Wellcome Collection

We talk a lot about how life begins, but maybe it’s time we spoke more openly about how it ends.

These hospice workers – Corinne, Wendy, Jenna, Sarah – work at hospices across the UK, helping families navigate death by showing them how the final chapter can be filled with choice, comfort, connection, and even joy.

Take a moment to celebrate these hospice and palliative care workers: people whose compassion make an immeasurable difference at the end of life. Read 'There at the End', our specially commissioned photo essay by Anna Gordon (), only on our website.

Alt text: These slides show photo-portraits of palliative care workers alongside their words about end-of-life care.

Colonies on the moon, jetpacks, teleportation…not all predictions of the future have been great, but this one is dead on!

In 1932, 88 years before Covid made video conferencing an every day thing for millions, Romanian-British cartoonist D. L. Ghilchik predicted “television” being used to host doctor’s appointments.

[Alt text: A smartly dressed doctor in a very 1930s office with a very 1930s telephone pressed to his ear as above his very 1930s desk is, incongruously, a large flat screen TV with a close up of a woman sticking out her tongue: “doctor, I don’t feel well and I’d like to show you my tongue. Look!"]

Reference: 15504i

Leo is symbolised by the lion and associated with courage, confidence and charisma.

Famous Leos include people who turn the simplest anecdotes into a keynote speech.

Happy birthday month to all you 'mane' characters 🦁

Alt text: These slides show lions from across our collection: zodiac lions woven through deep blue and gold constellations, lions from Persian manuscripts, a lion emerging from a cave, a lion climbing a hillside, lion cubs tumbling together, and lions appearing in astrological diagrams and celestial scenes. Some are regal, some are wild, some are surprisingly relatable, but all carry themselves with the unmistakable confidence of a creature that expects to be admired (much like the Leos we know).

Credit:
1. Leo - Horoscope from 'The book of birth of Iskandar". Wellcome Collection.
2. The zodiac man. Watercolour painting by a Persian artist. Wellcome Collection. Reference: 582971i
3. A lion and a leopard (?). Gouache painting by a Persian artist. Wellcome Collection. Reference: 583111i
4. Astrology: signs of the zodiac, Orion. Coloured engraving. Wellcome Collection. Reference: 46442i
5. The Sun (right), Leo and two lunar mansions (left) from Persian Manuscript 373. Wellcome Collection
6. A large lion ascending a hill. Etching by W-S Howitt after himself. Wellcome Collection. Reference: 39772i
7. A lion, emerging from a cave. Coloured mezzotint by J. Daniell, after J. Graham, 1792. Wellcome Collection. Reference: 578890i
8. Naked man surrounded by the twelve symbols of the zodiac. Wellcome Collection.
9. Zoological Society of London: four lion cubs. Coloured etching. Wellcome Collection. Reference: 42353i

Every photograph has two stories: The one in front of the camera, and the one behind it. 📸

In 1868, John Thomson arrived in China with a massive camera and a portable darkroom. His portraits are often praised for showing his sitters with real empathy and dignity, especially compared to the clinical ethnographic portraits that were common at the time.

But these photos weren’t taken in a vacuum. They were captured in a country that didn’t choose to be looked at.

Photography and empire traveled together. While Thomson captured beautiful, extraordinary historical documents, his craft was honed during a period of intense devastation – an era of the O***m Wars and forced-open ports that China refers to as its “Century of Humiliation.” Too often, early photography was used by colonial powers to reduce complex human beings into symbols of their ethnicity, class, or occupation.

We know so much about the man behind the lens. We know his travels, his accolades, and his name. But what did the woman on the boat think? Who were the people standing in the crowd?

They all had names, lives, and deep stories. We just don’t know them.

Next time you look at a archival photo, it’s worth asking: whose story do we remember, and whose was left in the shadows?

[Alt text: A carousel of John Thomson’s 1868–72 photographs of China, paired with text unpacking who gets remembered in history – the photographer or the people in front of his lens. Individual image descriptions are included with each slide.]

Desaturated colour aesthetics, anachronistic costumes? Forget Nolan and follow the Odyssey in 18th century black and white etchings instead

[Alt text:

1: Odysseus and his men flee back to their ships to escape the cannibal cyclops Polyphemus who had trapped them in his cave and violated the laws of hospitality by devouring their fellows. Odysseus having previously tricked the cyclops into believing his name was “No man”, foolishly reveals his name as a final taunt. This leads to Polyphemus to pray to his father Poseidon, God of the Sea, for revenge.

Reference: 557556i

2: An earlier scene (we can do jumbled timelines too, Mr Nolan) where Odysseus and his men, having fed him strong wine, blind the cyclops Polyphemus with a sharpened stake. Etching by Taylor, ca. 1790.

Reference: 43375i

3 + 4: The witch Circe sits looking bored before a pile of armour and a herd of animals. Circe’s hobby is giving those who end up on her island magic potions that turn them into beasts. She once turned a man who spurned her into a woodpecker. When Odysseus’s men land on her island she transforms them into swine before our hero manages to persuade her to turn them back into humans again. Etching by G.B. Castiglione, 165-.

Reference: 37534i

5: In another dangerous trial, our heroes navigate past the bird-like sirens whose beautiful song lures sailors to their deaths. Forewarned by Circe, the men seal their ears with beeswax while Odysseus is tied to the mast so he can hear their singing without drowning himself. When he begged to be let loose, his crewmates wisely just tied him tighter. Etching by P. Aquila after Annibale Carracci.

Reference: 11480i]