmingham in supplying it.

Below this Washington moves to medical and culinary ingredients. Interestingly, these are mingled together in a style similar to that of the 17th and 18th-century recipe books held in the Library, without clear distinction between food and medicine. Some ingredients, of course, clearly belong in one category or the other: "6 Bottles Turlington's Balsam", "5 oz. liquid laudanum" and "5 oz. spirits sal ammoniac" are obviously medical, whilst four pounds each of pearl barley and sago and five pounds of white sugar candy leads us to the kitchen. But there are other items that could be for either purpose – "4 oz. best rhubarb" is almost certainly there as a medicine rather than a foodstuff, and one might surmise the same about "12 oz. Venus treacle", but there is no clear distinction.

At the end of the order comes a distinct section of veterinary supplies, in which Washington allows his supplier to use their discretion: "40/- worth of Medicine proper for Horses – among which let there be - 4 lb. flower of Brimstone; 4 lb. Anniseeds… & such others as are most proper." It is to be hoped, however, that the list of medical/culinary supplies prior to this also includes things ordered for veterinary purposes: in it we find "4 oz. Spanish flies", which are chiefly used when encouraging farm animals to mate (when crushed the beetles irritate the lining of the urethra) but also have a long and often disreputable history as a purported aphrodisiac for humans.

One sheet of paper, signed one afternoon 250 years ago by a soldier who thought his fighting days were over: but it opens vividly the world of the Virginia plantations and the colonial society whose last days were ticking away.

Professor Vivian Nutton

The Wellcome Library held a reception on 18 September to mark the retirement of Professor Vivian Nutton, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL.

Professor Nutton is acknowledged as one of the foremost experts in the ancient history of medicine, with his main field of research being based around the works of the Greek physician Galen of Pergamum (129–216/7 AD). He has published widely and continuously, with his work Ancient Medicine (2004) recognized as the best summary of medicine from early Greece to late Antiquity.

Professor Nutton has taught at the Wellcome Trust Centre – formerly the Wellcome Institute – since 1977, and also has been one of the Library’s most consistent users in that time. A noted lecturer, Professor Nutton has also been a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time (his appearances on episodes discussing The Four Humors and The Brain and are still available online for UK listeners).

We wish Professor Nutton a long and happy retirement: one that still allows for occasional visits to the Wellcome Library.

Wellcome Library to use JPEG2000 image format

JPEG2000 is a relatively new image file format, created by the JPEG Committee in 2000. JPEG2000, despite its name, is not a JPEG format, but utilises a clever compression technology that maximises quality while minimizing file sizes.

The Wellcome Library, anticipating a growth in digitisation of library materials as it takes forward an ambitious digitisation program, recognises the value of efficiency in storing its digital content whilst maintaining the high levels of quality and open standards required for long-term preservation. However, JPEG2000 comes in a variety of "flavours" and comprises 12 "parts", as explained in the JPEG2000 specification.

Seeking to determine exactly which JPEG2000 format to use to meet the aims of long-term storage and accessible delivery services, the Library commissioned a report by Simon Tanner, Director of King's Consultancy Service (KDCS). The report was written in conjunction with Robert Buckley of Xerox Corporation, an expert in the technical specifications of the JPEG2000 format.

As a result of the recommendations and conclusions provided in the report, the Wellcome Library will adopt a "visually lossless" lossy compression to gain at least 75% storage savings in comparison to a TIFF version (depending on the type of material being digitised). The recommended compression parameters will produce an image with no visible difference in image quality, but the compression is irreversible - i.e. the original bit stream will not be possible to reconstruct. As the Library will be digitising physical items that can (if necessary) be re-digitised, it was considered an acceptable compromise.

Embedding multiple resolution layers and tiling will facilitate dissemination, allowing a single image file to address multiple needs (such as thumbnails, screen resolution, and print resolution). In future, the Library will incorporate a web delivery system that can exploit these characteristics to create on-the-fly derivatives that can be viewed through a browser or downloaded (e.g. JPEG and PDF).

The full report is available under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 2.0 license, and can be viewed and downloaded from the image viewer below (toggle full screen to read), or here.

