A human heart, ancient Japanese sex toys, a French guillotine blade and a mummified Peruvian body are amongst the fascinating objects unveiled today at The Wellcome Collection, London’s new £30 million museum exploring the history and wider meaning of medicine.
The Wellcome Collection ranges over two floors and three galleries and builds on the vision, legacy and remarkable personal collection of Sir Henry Wellcome who amassed a massive collection of over one million medical related items.
Visitors to the new museum will be treated to a fascinating view of medicine that manages to stretch out its tentacles to encompass art, history and the way medicine has been perceived and has affected the human race throughout history.
It was opened on June 20 2007 by the American Nobel laureate Professor James D. Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA.
At the launch Dr Watson praised the staff of the Wellcome Trust for their vision and determination before lauding the UK’s enviable commitment to science museums.
“I think you need to be congratulated in a very big way,” said the Nobel winning doctor. “The United Sates is a disgrace – there is not a single science museum in the whole country and hopefully what you have here will inspire us to put that right.”
Dr Watson was speaking in the new Public Events Forum attached to the Medicine Now Gallery of the new Museum. Amongst a range of topics the Gallery explores the human genome, a subject very close to his heart.
A display features a first print out of the human genome, presented as a vast series of books containing the 3.4 billion units of DNA code. Each a thousand pages long, the hundred volumes contain type so small that it’s barley legible. Elsewhere in the gallery contemporary medical topics are explored through the eyes of scientists, artists and through popular culture.
“Where else can you browse more than 3 billion letters of the human genome, see one of the robots that helped sequence it and contemplate the reactions of contemporary artists to this major scientific development?” added Dr Watson.
“DNA and medicine are now completely intertwined and Henry Wellcome and his collection have become indistinguishable from the investigation of DNA.” The 79-year-old Nobel laureate went on to predict that the next ten years will see great strides in the medical benefits of the continued investigation of the human genome.
“I think we should think positively,” he said. “I think we are close to a DNA diagnosis for every mental illness within the next ten years.”
“I want to convey my admiration for what the Trust has done. You are giving the public what it needs. By saying we can reach these goals we are going to get the public on our side.”
Elsewhere in the Medicine Now Gallery art is clearly separated from the scientific exhibits via large red ‘art cubes’. In one of them a grotesque sculpture by John Isaacs references the modern medical problem of obesity. I Can’t Help The Way I Feel is a 2 metre-high body of fat that envelopes its own head and torso.
But it’s the vast collection of Henry Wellcome that lies at the heart of the new Museum.
Henry Solomon Wellcome was the founder of Burroughs Wellcome & Co., a forerunner of the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline Plc, and the Wellcome Trust. Its Library and new museum are located in a renovated 1932 building on Euston Road that was once his company's headquarters.
Wellcome was one those Victorian and Edwardian giants who clearly had no time for sleep. He was a pioneer of aerial photography, ran one of the biggest archaeological digs of the time, coined the term tabloid (for compressed tablets) and amassed one of the greatest fortunes of his era.
In the last thirty years of his life he collected his massive collection of items, casting his net across the globe to acquire a research collection that would aid the study of medicine.
Inspired by the great Victorian collector Pitt-Rivers he also collected collections. After all, why just have one amputation saw when you could buy hundreds of them?
The cases in the Medicine Man Gallery display the depth of this collection. Even so, it’s the very top of the tip of an iceberg – with approximately 500 objects on display.
Three great showcases contain objects that deal with death (a guillotine, a trepanned skull…); birth (Victorian anti-masturbation devices, erotic carvings and ancient sex toys…) and how the body is pictured. Other cases contain saws, prosthetic limbs and votive offerings whilst a vast wall shows an impressive collection of medical-related paintings.
Beyond the objects Wellcome also bequeathed a very broad approach to the study and interpretation of medicine. Discreet recordings are imbedded within drawers, helping to set medicine in a wider cultural context. The grim fascination of a Peruvian Mummy is balanced via a commentary about the ethics of displaying human remains.
A lock of George III’s hair is accompanied by a recording of scientists discussing the presence of arsenic whilst the gentle Yorkshire brogue of Allen Bennett reflects on the ‘madness of King George’.
On the ground floor a gallery is dedicated to special exhibitions, with the first one focusing on the heart. The exhibition runs until September 16 and features a wealth of fascinating objects, including the massive heart of a sperm whale and a heart recently removed from a 22-year-old woman who a fortnight ago received a transplant at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge.
John Isaacs, I Can’t Help The Way I Feel. Photo: Richard Moss/24 Hour Museum
It’s probably safe to assume that she will be the first woman who can visit a museum and look at her own heart.
A model of a heart-lung machine, which keeps patients alive during bypass surgery, is also featured in the centre of the vast exhibition space, whilst two anatomical tables from seventeenth century Italy show the venal and arterial systems – each meticulously removed from a body and mounted onto wooden boards.
It’s a stimulating mix of contemporary and historic artefacts from across the world forming an exhibition that traces our medical understanding of the heart together with its extraordinary symbolic cultural significance.
The Wellcome Collection is a world first in that it successfully fuses medicine and art. It combines three contemporary galleries together with the world famous Wellcome Library, a forum, a café, bookshop, conference centre and a member’s club.
London has acquired yet another great museum to house an extraordinary collection.
