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Wellcome Collection Free museum and library in London and online. Explore the past, present and future of health with us. Do ask questions, comment on posts and share your thoughts.
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Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we all think and feel about health. Our online content aims to create opportunities for people to make connections between science, medicine, life and art. We want to spark conversation, inspire debate and encourage you to share your personal perspectives on human health and experience. But don’t be rude, hateful or insulting. Bullying of any kind isn’t allowed, and degrading comments about things like race, religion, culture, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity won’t be tolerated. We reserve the right to remove any material that we feel is inappropriate and we will ban individuals who persistently ignore these rules. If you notice any inappropriate comments, send us a message or report directly to Facebook. Find out more about Wellcome Collection: wellcome.info/About-Us

22/10/2026

Arsenic was used to create some of the most fashionable dyes of the Victorian era, turning up in wallpaper, clothes, books and more.

And then people started realising that having poison all over your house wasn’t the wisest choice...

Alt text: A fast-paced video featuring green Victorian dresses, wallpaper and book bindings, alongside historical illustrations and archival imagery from the Victorian period. Green graphics appear throughout before things take a darker turn, as we see Victorian satirical cartoons about arsenic poisoning. The Yellow Wallpaper book, pages and graphics are shown too.

20/10/2026

Joelle from our team lives with lupus. For Lupus Awarenss Month, here are the three things she wants you to know about a condition that affects around 5 million people worldwide.

Alt text: Joelle sits on the steps of Wellcome Collections Reading Room speaking to camera, during the video she shares the three top things she wants you to know about Lupus, and each one appears on screen as a numbered list.

15/10/2026

At our latest Wellcome Lates we celebrated all things friendship 💕

Tag the person you want to come to the next Lates with - FREE tickets are available now.

10/10/2026

Today is World Mental Health Day 💛

So, let’s talk about Bryan Charnley.

The British artist was diagnosed with schizophrenia while he was still at art school, and turned his inner world into vivid colours, strange landscapes and symbols.

His paintings give us a glimpse into how he experienced the world and a reminder that there’s always a person, a story and a whole lot more behind a diagnosis.

Alt text: An animated video introducing British artist Bryan Charnley. His colourful paintings appear one after another, with animated transitions moving between strange landscapes, symbolic imagery and self-portraiture. The artworks shift, zoom and layer across the screen, creating a colourful journey through Charnley’s visual world.

Image credits, in order of appearance:
Bryan Charnley, Tree of Life, 3049682i
Bryan Charnley, Homage to Freud, 3049681i
Bryan Charnley, 13th Self-Portrait, 3049698i
Bryan Charnley, Untitled (Love), 3049685i

Amelia goes back in time to try her luck with medical innovator, Joseph Lister 🍗💛To find out more about the life-saving ...
02/10/2026

Amelia goes back in time to try her luck with medical innovator, Joseph Lister 🍗💛

To find out more about the life-saving legacy of Joseph Lister, check out the digitised photographs, paintings and books on our collections website: https://wellcome.info/lister

Chicken Shop Date Amelia Dimoldenberg

[Alt text: 16 slides set in London’s favourite poultry establishments, with Amelia Dimoldenberg and Joseph Lister chatting gangrous wounds and benzenol over chicken. The text on each slide reads:

1: Cover image

2: AD: Joseph Lister, I’m intrigued by the mutton chops, are they what you’re best known for?

3: JL: Actually I revolutionised the craft of surgery…

4: AD: But the mutton chops are more memorable.

5: JL: I saved thousands of lives by making surgery an entirely sterile environment

6: AD: Entirely sterile? Sounds like this date

7: Cut to chips

8: JL: Before my work, wounds often got infected with gangrene

9: AD: Great date chat

10: JL: They’d swell up with pus

11: AD: And yet, still not as toxic as my ex

12: cut to deep fat fryer

13: JL: I used benzenol to clean wounds

14: AD: Is that a very acidic substance then?

15: JL: Nothing compared to your personality

16: AD: *Reacts*]

28/09/2026

What does a migraine actually look like?

Missing half your vision. Shapes that shouldn’t be there. And then the pain.

In 1980, the British Migraine Association invited people to turn their experiences of migraine into art. The result? 545 works showing what migraine can feel like when words just aren’t enough.

Rada Vlatkovic, Collections Information Officer at Wellcome Collection, shares some of the artworks from the collection and reflects on her own experience of migraine.

Alt text: A video featuring artworks created by people experiencing migraine as part of a competition organised by the British Migraine Association in 1980. The video slowly pans and zooms across details of the artworks, showing different visual interpretations of migraine symptoms.

If you've got unmatched rizz but can't make a decision to save your life... you might just be a Libra ⚖️ Well-known Lib...
25/09/2026

If you've got unmatched rizz but can't make a decision to save your life... you might just be a Libra ⚖️

Well-known Libras include anyone who read this post and thought it was a personal attack.

Happy birthday month, September/October babies 💌

Alt text: These slides explore Libra and related astrological imagery from across Wellcome Collection. They include a colourful Libra horoscope from The Book of Birth of Iskandar, a zodiac man showing the parts of the body associated with different signs, an illustration of a man surrounded by the twelve symbols of the zodiac, an image of a man being weighed on scales, a street vendor weighing food, and an illustration of Libra represented by the scales.