JPEG2000 Recommendations for the Wellcome Trust

A short post about long service

This summer marked the 35th anniversary of William Schupbach, Curator, Paintings, Prints and Drawings, starting work with what was then the Wellcome Institute. Since then, William and colleagues have undertaken a mammoth cataloguing task, to allow access to the illustrative works in our holdings. William has also spoken widely,
published extensively on medical portraiture, and was integral to the launch and success this year of the John Thomson exhibition in China.

Today also marks the 30th anniversary of Dr Lesley Hall starting work with the Wellcome. Since 1979, Lesley has been at the forefront of the Library’s work in acquiring and cataloguing the papers of twentieth century scientific societies and scientists of distinction. She is also one of the world’s leading historians of sexuality, with books including Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain (2000) and Outspoken Women (2005), and is a regular contributor to history programmes on both BBC radio and television.

Libraries are about people as much as they are about collections, and at the Wellcome Library, both our readers and fellow members of staff, have been extremely lucky to draw on William and Lesley’s knowledge and expertise.

Wellcome Library Insight - Cartoons and Caricatures

This week's free Wellcome Library Insight session - on Thursday 17th, 3pm - explores some of the 'Cartoons and Caricatures' in our collections, and illustrates the international nature of our drawings, paintings and prints.

An Infinity of Things

Referred to in previous blog posts, Frances Larson's An Infinity of Things: How Sir Henry Wellcome Collected the World (OUP, 2009) was launched last week at a reception in the Wellcome Library.

The book explores Wellcome's life through the story of his collections and draws heavily on our resources, particularly Wellcome's own personal papers.

An Infinity of Things has already drawn favourable reviews from (amongst others) the Literary Review, The Sunday Times and New Scientist, and offers the clearest account we have to date on Wellcome and his collection.

Open House

Open House London has established itself in recent years as one of the city’s most popular events. A celebration of the diversity of the capital’s buildings, the event allows free access to many buildings normally closed to the public.

Open House 2009 takes this place this weekend – 18th and 19th September – with over 700 buildings participating. A good number of these sites have a link to the collections of the Wellcome Library or to History of Medicine in general, but we’ll take this opportunity to flag up fellow members of the (London Museums of Health and Medicine network which are taking part), and the opportunity to view the Pioneer Health Centre in Peckham (built in the 1930s, converted to private dwellings in 2000, and the subject of a previous post on this Blog).

Patients Association Archive Available in the Wellcome Library

Readers may have observed recent media publicity following publication of the Patients Association's report 'Patients... not numbers, People... not statistics' in August 2009. In this report the healthcare charity focused on poor standards of nursing and domiciliary care for the elderly, highlighting the difficulties that patients and their relatives have encountered in access to information, communication with health authorities, and the complaints investigation process. These and many other aspects of patient care are issues examined and discussed in detail in the archive of the Patients Association which has recently been catalogued and is now available to historians and researchers.

The Patients Association, a registered charity, was founded in 1963 by Dame Elizabeth Ackroyd (1910-1987), civil servant and consumer rights campaigner. It was set up as an independent national voluntary body to protect and develop the interests, rights and well-being of users and potential users of health services in the UK. The Association was probably the first to address this angle of health, being set up before Community Health Councils and many other self-help organisations. Its activities focused on patient frustration with the National Health Service, particularly hospitals, doctors and bureaucracy; the paucity of information on how to make a complaint; educating the public on their rights and responsibilities as patients.

Over the years the Association has monitored trends in patient satisfaction and opinion; promoted the voice of the patient in NHS and private healthcare; represented the patient's viewpoint to official bodies such as the Department of Health, medical and nursing colleges and professional organisations such as the British Medical Association and General Medical Council; provided an advisory service for patients and their relatives; offered patients the opportunity to share their experiences of the whole range of healthcare services; campaigned on issues such as hospital conditions, waiting lists and visiting hours, standards of care, patient consent, codes of practice regarding use of patients in teaching, subject access to medical records, and confidentiality.

Elizabeth Ackroyd virtually ran the Association from its early days until her death in 1987. She was president from 1971-1978 and from 1978 chairman. She was considered to be the heart and soul of the Association in terms of representation on committees and working parties, engagement with the media, attending events, and (with a small industrious staff) the day-to-day business and running of the organisation. A source of formidable energy and enthusiasm, as well as running the Association Dame Elizabeth held prominent roles in the Consumer Council established in 1963, the Consumers’ Association and numerous other voluntary organizations.

