A free museum and library exploring health and human experience

  • Display

Expecting: Birth, Belief and Protection

This display, featuring a rare medieval birth scroll, explores protective practices and beliefs surrounding pregnancy, childbirth and infertility from the past to the present.

This week

In focus

The Joy of Being Disabled

Explore what it means to be joyful, defiant and disabled. Guest edited by Amy Kavanagh, this series of five articles celebrates different bodies and minds, and challenges ableist ideas of what it means to be happy.

  • Book

Books

We publish thought-provoking books exploring health and human experiences. Our latest title, 'Thirst: In Search of Freshwater', is a collection of writings celebrating the myths and memories that flow through freshwater.

Shop

The Wellcome Collection shop stocks unique books and gifts inspired by our collection and exhibition themes.

Latest stories

  • Article

The blue space blueprint

It’s easy to overlook the litter choking our cities’ waterways, but the litter-picker’s manifesto is one to follow if we dream of a better world. Leila Taheri explores the psychology of littering and litter-picking, and imagines a radical future for our urban blue spaces.

  • Long read

Acts of love and resistance in Sudan

Growing up in Sudan, Jumana Eltgani knew the highs of water flowing and the lows of dry days. Her family’s clay zeer kept water cool and easy to share. Now, amid war, that spirit of generosity is keeping her neighbourhood alive.

Part of Inside our collections
  • Article

The vilest of all beverages

Drinking water was risky in the Middle Ages. But that didn’t stop people from drinking it – warily, enthusiastically, and sometimes with disgusting consequences. Historian Katherine Harvey explores the sometimes strange beliefs medieval people had about water.

  • Article

The price of pure water

Like millions of people across West Africa, Tracy Egbele’s family has no access to safe tap water, and buys plastic-packaged water instead. She highlights the serious problems facing this fragile system, and the daily health risks people are forced to take as a result.

All stories