January 2018
Initially inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by its founder, Sir Henry Wellcome, Wellcome Collection offers a wide range of documents and images about the history of medicine and science in Brazil.
It includes content on tropical medicine and neglected diseases such as leishmaniasis in the Amazon region, schistosomiasis as well as yellow fever and malaria. The archives also contain material on family planning, the histories of pharmacy and veterinary medicine, botany and exploration.
The Wellcome Collection at Euston Road, London.
Researchers who would like to use the collection can apply for the Consortium fellowships in the history of science and medicine. Now, these fellowships will count on the support of the Wellcome Trust for researchers from Brazil, South Africa and India.
Applications for the next round of fellowships must be submitted online by 1 May 2018. See how to apply:
Wellcome Collection’s Research Development team* explained to our blog how the archive can be useful to Brazilian researchers.
What kind of content in relation to Brazil is only available in the WC and what makes it relevant to historians of medicine?
Therapeutic Institute for Leprosy, Tocunduba, Belém, Brazil, ca. 1910
Many of the Wellcome Library’s collections are of great interest to Brazilian researchers. Our holdings relating to Brazil date from the 16th to the 21st century and include rare books, artworks, moving image and sound materials, manuscripts and archive materials.
The topics covered are wide-ranging, and include themes such as tropical medicine, family planning and reproductive science research, disease transmission, the histories of pharmacy and veterinary medicine.
More contemporary archive material includes documentation on international medical societies and campaigning bodies, allowing insights into Brazilian membership of such organizations. For example, the archive of the International League Against Epilepsy (SA/ILE) includes material on the Brazilian chapter of the organization and the archive of Population Control (SA/POP).
Such collections allow for studies to traverse national boundaries and make comparisons between neighboring countries in South America and further afield, as well as studies looking at the development of international networks between individual researchers.
Relatório sobre medidas de salubridade reclamadas pela cidade do Rio de Janeiro. 1854
The archive of the Wellcome Foundation tracks the history of the pharmaceutical company co-founded by Sir Henry Wellcome up until its merger into GSK in 2000.
This collection offers an insight into a major pharmacy company’s relations with Brazil, particularly in relation to veterinary medicine. As cataloguing proceeds of the archive of the Wellcome Trust, we fully expect more records to become available for research, relating to medical research funded by us in Brazil in recent decades.
What makes this collection unique?
Sir Henry Wellcome was interested in tropical materia medica, botanical exploration, ethnology, the medicine and literature on travel in the Americas and collected a diverse range of publications in different languages in all these areas making it one of the most extensive (just under 1000 items) collections on the region outside South America.
Frame grabs taken from the Wellcome Trust video Schistosomiasis, 1990.
We also hold a number of films which feature Brazil, such as The population problem. : Brazil / The gathering millions, 1967 (via the archives of ‘Population Concern’ SA/POP), although most of the films we hold are about schistosomiasis, for example Science against schistosomiasis, 1967, Schistosomiasis, 1963. According to the World Health Organization, this disease is still present in Brazil, but is now under control.
How can the WC be useful for Brazilian researchers of history of science and medicine?
For researchers in the history of medicine and science, Wellcome Collection is a hugely rich resource. Earlier 18th century material includes publications in relation to cinchona, dissertations on cures for wounds caused by firearms and botany. For 19th century historians, topics as wide as ethnography, folklore, botany, medical education, and exploration are encompassed.
A collection of voyages and travels including Brazil compiled by Awnsham and John Churchill, 1751.
The collection is particularly strong in 20th century research on neglected parasitic diseases such as Leishmaniasis in the Amazon region, borne by sand flies, as well as yellow fever and malaria.
Of note are the personal archives of renowned scholars and researchers, such as Percy Cyril Claude Garnham at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, whose research interests included Leishmaniasis and malaria parasites, and Walter Myers of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, who was a leading figure in Tropical medicine and parasitology at the turn of the 20th century. The collection encompasses Myers’ clinical and post mortem notes on the aetiology, pathology, and treatment of yellow fever, especially in Pará (now Belém), Brazil.
The Wellcome Bureau of Scientific Research was established in 1913 as a hub of international scientific activity. This unit provided training for medical officers in tropical diseases and medicine. As ‘Director of Research in the Tropics’, Dr Andrew Balfour first identified the howler monkey as a reservoir host of yellow fever in 1914.
The work of the Bureau was encapsulated in Balfour’s 1920 publication War against tropical disease (published by Baillière, Tindall & Cox) that identified a need for alternatives to quinine in resistant strains of malaria in Brazil. Draft copies of Balfour’s work on The Practice of medicine in the tropics, 1918-22 would also be of interest to researchers within this field of study.
An advertisement for safe sex to prevent AIDS by the Brazilian Health Ministry. 1995
In addition, medical education programmes in Brazil are covered in papers relating to the British Council visit to the country in the 1970’s. Equally relevant to researchers in genetics is the archive of George Robert Fraser (1861-2011) who was visiting professor in the Division of Human Genetics Department of Biology at the of São Paulo, Brazil in 1970.
* We would like to thank Angela McShane, Angela Saward, Julia Nurse, Ross MacFarlane and William Schupbach.
See a selection of documents and images about Brazil
18th century Brazilian publications:
19th century publications include:
- Domestic medicine
- Vaccine inoculation in Brazil
- Ethnographic accounts and imagery
- Illustrated botanical publications
- Imagery about child slavery
- Medical education in 19th century Brazil
- Visualization of race
- Diary of a cholera-infected expedition to China via Brazil
- A publication about the application of poisons peculiar to Brazil in medicine
- Imagery of sanatoriums in Brazil
- Brazilian folklore
20th century publications in the collection:
- Medical expeditions to the tropics
- Studies on yellow fever
- Leprosy
- Snake poisoning
- Archival material on the Foot & Mouth Disease Vaccine Production in Brazil in 1976
- Aids posters