The Archive has been allocated collection reference SA/PAT and comprises 112 boxes. It is divided into ten sub-sections and covers the history of the organisation from its establishment in 1963 up to about 1996. It contains material relating to the organisation and administration of the Association, correspondence with numerous voluntary, professional and other health related bodies, files on a wide range of health subjects, publications, press cuttings and patient correspondence (the latter is however closed for a specified period in order to protect the confidentiality of individual members of the public).

The catalogue can be viewed by entering ‘SA/PAT’ in the reference field of the search interface of the Archives and Manuscripts online catalogue. To navigate around the catalogue click on the light blue numbers on the left side of the results page and the ‘See this in context’ links.

The papers are available subject to the usual conditions of access to Archives and Manuscripts material, after the completion of a Reader's Undertaking. Please note that parts of this collection are subject to specified restrictions or closure periods for the purposes of data protection.

It is hoped that the Patients Association archive will provide valuable evidence of the concerns of patients from the 1960s through to the mid-1990s and thereby also a basis upon which comparisons can be made with issues affecting today’s health service consumers.

Author: Amanda Engineer

Frederick Cayley Robinson in 'Country Life'

An article by Peyton Skipwith in the current issue of Country Life discusses the four large paintings by Frederick Cayley Robinson which are displayed at the entrance to the Wellcome Library. [1]

The author calls Cayley Robinson "that rare phenomenon—an English Symbolist painter". He identifies features of the Wellcome Library paintings which are handled with variations in other paintings by the artist, such as the L-shaped compositions, or subjects of innocence and experience, and sums it up as "a four-part pictorial-Theosophical cycle concerned with sympathy and compassion". Theosophical? In the group shown above, the figures wear costumes from several different eras, and given that the seated old man also appears in one of Cayley Robinson's ancient Egyptian scenes, one can certainly see him as a continually reincarnated figure appearing, like the Wandering Jew or the Flying Dutchman, as an eternally recurrent presence in the doctor's waiting-room of earthly existence.

Mr Skipwith also suggests that the girl being presented to the doctor in the second pair of paintings is to be understood as one of the orphans shown in the first pair. This has also been suggested verbally by another observer, the artist James Broomfield, and it would satisfactorily link the two pairs.


During the summer of 2009 the four paintings were cleaned, and a large amount of surface dirt was removed that had inevitably accumulated during the seventy years in which the paintings had been displayed at the entrance to the Middlesex Hospital (even though they had been protected there by glass). The difference between the cleaned area above and the uncleaned area below is shown on the left.


After cleaning the purple outlines around the figures make them seem more unearthly, the artist's meticulously drawn squaring-up is more visible, and the greens, violets and whites (suffragette livery!) shine out more strongly against the drab surroundings. And look at those blues below!










[1] Peyton Skipwith, 'Exhibition: Frederick Cayley Robinson at the Wellcome Library. Acts of mercy sold but safe', Country life, 9 September 2009, p. 116

25 years of DNA Fingerprinting

Today, the DNA fingerprint is 25 years old. Wellcome Images holds a photo of the original autoradiograph, discovered by Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys in his lab at Leicester University, where he still works today.

This image, acquired in 2005, represents a greatly important discovery for the field of forensic science. Thanks to later technological improvements, a microscopic sample of DNA can now be analysed to produce a DNA profile sufficient to convict a criminal.

DNA profiling uses the very small variations in DNA to distinguish or relate individuals. 99.9 per cent of our DNA is the same as everyone else’s, but in the remaining 0.1 per cent are repeated sequences which are very similar in related people, but very unlikely to be similar in unrelated people. Apart from identical twins, it is widely agreed that no two people have the same DNA fingerprint. As such a fingerprint from a sample at a crime scene can be compared to a suspect’s, and if there is a match, the evidence against them is very strong.

The first DNA fingerprint shows 11 lanes of DNA. The last eight are from various animal species, showing a lot of variation. The first three are from a woman, her father, and her mother. The pattern of dark and light lines, representing the repeated short stretches of DNA called minisattelites. The patterns are very similar, which indicates the close relation of the three samples.

