Terrence Higgins Trust 30th anniversary

It is not only Independence Day in the US today. It is also the 30th anniversary since the death of Terry Higgins, the first person publicly identified as dying with AIDS in the UK on 4th July 1982.

To prevent more people facing the same fate, a group of Higgins' friends established a Trust in his name on 26th November that year to raise awareness of the disease. The Trust remains at the forefront of the fight against HIV in the UK today.

The Trust have recently donated examples of their recent publicity campaigns to the Wellcome Library.  Among the campaigns are posters targeting Black Africans (see http://www.mambo.org.uk/ for details).

Another draws attention to 'PEP', or post-exposure prophylaxis, a treatment that can stop HIV infection after the virus has entered the body. Such a treatment is not intended as a substitute for condoms as this poster warns:

Other quick tests now on offer are also publicised by the Trust:

These posters and ephemera items will contribute to the already extensive collection of AIDS posters from across the world held within the Wellcome Library. This collection has been highlighted in numerous other posts see: 3000 AIDS posters catalogued, World AIDS Day: from despair to defence, BBC Audio slide show: The AIDS message, Spreading the word: HIV/AIDS at 30.

Of the 99 posters from the UK already in the collection, 29 of those were produced by the Terrence Higgins Trust, some in collaboration with other smaller groups such as London Black Mesmac from the early 1990's - see 666560i. As with two-thirds of the collection, the Terrence Higgins Trust also focussed heavily on safe sex and use of condoms as this poster demonstrates on the right from 1992 (666545i):

The advantages of recently digitising the entire collection has enabled us to convert the records into a World map:



This map clearly shows the global spread of the disease though it must be stressed, the collection is by no means complete.  Large gaps across Asia, Africa, and the perimeters of North America are not always because of collection omissions. In some cases, sparsely populated areas are to blame, but also the fact that some regions just didn't respond to the disease.

Since 2001, HIV prevalence in Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia has increased by 250 percent, making the region home to the world's most rapidly expanding epidemic. In contrast, over the same period, prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa fell and stabilised in South and Southeast Asia where campaigns have continued.

Click here  for the latest HIV statistics in the UK. To find out more about how the Terrence Higgins Trust are marking their anniversary, see their current press releases.  Please note the posters illustrated have yet to be catalogued.

Authors: Julia Nurse and Natalie Pollecutt

Investigating HIV/AIDs

We were sorry to note recently the death of Tony Coxon, who was the principal investigator of Project SIGMA, a major longitudinal study of gay men and HIV/Aids which informed government and World Health Organisation policies at the height of the epidemic. 

The Wellcome Library holds microfiche copies of the anonymised diaries of sexual behaviour kept by gay and bisexual men, 1987-1994, in connection with this study, along with some associated documentation. These were described at more length in the post announcing that the collection had been catalogued early last year. The importance of the diary method for obtaining information on actual practices of men having sex with men is described on the Project SIGMA website. This kind of detail is essential to developing strategies of education and prevention.

HIV/AIDS at 30: Spreading the Word

To mark World AIDS Day (1 December) this year, BHIVA (the British HIV Association) held a World AIDS Day Event in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust on the theme HIV/AIDS at 30: Back to the Future. 2011 is the thirtieth anniversary of the first description of AIDS -- a milestone in the continuing epidemic that has claimed the lives of millions of people worldwide. While reflecting on the experiences and work of the past 30 years, eminent speakers reviewed today's challenges, and looked ahead to consider how the knowledge of the past will inform future strategies.

One aspect of the epidemic that was considered was the way in which health authorities, activists and charities around the world have tried to prevent its spread by publicity, including posters. The Wellcome Library now has over 3,200 AIDS posters from many countries. The exhibition Spreading the Word: AIDS Posters from Around the World is a selection of 24 posters chosen and interpreted by Dr Sarah Graham of Leicester University, and shown earlier this year at the New Walk Museum in Leicester.


The posters emphasize the range of graphic techniques adopted and the variety of ethnic and social groups at which they were directed. Spreading the Word was also on display today at the BHIVA/Wellcome Trust meeting (left) and was much appreciated by those attending.

