Blogs

Rare books and special collections librarian, Katie Birkwood explores the history of Ladies' Night at the RCP. 

Co-curator of exhibition ‘Unfamiliar’, Theo Deproost is a fine-art and commercial photographer whose practice focuses on discovering and re-interpreting the hidden gems of museum stores. We recently chatted with Theo about the experience of co-curating at the RCP: 

Debbie Jegede is a lead physician associate in the emergency department at Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, a member of the RCP’s Diversity and Inclusion Delivery Group, and co-curator of our current exhibition ‘Unfamiliar’. We recently chatted with Debbie about the experience of co-curating at the RCP: 

Tuesday 24 January was an exciting day for the archive, heritage library and museum team – the launch of new exhibition, ‘Unfamiliar’.

A chance find in a newly catalogue book led to the story of two leading lights in nursing teaching in New York in the late 19th century: women who devoted their lives to their work and to each other.

After the Second World War, the British Advisory Committee for Medical War Crimes was set up to investigate experiments carried out on prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. The committee’s records are held by the RCP archives. One of the categories into which the Committee divided the war crimes was eugenics, the bigoted ideology of ‘perfecting’ society through state-planned breeding. However, eugenics was not an ideology confined to Nazi Germany. Two members of the war crimes committee, Carlos Paton Blacker (1895-1975) and Aubrey Lewis (1900-1975), were also members of the RCP’s euphemistically named Voluntary Sterilisation Committee. Assistant Archivist, Felix Lancashire, examines eugenic theory and practice among British physicians in the 1930s-50s.

Please be aware that this blog contains distressing content from the outset. 

From bodily excretions to corpse medicine, human ingredients were once commonplace enough to feature in domestic recipe books. Archives volunteer, Jessica Reeves, explores this fascinating medical history. 

New research into Field Marshal Montgomery’s ‘lucky greenstone’ amulet reveals its Māori history.

Library Volunteer Grace Murray uncovers an intriguing signature and a twisting tale of provenance that reminds us how individual collections can shape institutional libraries.

A husband and wife printing team, a world-travelling botanist, and a visual guessing game…Explore the print ‘The Simpling Macaroni’