Volunteers' Week is an annual celebration of the contribution millions of people make across the UK through volunteering in their communities.
Join us in celebrating the work of the volunteers of the RCP archives, heritage library, and museum team.
Caitlín Rankin-McCabe, PhD candidate from Durham University, researches a mysterious object in the RCP's current exhibition: Unfamiliar: A new look at the Royal College of Physicians’ collections
The RCP Heritage Library manages the Heberden Library of the British Society for Rheumatology (BSR), a collection documenting the history of rheumatology from the 16th to 20th centuries. Today on the blog we take a look at a recent addition to the Heberden Library: Thomas Short’s, Discourse on tea, sugar, milk, made-wines, spirits, punch, tobacco (1750) which contains his ‘plain and useful rules for gouty people’.
WARNING – SPOILERS!
The RCP is housed in a Grade I listed building designed by celebrated architect Sir Denys Lasdun. The striking modernist building with its unexpected historic interiors has been popular with film and television producers since it was opened in 1964. In this blog we revisit some of the sets the RCP has played host to in recent years. Why not come and visit us to see where you favourite scene was filmed?
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.
