Inside our collections

Votive offerings, known as ex-votos, have been a vibrant part of devotional practice since ancient times and, Louisa McKenzie suggests, they still have a place in the secular world of today.

There’s a lot of plant lore about the mandrake, going back to ancient times. Find out more about how this unremarkable-looking plant got its magical reputation.

For a couple of centuries, friendly societies plugged the healthcare gap between expensive private care and charitable institutions for many thousands of people in the UK.

Cigarettes gifted ex-smoker David Jesudason coughing, wheezing and fatigue, yet they also gave him pleasure. Here he unpicks his fluctuating attitudes towards lighting up.

The death of a close friend made David Jesudason want to know more about viruses and the people who first discover them. Here, he puts both under the microscope.

Ross MacFarlane traces the ideas around Charles Darwin’s famous ‘Tree of Life’, both back to the Bible, and forward to its appropriation by the proponents of eugenics.

Ever since the discovery of cinchona bark as a treatment for malaria in 17th-century South America, the cinchona tree has accompanied European colonisation around the world. Kim Walker tracks the human and ecological impact of this global commodity.

The healing powers of different breathing methods are said to help with a range of health challenges, from asthma to PTSD. Effie Webb traces their spiritual origins and explores the modern proliferation of breathwork therapies.

Discover how chocolate morphed from a prized, spiritually significant commodity to a quasi-medicine, and finally to the sweet treat we eat almost daily.

Find out how activists and organisations working on AIDS information campaigns in 1980s Scotland used cartoons, kilts, and candid language to convey their message.

Find out how hydrogen peroxide has been used to do everything from investigate murders and propel rockets to treat teeth and bleach hair.

Having experienced the healing power of plants and gardens, Iona Glen goes in search of present-day “physic gardens” and their origins in history.

Wellcome’s Adrian Plau shares some the stories behind the Asian palm-leaf manuscripts in our collections. He reveals how British colonialism impacted this special form of knowledge transmission and the challenges involved in unearthing each manuscript’s origins and historical journey to Wellcome Collection.

Industrialisation brought visibly polluted air to the world’s cities, captured in various media from the 1800s. Angela Saward explores the methods used, and the messages the images conveyed.

Our centuries-old fear of disease-carrying “bad air” might have been modified by scientific advances, but it’s still liable to re-emerge under the right circumstances, as Kirsten Nicholson explains.

Part science lecture. part public spectacle, thanks to chemist Humphry Davy the 19th-century craze for inhaling nitrous oxide rapidly spread from the science laboratory to fashionable salons and homes of the day, and onto the popular stage.

Five bearded and moustachioed men choose five hirsute archive images to help them reflect on the way facial hair is linked with personality and identity.

Epidemiology is the systematic, data-driven study of health and disease in populations. But as historian Jacob Steere-Williams suggests, this most scientific of fields emerged in the 19th century imbued with a doctrine of Western imperialism – a legacy that continues to influence how we talk about disease.