Search results for ""Wellcome Collection""

We've become used to thinking of plants as things for us to use: as food, tools, resources, or just as an attractive background to our own lives. But it's time to change our minds. New research shows that plants can think, plan - and may even have memories. We share our planet with beings whose potential we have only glimpsed. Featuring the writing of Robin Wall Kimmerer, Susie Orbach and Merlin Sheldrake, This Book is a Plant will be your handbook to the new reality: showing you a pathway to completely reimagine your relationship with a different kind of natural world. Delve into a world of moss and fungi: Sheila Watt-Cloutier transports us to the Arctic spring, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan discovers the pleasures of painting trees, and Rebecca Tamás puts roots down through earth and soil. This Book is a Plant is made from paper: it was once part of a tree. But it's also a seed: the first shoots of a radical new way of seeing the world around you. Featuring stunning illustrations by Eduardo Navarro, and accompanying a major 2022 Wellcome Collection exhibition, Rooted Beings.

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'A spectacular treasury of treats. Page after page of utter joy: I can’t tear my eyes away' - Derren BrownIn The Spectacle of Illusion, professional magician-turned experimental psychologist Dr. Matthew L. Tompkins investigates the arts of deception as practised and popularised by mesmerists, magicians and psychics since the early 18th century. Organised thematically within a broadly chronological trajectory, this compelling book explores how illusions perpetuated by magicians and fraudulent mystics can not only deceive our senses but also teach us about the inner workings of our minds. Indeed, modern scientists are increasingly turning to magic tricks to develop new techniques to examine human perception, memory and belief. Beginning by discussing mesmerism and spiritualism, the book moves on to consider how professional magicians such as John Nevil Maskelyne and Harry Houdini engaged with these movements – particularly how they set out to challenge and debunk paranormal claims. It also relates the interactions between magicians, mystics and scientists over the past 200 years, and reveals how the researchers who attempted to investigate magical and paranormal phenomena were themselves deceived, and what this can teach us about deception. Highly illustrated throughout with entertaining and bizarre drawings, double-exposure spirit photographs and photographs of spoon-bending from hitherto inaccessible and un-mined archives, including the Wellcome Collection, the Harry Price Library, the Society for Physical Research, and last but not least, the Magic Circle’s closely guarded collection, the book also features newly commissioned photography of planchettes, rapping boards, tilting tables, ectoplasm, automata and illusion boxes. Concluding with a modern-day analysis of the science of magic and illusion, analysing surprisingly weird phenomena such as ideomotor action, sleep paralysis, choice blindness and the psychology of misdirection, this unnerving volume highlights how unreliable our minds can be, and how complicit they can be in the perpetuation of illusions.

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"INFORMATIVE AND ORIGINAL" Guardian, 'This month's best paperbacks' We've become used to thinking of plants as things for us to use: as food, tools, resources, or just as an attractive background to our own lives. But it's time to change our minds. New research shows that plants can think, plan - and may even have memories. We share our planet with beings whose potential we have only glimpsed. Featuring the writing of Robin Wall Kimmerer, Susie Orbach and Merlin Sheldrake, This Book is a Plant will be your handbook to the new reality: showing you a pathway to completely reimagine your relationship with a different kind of natural world. Delve into a world of moss and fungi: Sheila Watt-Cloutier transports us to the Arctic spring, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan discovers the pleasures of painting trees, and Rebecca Tamás puts roots down through earth and soil. This Book is a Plant is made from paper: it was once part of a tree. But it's also a seed: the first shoots of a radical new way of seeing the world around you. "AN ECLECTIC ANTHOLOGY GUARANTEED TO MAKE THE HEARTS OF EARTH LOVERS BEAT FASTER" Metro

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Sunday Times bestseller We have a lifetime's association with our bodies, but for many of us they remain uncharted territory. In Adventures in Human Being, Gavin Francis leads the reader on a journey through health and illness, offering insights on everything from the ribbed surface of the brain to the secret workings of the heart and the womb; from the pulse of life at the wrist to the unique engineering of the foot. Drawing on his own experiences as a doctor and GP, he blends first-hand case studies with reflections on the way the body has been imagined and portrayed over the millennia. If the body is a foreign country, then to practise medicine is to explore new territory: Francis leads the reader on an adventure through what it means to be human. Both a user's guide to the body and a celebration of its elegance, this book will transform the way you think about being alive, whether in sickness or in health. Published in association with the Wellcome Collection. WELLCOME COLLECTION Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death. Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation that exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive, funding over 14,000 researchers and projects in more than 70 countries. wellcomecollection.org

