Saturday, September 6, 2025

Artwork of the Month - September 2025: 18th Century Surgical Instrument Set from the Wellcome Collection

 

Creative Commons LicenseThis image is released under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 License

In addition to the monthly Art-in-Medicine series, Lucinda Bennett, Ascension Medical Librarian at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, MD, also features a monthly artwork that may be of interest to those who work in medicine.  


“Wellcome had a passion for collecting medically related artefacts, aiming to create a Museum of Man.[14] He bought for his collection anything related to medicine, including Napoleon's toothbrush. By the time of his death, there were 125,000 medical objects in the collection, of over one million total. Most of the non-medical objects were dispersed after his death. He was also a keen archaeologist, in particular digging for many years at Jebel Moya, Sudan, hiring 4000 people to excavate.[15] He was one of the first investigators to use kite aerial photography on an archaeological site, with surviving images available in the Wellcome Library. 

Wellcome's collection is now managed by the Science Museum, London, and has been in their care since 1976. Many objects from the collection are now on display in the museum's Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries. The Wellcome Collection exhibited a number of objects from Wellcome's collection in "Medicine Man", from 2007 to 2022. His collection of books, paintings, drawings, photographs and other media is available for viewing at the Wellcome Library. In 2003, the Brothers Quay directed a short animated film in tribute to the collection entitled The Phantom Museum.” (Wikipedia: Sir Henry Wellcome) 

Geography: United Kingdom 

Culture: British 

Artist: Unknown 

Medium: case, wood, case, brass, case, steel, case, velvet, lined and case, fishskin, covered 

Dimensions: Not listed 

Credit Line: Sir Henry Wellcome’s Museum Collection 

Accession Number: A86333 

Source: Science Museum Group


Reprinted with the generous permission of Ms. Bennett.

No comments:

Post a Comment