Recently, during the October half-term break, I visited one of the arguably coolest museums in London- the Wellcome Collection. In contrast to many museums I’ve visited in the past, the Wellcome Collection had a unique atmosphere with the exhibits being both mildly unnerving and intensely intriguing. One of the best aspects of the museum was that it encouraged viewers to do more than simply ‘view’- its many drawers and panels allowed visitors to delve deeper into the fascinating collections.
The Wellcome Collection was founded by Sir Henry Wellcome, an extraordinary man who was a “pharmacist, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and collector”. Wellcome had a strong personal interest in medical objects and artworks and, over time, his collections were developed to form this fascinating museum exploring health, life and our place in the world.
The museum has two permanent exhibitions: Medicine Man and Medicine Now. Medicine Man showcases many extraordinary objects from Henry Wellcome’s collection which are grouped by broad cross-cultural themes. Medicine Now focuses on a few key themes of modern medicine and consists of medical objects and artistic responses to medical issues collected since Henry Wellcome’s death in 1936.
Upon entering the Medicine Man exhibition, I was greeted with an extensive array of glassware; the truly impressive scale of Wellcome’s collection is made tangible with this dramatic display.
The case only displays a fraction of a collection of over 5000 pieces of medical and scientific glassware.
An archaic retort flask
Another part of the exhibiton which piqued my curiosity from this exhibition was the collection of glass eyes.
Glass eyes made by W. Halford of London (1870 – 1920)
One of the earliest ocular prostheses dates back to 2900–2800 BCE and has “a hemispherical form and a diameter of just over 1 inch. It consists of very light material, probably bitumen paste. The surface of the artificial eye is covered with a thin layer of gold, engraved with a central circle (representing the iris) and gold lines patterned like sun rays” (Credit: Wikipedia).
Despite sometimes still being referred to as glass eyes, modern ocular prostheses are typically made of medical grade plastic acrylic in order to avoid issues such as shattering of the prosthetic in the eye. Realism of artificial eyes have been continually developing since the first ocular prosthesis; the main limitation being realistic pupil movement.
Ocularists and eye surgeons have always worked together to make artificial eyes look more realistic. For decades, all efforts and investments to improve the appearance of artificial eyes have been dampened by the immobility of the pupil. The most recent solution to this issue is to use an LCD display to vary the pupil size depending on the light intensity of the environment.
The next exhibition that I explored was Medicine Now. As I had mentioned earlier, this exhibit revolves around a few aspects of modern medicine: the body, genomes, and obesity. I was particularly drawn to the body section of the exhibit which focused on the multitudinous methods used to reveal the internal structures of the body that would have been simply unfathomable during Henry Wellcome’s lifetime.
The highlight of this section is the plastinated full body slice of a woman created by replacing all the lipids and water in the donor’s body with epoxy and silicone.
This mildly discomfiting specimen is on loan from the Institute of Plastination, Heidelberg, Germany
Plastination is a relatively new process developed in 1977 by Gunther von Hagens when, during his time as an anatomical assistant at the University of Heidelberg, he saw specimens preserved in plastic blocks for the first time.
He “wonder[ed] why the plastic has been poured around the specimen in a block rather than stabilizing the specimen from within” -BodyWorld
Standard plastination involves four steps: fixation, dehydration, forced impregnation in a vacuum, and hardening.
- Fixation via formaldehyde is beneficial to prevent the decomposition of the specimen and to ensure the specimen stays rigid, allowing it to be moved to display specific organs.
- The specimen is then dissected and the slice is submerged in acetone which, under freezing conditions, draws out all the water from the cells and replaces it.
- During the forced impregnation stage, the slice is submerged in a liquid polymer and a vacuum is created- this forces the acetone to boil off, drawing out of the cells and replacing it with the polymer.
- Finally, the plastinated slice must be cured with heat or UV light to harden it.
This method allows the internal structures of the body to be viewed in 3D and in an amazing level of detail.
Despite plastination being a modern technique, the desire to observe the inner structures of the human body has been present throughout history. In 1887, paint was injected into the arteries of a woman who was sentenced to hanging so that, when she died, her body could be frozen and cut into slices for anatomical studies. This ghastly, albeit innovative, manner of viewing the internal workings of the body resulted in the following woodcut.
From An Atlas of Topographical Anatomies after Plane Sections of Frozen Bodies (1877) by Wilhelm Braune
The Medicine Now exhibit is not the only place within the Wellcome Collection where I encountered these plastinated body slices…
To conclude my visit to the Wellcome Collection, I visited the marvellous Reading Room that managed to relax visitors and incite curiosity at the same time.
The Reading Room, like the exhibits, contains unique sections (each with their own collections of objects, fiction, non-fiction, and interactive activities).
Dotted around the room were oddities such as another body slice that greeted me as I entered the Reading Room.
A lateral body slice created by Gunther von Hagens
Visitors were encouraged to relax in one of the surprisingly vast array of insanely comfortable chairs and peruse through the books and articles that filled the rooms. I chose to fully recline over the several cushions that flanked the staircase and read Susannah Cahalan’s Brain on Fire (a deeply moving and fascinating account of a rare disease).
I’ve recently finished the book and would highly recommend it!
As one of the highlights of visiting this museum has been the exploration in anatomy, I couldn’t resist buying a copy of the Bourgery’s Atlas of Human Anatomy and Surgery which features the most beautiful and exquisitely detailed drawings of the human body (right down to the cellular level).
An example of one of the hundreds of full-colour plates in this beautiful book
Overall, my visit to Wellcome Collection has been absolutely amazing and inspiring and has compelled me to delve deeper into the world of anatomy.
If you have the chance to visit, I would strongly urge you to do so!
Curiosity Killed The Cation 