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June 21, 2003
Henry Wellcome's astonishing collection of medical artefacts
Henry Wellcome was a "pharmacist, entrepreneur and philanthropist" collected more than one million medical artifacts by the end of his life:
The overwhelming size of Wellcome's hoard, and the rather shocking fact that he never set eyes on some of it, suggests he lacked the finesse and dedication of the conoisseur. He bought job lots. Other men did his buying. Was this the vacuum cleaner approach to collecting? What sort of collector wants thousands of apparently identical ethnographic spears? Or buys 516 pairs of obstetric forceps? Or just cannot stop at 850 Roman votive objects if the 851st turns out to be a clay ear that's a different shape from all his other clay ears?
The British Museum's Medicine Man: The Forgotten Museum of Henry Wellcome exhibition runs from 26 June-16 November. Forgotten to many perhaps but not forgotten by the Flea. Abracadabra: the magic of medicine was a 1997 exhibition at the Wellcome Trust's small gallery space at their Euston Rd. HQ in London. I had it entirely to myself. The display included a first edition copy of the Malleus Maleficarum and the obsidian mirror through which John Dee claimed to receive communications from the angel Uriel.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at June 21, 2003 10:32 AM