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The history of selling sex is a hidden one, its practitioners a ‘damnable crew’ pushed to the margins of history. Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts redresses the balance, revealing the history of sex for sale, from medieval back street to Wild West saloon, and from the brothel to state bedroom. This enthralling history is brought to life by Kate Lister’s witty and authoritative text, and illuminated by a rich archive of photographs, artworks and objects. Structured thematically in broadly chronological order, the book introduces a lively cast of complex and entertaining characters operating in an array of different periods and settings. The Mesopotamian harlot Shamhat was powerful and respected, able to civilize the wild man Enkidu through her charms. In medieval London Elizabeth Moryng serviced clergy under the guise of an embroidery business, though was eventually jailed for being a prolific procuress and bawd. In Renaissance Venice the courtesan Veronica Franco published her poetry, rubbed shoulders with royalty and founded a charity for other courtesans. In the hedonistic floating world of Edo, Japan, kabuki actresses and then geishas entertained and pleasured their patrons. Three men were hanged in 18th-century London for buggery after being found in the Molly House of Margaret Clap. And at the turn of the century, in New Orleans, Lulu White ran Mahogany Hall, a four-storey building that housed up to forty sex workers. Lister’s illuminating tales invite readers to look, listen and reconsider everything they thought they knew about the world’s oldest profession.With 450 illustrations in colour

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Is your heart fluttering in anticipation? Is your stomach tight with nerves? Are you falling in love? Feeling a bit miffed? Are you curious (perhaps about this book)? Do you have the heebie-jeebies? Are you antsy with iktsuarpok? Or giddy with dépaysement? The Book of Human Emotions is a gleeful, thoughtful collection of 156 feelings, both rare and familiar. Each has its own story, and reveals the strange forces which shape our rich and varied internal worlds. In reading it, you'll discover feelings you never knew you had (like basorexia, the sudden urge to kiss someone), uncover the secret histories of boredom and confidence, and gain unexpected insights into why we feel the way we do. Published in partnership with the Wellcome Collection. Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death. Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation that exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive, funding over 14,000 researchers and projects in more than 70 countries. wellcomecollection.org

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A lively collection of literature, science and art delving into the mysteries of human consciousness, with a new introduction by Mark Haddon, published to coincide with a major exhibition at Wellcome Collection in 2016 "The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and where the other begins?" Edgar Allan Poe Understanding the nature of consciousness continues to challenge even our leading scientists and psychologists. Yet we all experience some form of consciousness and make daily journeys between different conscious states as we sleep and wake. Through the eyes of writers, artists, scientists and philoso­phers, States of Mind explores the meaning of consciousness and, in particular, the nature of interrupted or liminal conscious experiences, such as somnambulism, synaesthesia and disorders of memory. These diverse - even conflicting - perspectives pose fundamental questions about what it means to be alive, aware and human. This engaging collection draws on five centuries of thinking, probing science and the soul, language and memory, being and not being. It includes works by Jane Austen, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Arthur Conan Doyle, Francis Crick, René Descartes, Emily Dickinson, H L Gold, Franz Kafka, H P Lovecraft, Marcel Proust, Mary Shelley, Henry David Thoreau, Alan Turing, H G Wells and Emile Zola. WELLCOME COLLECTION Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death. Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation that exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive, funding over 14,000 researchers and projects in more than 70 countries. wellcomecollection.org

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'By the summer of 1998, it had become clear that there was something wrong with my hearing. It didn't happen suddenly but softly, so softly I almost wasn't aware of it happening; sound seemed to have stolen away ...' For twelve years, Bella Bathurst was deaf. She missed the punchlines and the jokes, avoided busy restaurants and raucous parties, and grew her hair long to cover hearing aids. But then, twelve years later, pioneering surgery on her ears gave her the chance to hear again. Sound is the extraordinary story of Bella's journey into deafness and back to hearing. Mixing memoir with interviews with soldiers, sign language experts, musicians and mental health workers, Bella explores what it means to live with and without sound, and in the process uncovers a hidden world of sense and connection. If sight gives us the world, then hearing - or our ability to listen - gives us each other. Warm, wry and honest, this is a story not just for the one in six of us with hearing loss, but for everyone who ever listened. Published in partnership with the Wellcome Collection. Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death. Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation that exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive, funding over 14,000 researchers and projects in more than 70 countries. wellcomecollection.org