Below: Wellcome Library no. 778362i

The latest AIDS poster to enter the Wellcome Library catalogue (right) must be one of the most allusive and discreet in the entire collection. It was published on World AIDS Day in 1994 by UNESCO in Paris, for Hispanic populations in which drug use was a source of transmission of the virus. Unlike the crashingly explicit posters (mostly from Germanic and Anglo-Saxon countries), it refers to open discussion within the family and use of counselling to help drug users, with no obvious indication to the casual passer-by that its end-purpose is to save them from contracting HIV through needle re-use.

Among the work publicised at the conference was a recent volume in the series Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, which was published in November 2011. It concerns the controversial National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL) which was launched in 1990. "A proposal that the UK Department of Health would fund it, after scientific scrutiny by the Economic and Social Research Council, was vetoed at government level – some say by Mrs Thatcher herself – on the grounds that this would be an unacceptable intrusion into private lives. This decision hit the headlines (first in The Sunday Times), as did the decision, some four weeks after the story broke, by the Wellcome Trust to step in and fund it instead. There is a similar story to be told of obstruction from the Bush White House,which forbade funding from the National Institutes for Health (NIH) for the American survey" (pp. xxi-xxii).

The phrase "some say by Mrs Thatcher herself" is backed up on p. 67 by a separate statement in the book (Appendix 3, pp. 66-68) by Dr Peter Williams, Director of the Wellcome Trust at the time, who received that account of events in a phone call from the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Donald Acheson. A note by Professor Virginia Berridge (p. 61) suggests that the reality behind the scenes may have been more complicated, but that at any rate Downing Street was happy to go along with the veto. More of the raw materials for this episode are set out in the volume, in the usual Witness Seminar manner: the spoken memories of people who were involved in the events at the time, provided with scholarly commentary and often with competing points of view. It makes compulsive reading. It is available in hard-copy from booksellers and Amazon, and available free of charge on the web as a PDF. [2]

[1] Overy C, Reynolds L A, Tansey E M. (eds) (2011) History of the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles. Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, vol. 41. London: Queen Mary, University of London. ISBN 978 090223 874 9

[2] http://www.history.qmul.ac.uk/research/modbiomed/wellcome_witnesses/index.html

From the Game of Goose to Snakes and Ladders

Amongst the more surprising items in the Wellcome Library’s collections, are a small selection of board games produced across the past three centuries. While they may seem a little drab in comparison with more modern pastimes, the board games of the past can provide an important and useful insight into historical social beliefs and concerns, and even allow us to some extent gauge the amount of enjoyment derived from watching a grown man bark like a dog...



The games this brief foray into a very specific material history will focus on are by and large 'race games' derived from the Game of Goose, an Italian import from the Middle East played by rolling dice and advancing around the board in a circuit. Newe and most Pleasant Game of the Goose, translated into English for the first time John Wolfe in 1597, is widely credited as the progenitor of the particular type of board game in our collections. While not all of our games attempt to be educational, those that are attempt to address geography, morality and health, and in this respect they are fairly representative of larger thematic groups of historical board games. [1]







Given the variety of historical games in the Library it makes sense to try to address them thematically. Our oldest geographical game, Le Iev Desnations, published in the 17th century, is an educational race game featuring the spiral structure and 63 places common to games of goose. The game purports to teach the "morals, fashions and customs” of the nations of the world, which are presented to educate those "curious about history and geography". The modern player would likely find the descriptions of the depicted nations more interesting than the playing of the game itself which is a straightforward game of chance. The game describes the French as being "of advantageous size" with "beautiful head[s]", claims that French women are "charming [in] body and spirit", and states that the nation is "faithful to their king, courteous to foreigners and very Catholic". The English on the other hand are "blonde, well made", while "the mob [is] impudent, beautiful and harsh". Native Canadians receive a harsher treatment, described as being a "medium size" people "with little thought for the future" who "believe and consult often their god Cadouagny". The game is otherwise notable for its other early colonial descriptions of contemporary human cultures and for its miniature maps depicting a (to the modern eye) inaccurately large “Terre Austrelle”, and that label the Antarctic region "incognue" - unknown.