Professor Jeffreys’s discovery has not only benefited forensic science, but has enabled the tracking of historical migration of groups, and revealed family ties for children whose parentage is unknown.

Author: Louise Crane

The Test of Time

This week, BBC Radio 4 airs The Test of Time, a new series in which Scientists look back at their ancient forebears and examine how much of that early knowledge still stands up to scrutiny.

The first episode, broadcast today, features consultant oral and maxillofacial surgeon, Iain Hutchison, discovering the connections between today's reconstructive surgery and techniques developed in South Asia in the third century BC.

The techniques of the School of Sushruta - and their dissemination from east to west - are illustrated in the episode through items held in the Wellcome Library, described by Sanskrit specialist, Dominik Wujaystik. (Pictured above is an illustration from one of the works discussed: J C Carpue, An account of two successful operations for restoring a lost nose from the integuments of the forehead in the cases of two officers of His Majesty's Army... (London, 1810).

All of the series will be available to listeners in the UK through the BBC's iPlayer.

Two empresses and their sons

SS. Constantine and Helena. Russian painting on wood.
Wellcome Library no. 34400i

Empresses are rarely encountered. However a small Russian painting in the Wellcome Library records a bond between two empresses who lived fifteen centuries apart. As will be seen, 4 September is an apt date on which to publish it.

The Roman Empress Helena (ca. 246/50-330) was the consort of the Emperor Constantius, and the mother of the first Christian emperor, Constantine (ca. 272-337). The painting shows her on the right, with her son Constantine on the left. Constantius divorced her or separated from her and remarried for political reasons, abandoning Helena and depriving her of imperial honours. When Constantius died in York in 306, Constantine (also then in York) succeeded him, and restored his mother to her previous status in the imperial court in Byzantium.

As the mother of the new Emperor, Helena supported Constantine in the promotion of Christianity throughout the empire, and devoted herself to the recovery of the relics of Christ's Passion in Jerusalem, particularly the excavation of the Cross.

Hence, in the engraving shown here, Helena and Constantine are the figures closest to the Cross, Helena on the left and Constantine with a full beard on the right, both of them wearing imperial crowns (click on the image to enlarge it). Helena died in Byzantium in 330 in the presence of her son.

Engraving by Nicolas Beatrizet, 1557. Wellcome Library no. 10914i

The Wellcome Library painting of Constantine and Helena is a Russian icon. The two saints are named as "Святыи Цар Константин" and "Святая Царица Елена" (the Holy Emperor Constantine and the Holy Empress Elena). Between the two figures is the Cross. The Cross had been the subject of a dream in which Constantine had been told "In hoc signo vinces" ("In this sign you shall conquer"). A relic believed to be the original Cross had, as we have seen, been discovered by Helena in Jerusalem. Neither the subject nor the manner of depiction is particularly rare. What is distinctive about the painting is its provenance. Before it was acquired by Henry S. Wellcome, it had belonged to another empress: Empress Eugénie of the French (1826-1920), consort of the Emperor Napoleon III (1808-1873).

Eugénie was a Spanish countess whose mother was of Scottish and Belgian parentage. In 1853 she married Napoleon III. He had lived in various places (on Lake Constance in Switzerland; Leamington Spa, Warwickshire; Southport, Lancashire; New York City) before returning to France in 1848 to take up the presidency and in 1852 the Imperial throne.

Right: The empress Eugénie in Paris. Engraving by D.J. Pound. Wellcome Library.

Napoleon III's reign was eventful. He provoked the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, only to end up losing it and himself a prisoner of war after being captured at the battle of Sedan. He returned to England and settled with his wife at Chislehurst in Kent. There they lived with their son, Napoleon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte, the Prince Imperial, who had been born in 1856. It was at Chislehurst that Napoleon III died in 1873, weakened by a sequence of three surgical operations performed in an attempt to break up a huge bladder stone.

Left: the Prince Imperial Louis Napoleon. Wood engraving, 1879. Wellcome Library no. 580028i

The exiled Eugénie was not so fortunate in the career of her son, Prince Louis Napoleon, as Helena had been in the support of her son, Constantine. Louis Napoleon joined the British army and was keen to see action in the Zulu War. On 1 June 1879 he took part in an expedition outside the camp. He and his party were ambushed by some forty Zulu: most of the other soldiers got away, but the Prince Imperial was unlucky. His dead body was discovered the following morning riddled with spear wounds.