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We all hear voices. Ordinary thinking is often a kind of conversation, filling our heads with speech: the voices of reason, of memory, of self-encouragement and rebuke, the inner dialogue that helps us with tough decisions or complicated problems. For others - voice-hearers, trauma-sufferers and prophets - the voices seem to come from outside: friendly voices, malicious ones, the voice of God or the Devil, the muses of art and literature. In The Voices Within, Royal Society Prize shortlisted psychologist Charles Fernyhough draws on extensive original research and a wealth of cultural touchpoints to reveal the workings of our inner voices, and how those voices link to creativity and development. From Virginia Woolf to the modern Hearing Voices Movement, Fernyhough also transforms our understanding of voice-hearers past and present. Building on the latest theories, including the new 'dialogic thinking' model, and employing state-of-the-art neuroimaging and other ground-breaking research techniques, Fernyhough has written an authoritative and engaging guide to the voices in our heads. WELLCOME COLLECTION Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death. Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation that exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive, funding over 14,000 researchers and projects in more than 70 countries. wellcomecollection.org

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Dr Samara Linton is an award-winning writer and multidisciplinary content producer, and co-author of Diane Abbott: The Authorised Biography. A University of Cambridge and UCL graduate, she has worked as a medical doctor and written for gal-dem, Metro and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.Dr Rianna Walcott is an academic, activist, writer and musician. She is a PhD candidate at Kings College London researching Black women's identity in digital spaces, and a graduate twice over from the University of Edinburgh. Rianna has written for the Guardian, Metro, Vice, Dazed and The Wellcome Collection.

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Dr Agnes Arnold-Forster is a historian at the University of Edinburgh. She has also worked at McGill University, King's College London, UCL, and at the Centre for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of two academic books, one about cancer and the other about surgery, and has written widely for academic, medical and mainstream outlets. She has also appeared on BBC Radio and TV, consulted for television dramas and documentaries, and worked closely with the Science Museum, the Wellcome Collection, and the Royal College of Nursing. She lives in London.

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Sudha Bhuchar is an acclaimed actor/playwright/founder of Bhuchar Boulevard. As co-founder of Tamasha, with Kristine Landon-Smith, their landmark work includes A Fine Balance &the award-winning musical Fourteen Songs Two Weddings and a Funeral. Other plays include Child of the Divide (Winner Asian media awards 2018), My Name is. (also adapted for Radio 4) & The House of Bilquis Bibi (Lorca's The House of Bernada Alba transposed to Pakistan). Recent commissions are Touchstone Tales (RevolutonArts/Wellcome Collection) and French like Faiza (Radio3 cowritten with Ilana Navaro). Sudha has written and is appearing in her one woman show, Evening Conversations.Acting credits include Khandan (Royal Court /Birmingham Rep),The Village (Theatre Royal Stratford East) and Lions and Tigers (Globe Theatre). TV includes Coronation street, Stella & Noughts and Crosses. Film: Mogul Mowgli, Mary Poppins R

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I was the eyes and she was the body I mean that sounds poetic but really that’s how it worked Girl meets anatomical wax sculptor. Anatomical wax sculptor meets Girl. They fall in love. Or something like that. Bea’s older neighbour was her first love, her first cigarette, her first prosthetic eye. When Bea is invited to the Wellcome Collection to speak about her expertise making glass eyes, she finds herself unable to untie Margot from all that she does. As she tries to unpack her mentor’s effect on her work, Bea must dissect for herself what love really looks like. Isabella Waldron’s electric new play, how to build a wax figure, brings a fresh perspective on queer love, age-gap relationships, and ocularistry.

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A global history of intoxication, exploring the international spectrum of drug use in cultures across the world, from prehistory to the present day. Every society is a high society. Every day, people drink coffee on European terraces, chew betel nut in Indonesian markets, take coca leaf on Andean mountainsides and smoke tobacco in every nation on earth. Mike Jay's global history of intoxication looks at the earliest archaeological evidence of drug use, the botanicals of the classical world, the mind-bending self-experiments of early scientists and today's war on drugs'. In High Society Jay paints vivid portraits of the roles that drugs play as medicines, religious sacraments, status symbols and trade goods. He traces the understanding of intoxicants from prehistory to the present, and reveals how the international trade in substances such as tobacco, tea and opium shaped the modern world. First published to accompany the highly successful exhibition at the Wellcome Collection,

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A rediscovered modern classic: a life-affirming account of one man's journey into blindness 'A gift to the whole of humanity' Cathy Rentzenbrink Days before the birth of his first son, writer and academic John M. Hull started to go blind. He would lose his sight entirely, unable to distinguish any sense of light or shadow. Isolated and claustrophobic, he sank into a deep depression. Soon, he had forgotten what his wife and daughter looked like. In Notes on Blindness, John reveals his profound sense of loss, his altered perceptions of time and space, of waking and sleeping, love and companionship. With astonishing lucidity of thought and no self-pity, he describes the horror of being faceless, and asks what it truly means to be a husband and father. And eventually, he finds a new way of experiencing the world, of seeing the light. Based on John's diaries recorded on audio tape, this is a profoundly moving, wise and life-affirming account of one man's journey into blindness. 'Poignant and wise' Andrew Solomon Published in partnership with Wellcome Collection.