Another thematic group of games is less educational: The Game of Chance or Harlequin Takes All is a straightforward race around the board in which players try to win tokens added to a kitty, each position on the board entailing some sort of illustrated forfeit or prize, usually simply raising the stake by adding to the kitty but sometimes requiring more unusual actions. Position 9 for example requires the player to pay 6 into the game’s kitty (a relatively hefty fee in context) and for them to “look at the Turk”, a forfeit which seems to have lost its contemporary significance. Other actions include missing two turns sitting in a chair, being fined for “breaking a pitcher”, or being trapped awaiting “rescue from a wood”. Particularly interesting is the forfeit for stopping at position 23; the unfortunate player loses all stake in the game and must “bark until it is over”, like a dog. Dying though is a mere setback: players must “give way to the corps, pay 9 for ye grave and begin the game again” upon landing at 31. Strangely, the game can only be ended once a player has landed at position 13, the Harlequin, illustrated by a figure in the characteristic chequered costume leaving a house with a club and a sack, at which point they collect the kitty and end the game. The publisher, Laurie and Whittle of London, would reuse many of the images and mechanics of The Game of Chance in their later New and Entertaining Game of the Goose. This game is significant for its reintroduction of the goose motif from the game’s heritage without the punitive trappings imposed in The Game of Chance. Though some of the more mature positions have been removed or reworked, most notably the “drink to your friend” tile, the death tile remains, perhaps suggesting that the publisher recognised its value as a memento mori.











The third group of games represented are ‘morality games’ that sought to impart contemporary morality to the players through a simple system of reward and punishment. Perhaps the most elaborately named of the games discussed here is Laurie’s Instructive Moral and Entertaining Game of the Mansion of Happiness. The game’s moral tone is far from subtle; the playing board itself has the tag-line “virtue rewarded and vice punished,” and the rules admonish players in possession of “Audacity, Cruelty, Immodesty or Ingratitude” to “not even to think of Happiness, much less partake of it.” For other attributes the game has more specific and contemporaneously appropriate forfeits; “Whoever becomes a PERJURER must be put in the pillory and pay a Fine of one.” Punishments at the infamous Bridewell prison, in the stocks or at the whipping post are also instructed. Some significance might be found in the production of this exceptionally upstanding morality game from the publisher of The Game of Chance that rewarded drinking and incorporated a stronger element of gambling; Laurie, whose name the company still used and who would have overseen the production of The Game of Chance, left the business in 1815, possibly allowing for a change in direction toward more educational games, though it may be the case that the game is simply a product of the emerging market for morally educational titles. [1]



Interestingly, a second morality game held by the Library, a late 18th century Indian game titled Jnana Bagi; the Game of Heaven and Hell was one of the influences on the the western board game Snakes and Ladders. A tool for teaching ethics, the 82 hand drawn and coloured squared are inscribed with symbols denoting living creatures and moral attributes. Significantly, the longest ladder on the board is from position 17, labelled “compassionate love”, to position 69, “the world of the absolute.” Compared with the later western morality game, the Game of Heaven and Hell is much richer in symbolism; the rewards and setbacks posed by the snakes and the ladders illustrate an understanding that life is fraught with successes and challenges, perhaps a more complex lesson than the didactic moral certainties illustrated by the Mansion of Happiness.







The final category of games is that of the ‘health game’. Building on the historical precedent of games as vectors for educational ideas, health games have been produced at various times to support campaigns confronting contemporary health concerns. See how they won: the game of good health, is a departure from the previous games discussed so far, in that it isn’t strictly a board game, though remains worthy of consideration through its value as a record of contemporary concerns.







A ball and maze puzzle with hazards, dating from the 1930s, the game charts the player’s progress from “slumdom”, highlighting contemporary fears of urban degradation, past the many health risks threatening young people in the early twentieth century urban environment; lack of sunlight, rickets and pneumonia, amongst others, toward “The Great Goal, Good Health”. Given its context the game’s subject matter is not at all surprising; it was produced to raise funds for the Vincent Square Infant’s Hospital in London, a charitable children’s hospital that would have directly confronted the problems created by poor living conditions in the city.







Sixty years later, another health game confronts a later public health concern: the spread of HIV/AIDS in modern America. TrianguAIDS, a book cover designed as a board game played in much the same way as the other ‘race games’ in the collection; players move around the triangular board by rolling dice, trying to avoid the hazards (in this case a “Hooker”, “Pusher” or “Little Action”) which somewhat morbidly increase the player’s chance of contracting HIV. Once a player becomes a carrier a second area of the board is opened up to chart their swift progression with the virus to an inevitable death, and the ability to spread the condition to other players creates an escalating sense of paranoia. In some respects the game owes more to historical morality games than to health games; the instructions’ didactic tone and the penalisation of players for finding themselves in morally questionable positions is characteristic of this particular genre of pedagogical pastime.