The reaction around the world was comparable (mutatis mutandis) to the shock at the death of Diana Princess of Wales in 1997. Eugénie was of course devastated. In 1880 she went to South Africa to visit the spot where he had been killed.

On her return to England she left Chislehurst and moved to Farnborough in Hampshire, where her remains of her son's body were interred with his father. There she involved herself in good causes, including women's suffrage, improving the treatment of young offenders, and children's charities, as well as radio, electrification, motor cars, her complicated family relationships, and a close friendship with the Queen. In World War I she turned a wing of her house into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers.

Right: the Empress Eugénie mourning her late son the Prince Imperial. Colour lithograph by F. Betbeder, 1879. Wellcome Library no. 575546i

Among her many possessions was the icon of Helena and Constantine which is now in the Wellcome Library. In gazing on the likeness of her fellow-empress, Eugénie could recognize in several respects a kindred spirit. The island named after St Helena, to which her husband's uncle Napoleon I had been exiled, was often in her thoughts: violets from the island decorated her sitting room. Eugénie was also linked with Helena through the True Cross, for Eugénie was the guardian of a relic believed to be a fragment of the Cross which Helena had excavated. This sliver of wood, glazed with a pale green gemstone and housed with other relics in a Gothic iron chasse, was believed to have been buried with Charlemagne; the Emperor Charles V had had it placed in the treasury at Aachen, from which it passed to Napoleon I and thence through his step-daughter Hortense de Beauharnais to Eugénie. It was the only item which Eugénie had managed to save from the Tuileries when she was forced to flee the howling mob surrounding the palace on 4 September 1870, and it received an honoured place in the chapel at Farnborough Hill. Through a continuous line of individuals and families, from Jerusalem to Byzantium, from the first Holy Roman Emperor in Aachen to the Empress of the French in the rolling Hampshire countryside, "westward the course of Empire takes its way", in Berkeley's words.

On the other hand, the sight of Helena standing side by side with her son could arouse more melancholy thoughts. Unlike Constantine, Eugénie's son never succeeded his father as Emperor. Unlike Helena, Eugénie herself was never restored to her former imperial glory. The icon reassured because it represented a fond ideal to be cherished, rather than the sorrowful reality. And just as the icon commemorated Helena and Constantine long after their deaths, so perhaps Eugénie and her son would be remembered in centuries to come. That certainly seems to be the intention of the person who placed the icon in a box lettered "La belle fleur de mémoire". And, as we read about them here, we cultivate that flower of remembrance.

A note on the provenance
The box (above left and right) is inscribed and is accompanied by a letter from Mr Norman H. Greatorex, 13 The Hostel, Newburn Street, London S.E. 11, offering the painting to Queen Mary, consort of King George V of the United Kingdom. The letter states "These belonged to the Empress Eugénie & came from Farnborough Hill after she died there. I bought them at Guildford for 10/-". A letter to Mr Greatorex from a Lady in Waiting declined the gift "as the Queen does not collect icons". "These" in the the letter presumably refers to the painting and the box.

Acknowledgments:
Agnes Carey, Empress Eugénie in exile, New York: Century Co., 1920
Anne L McClanan, Representations of early Byzantine empresses: image and empire, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002
William Smith, Eugénie, impératrice des Français, Paris: Bartillat, 1998
William Smith, The Empress Eugénie and Farnborough, Winchester: Hampshire County Council, 2001

'The Smallest Medicine Chest in the World'

A post earlier in the week mentioned the forthcoming book An Infinity of Things: How Henry Wellcome Collected the World by Frances Larson (OUP, 2009).

To highlight its publication, Oxford University Press's Blog now features an original post by the author, titled 'The Smallest Medicine Chest in the World'.

Wellcome Library Insights

Our Insight 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.

The autumn series of Insights begins this Thursday afternoon at 3pm, exploring items in our collections relating to the cultures of Native American peoples.

Information on later Insight sesssions:

Caricatures and Cartoons - 17th September

Medi-Cinema – 1st October

Conservation in Action – 15th October

Entrance to an Insight session is free, and there is no need to book (though spaces are limited).