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A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A triumph' Guardian 'Glorious ... makes the past at once familiar, exotic and thrilling.' Dominic Sandbrook 'A brilliant book' Mail on Sunday Just like us, medieval men and women worried about growing old, got blisters and indigestion, fell in love and had children. And yet their lives were full of miraculous and richly metaphorical experiences radically different to our own, unfolding in a world where deadly wounds might be healed overnight by divine intervention, or the heart of a king, plucked from his corpse, could be held aloft as a powerful symbol of political rule. In this richly-illustrated and unusual history, Jack Hartnell uncovers the fascinating ways in which people thought about, explored and experienced their physical selves in the Middle Ages, from Constantinople to Cairo and Canterbury. Unfolding like a medieval pageant, and filled with saints, soldiers, caliphs, queens, monks and monstrous beasts, it throws light on the medieval body from head to toe - revealing the surprisingly sophisticated medical knowledge of the time in the process. Bringing together medicine, art, music, politics, philosophy and social history, there is no better guide to what life was really like for the men and women who lived and died in the Middle Ages. Medieval Bodies is published in association with Wellcome Collection.

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A vivid picture of the human heart and its place in culture and medicine Published upon the opening of the Wellcome Collection, the Wellcome Trust's new public venue in London, this book examines the history of our understanding of the human heart. Encompassing material from Henry Wellcome's own collections in the Wellcome Library and images and artifacts from private and public archives across the world, the book provides a richly illustrated account of changes in our perception of what the heart does and what it means.The book first explores the symbolic significance of the heart in ancient Egypt, China, India, and Greece; its role in Aztec ceremony; and its place in the medieval world. It then considers the centrality of the heart in Christianity and other religions and the literary and artistic views of the heart as the seat of the soul and emotions.The growth of anatomical knowledge of the heart and its treatment through developing technology is fundamental to the volume. Fifteenth-century drawings by Leonardo da Vinci reveal his extraordinary early insight into the heart’s mechanisms, and twentieth-century medical breakthroughs prompt questions about ownership of the heart and the source of life itself. With testimony from surgeons and patients, the book highlights developments in cardiac surgery and considers future alternatives involving gene therapy, stem cell options, and micro-surgery.Published with The Wellcome Trust

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* * * Winner of the 2014 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books * * *Stuff Matters by Mark Miodnownik is a unique and inspiring exploration of human creativity.'Enthralling. A mission to re-acquaint us with the wonders of the fabric that sustains our lives' GuardianEverything is made of something...From the everyday objects in our homes to the most extraordinary new materials that will shape our future, Stuff Matters reveals the inner workings of the man-made world, the miracles of craft, design, engineering and ingenuity that surround us every day.From the tea-cup to the jet engine, the silicon chip to the paper clip, from the ancient technologies of fabrics and ceramic to today's self-healing metals and bionic implants, this is a book to inspire amazement and delight at mankind's creativity.'A certain sort of madness may be necessary to pull off what he has attempted here, which is a wholesale animation of the inanimate: Miodownik achieves precisely what he sets out to' The Times'Insightful, fascinating. The futuristic materials will elicit gasps. Makes even the most everyday substance seem exciting' Sunday Times'Wonderful. Miodownik writes well enough to make even concrete sparkle' Financial Times'I stayed up all night reading this book' Oliver Sacks'Expert, deftly written, immensely enjoyable' ObserverMark Miodownik is Professor of Materials and Society at UCL, scientist-in-residence on Dara O Briain's Science Club (BBC2) and presenter of several documentaries, including The Genius of Invention (BBC2). In 2010, he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, broadcast on BBC4. He is Director of the UCL Institute of Making, which is home to a materials library containing some of the most wondrous matter on earth, and has collaborated to make interactive events with many museums, such as Tate Modern, the Hayward Gallery and Wellcome Collection. In 2014 Stuff Matters won the Royal Society Winton Prize.

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