Credits:

Libra – Horoscope from The Book of Birth of Iskandar. Wellcome Collection.
Signs of the zodiac: Libra, the scales. Gouache painting by an Persian artist. Date: between 1800 and 1899. Reference: 583091i
The zodiac man. Watercolour painting by a Persian artist. Date: between 1800 and 1899. Reference: 582971i
Detail of image of two women standing under a tree exchanging an olive branch and music. Coloured mezzotint. Date: 1800 Reference: 39098i
A man being weighed on a set of scales, and a man with his head in a glass container; showing Lavoisier's experiments with respiration. Drawing attributed to M.A.P. Lavoisier. Wellcome Collection. Reference: WT/D/1/20/1/157/98.
The face of an angry man. Drawing, 18th century (?), after C. Le Brun. Charles Le Brun Reference:
32493i.
A young female role actor performing a butterfly dance. Colour woodcut by Kunisada, 1860.
Utagawa Kunisada Date: 1860. Reference: 36671i
A young woman holding a skull in her hands; representing life and death. Colour lithograph.
Reference: 46796i

15/09/2026

A hospital bed, a clinical ward, and in the middle of it, a handwritten card that just says 'Love'.

Photographer Gideon Mendel took this photo of John and his partner Michael in a hospital ward for AIDS patients in 1992. Here he explains why it still moves people, decades on.

Tenderness and Rage is a free display, now open at Wellcome Collection.

Alt text: A video of photographer Gideon Mendel is sitting in front of a framed black and white photograph, on display as part of the exhibition. As he speaks about the image, details of the photograph appear on screen - including John and his partner Michael sitting together on a hospital bed, a nurse walking past in the background, and postcards on the wall, one of which reads 'Love'.

10/09/2026

“Everyone thinks they know an ‘auntie’, but most people only know the stereotype.” —

Singaporean artist Wenhui Lim, aka , has spent years building the ‘Auntieverse’, a world where ageing looks completely different. In Lim's imagined future, aunties don’t disappear – they reign; they dance, party, skip and take up space.

See ' work at the 'The Coming of Age', an exhibition about experiences and perceptions of ageing, free and open now at Wellcome Collection. Open until November 2026.

08/09/2026

Louis Wain gave cats their main character energy 🐈‍⬛

For us, Wain's work is about more than just cats. It opens up conversations about mental health, care, stigma and creativity (and yes, OK, cats too)

Alt text: This video tells the story of Louis Wain, the Victorian artist whose illustrations transformed cats from mousers into playful, human-like characters. We see photos of Louis and his cat Peter, alongside his artwork animated and displayed in Victorian-style frames on a patterned floral wallpaper. The video traces how Wain's art style evolved, from cartoon-like illustrations of cats throwing parties and riding bikes, to more abstract, psychedelic representations of cats in his later years, following his time in psychiatric hospitals.

Virgo is symbolised by the maiden and associated with practicality, diligence and an eye for detail.Famous Virgos includ...
03/09/2026

Virgo is symbolised by the maiden and associated with practicality, diligence and an eye for detail.

Famous Virgos include people who said "let me make some quick notes" and now have a 50-page document with a table of contents, footnotes and further reading at the end. (If we had a Virgo on the team, this post would gone out on the first day of Virgo season and not two weeks late).

Happy birthday month Virgos 💓

Alt text: These slides show Virgo and related astrological imagery from across our collection: a richly illustrated Virgo horoscope from The Book of Birth of Iskandar, celestial constellations depicting an elegant snail from a Persian manuscript, a medieval zodiac man linking the signs to different parts of the body, and an engraving of two sisters (echoing Virgo's "big sister energy"). The text on the slide lists five signs you that might make you a Virgo: 1. tenacious, 2. go-getter, 3. prepared for everything, 4. hard to impress, 5. big sister energy.

Credits:
Virgo - Horoscope from 'The book of birth of Iskandar". Wellcome Collection.
Constellation of Argo Navis (ship) from Persian Manuscript 373. Wellcome Collection.
Zodiac man showing the parts of the body controlled by the signs of the Zodiac, c.1483. Reference:
WT/D/1/20/1/157/98
Two sisters. Engraving by C.W. Wass after Sir William Ross R.A. Wellcome Collection. Reference: 27370i

02/09/2026

We're trialling different chairs at our latest exhibitions to give visitors with access needs more choice and flexibility.

Which chair works best for you? Let us know in the comments 💓

Come and try them for yourself at "Rudy Loewe: Intimacies of Care – Spaces of Grief and Possibility" and A"udrey Amiss: The Surviving Exhibitions", open now.

Alt text: Artist Rudy Loewe shows three different types of portable chairs available to use at Wellcome Collection's latest exhibitions. The first is a standard fold-out chair. The second is a plastic stool that telescopes down to a compact size with a carry handle. The third is a walking stick design that folds out into a seat and features a phone mount to double as a selfie stick.

01/09/2026

Buckle up for part 2 of our look into how gin sent Georgian London into a full-on meltdown.

Alt text: The reel focuses on William Hogarth’s Gin Lane (1751). We video pans right, showing a skeletal man slumped unconscious in the lower corner, his shirt open to reveal his ribs. Beside him are a basket, a bottle and a paper titled “The Downfall of Mrs Gin.” The shot then moves to the centre of the print, where a drunken woman sits on a staircase attempting to breastfeed while her baby slips from her arms and falls over the bannister. The video ends by cutting to Hogarth’s contrasting print B**r Street, zooming in on a cheerful, rosy-cheeked chap holding a large tankard of b**r with a long pipe jutting from his mouth.

Credit: Gin Lane. Engraving, c. 1751, after W. Hogarth. Wellcome Collection. Reference: 26961i
Credit: B**r Street. Engraving, c. 1751, after W. Hogarth. Wellcome Collection. Reference:26979i

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