References:

[1] Caroline G. Goodfellow, ‘The Development of the English Board Game,

1770-1850’, Board Game Studies,1998, 1: 70-80.

http://www.boardgamestudies.info/pdf/issue1/BGS1Goodfellow.pdf



Images:

- A game involving many of the countries in the world. Engraving by Antoine de Fer after Louis Richer (Wellcome Library no. 35129i)

- A board game with various forfeits, penalties and rewards. Etching. 1794 (Wellcome Library no. 33448i)

- A large goose, with three golden eggs: numbered circles printed on the body of the goose for playing a counter game. Coloured engraving. 1848 (Wellcome Library no. 35130i)

- A layout for a board game, with the rules of the game. Engraving. 1851 (Wellcome Library no. 37628i).

- Game of Heaven and Hell (Jnana Bagi) (Sanskrit Alpha 276)

- See how they won: the game of good health (Oversize ephemera. EPH+13)

- A book cover designed as a board game about safer sex risks by the Walraven Book Cover Company. Colour lithograph, 1992. (Wellcome Libary no. 668792i)



Author Simon Wilson

Swiss National Day

Every country has its own day for fireworks, it seems: November 5th in the UK, July 4th in the USA, July 14th in France. In Switzerland it’s today, 1st August, and anyone standing on the southern shore of Lac Léman tonight, in France, will look across to see firework displays taking place all down the long sweep of the Swiss shore. Today is the Swiss National Day*, when communities gather all over the country (and beyond, in the so-called “Fifth Switzerland” made up of expatriates) to celebrate their Swissness and the survival of their country despite all the obstacles that geography, language, religion and sometimes-aggressive neighbours have placed in the way of its unity. Here we look at some Swiss items in the Wellcome Library collections, and the links between Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

[*Of course, as a multi-lingual country Switzerland has not one but four names for the celebration, calling it the Bundesfeier (German), Fête nationale (French), Festa nazionale (Italian) or Fiasta naziunala (Romansch).]

The date of the National Day commemorates the first Federal Charter, dated “early August” 1291, although it has become conflated also with the slightly later Oath of the Rütli sworn between the representatives of the three original cantons, an event dramatised by Schiller in his play Wilhelm Tell (and re-enacted at a crucial moment in the country’s history, in 1941, when the 650th anniversary of the confederation was used to reaffirm a commitment to democracy and independence). Needless to say, history does not really provide a neat date and time at which the country was founded. Rather, the origins of Switzerland lie in a gradual coalescence of various communities, mostly of their free will, for mutual protection and self-determination. As the Middle Ages progressed, the original three “forest cantons” of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, clustered in the mountainous area around the Vierwaldstättersee, were joined by other similar areas, by imperial cities such as Zürich, Bern and Basel, by their subject areas, and by other loose confederations of mountain communities such as those that now make up the cantons of Valais and Graubünden, until by the early modern period the country had essentially the shape that it has today.

There have long been strong links between Switzerland and the United Kingdom, with the nineteenth century particularly important for these. The Romantics’ appreciation of Switzerland’s scenery – prior to the Romantic movement it had been more usual to see mountains as a nuisance – forged a trail that tourists followed, with an ever-expanding railway network (and travel agents like Thomas Cook) making it ever easier to get there. The names of hotels in holiday centres such as Interlaken are a testament to the British influence on Switzerland’s tourist industry. Politically, too, Switzerland was appealing to the nineteenth-century Briton. At a time when much of Europe was controlled by empires and other undemocratic régimes, this was a country whose foundation myths, of sturdy independent peasants banding together to resist oppression and decide their policies by democratic means, chimed well with Victorian ideas of ancestral Anglo-Saxon liberties and the evolution of the Mother of Parliaments. (In each case, of course, the foundation myth ignored many less democratic elements such as the unequal weighting that wealth gave certain citizens’ voices, and the complete absence of any voice for women.) The robust Protestantism of many Swiss would have been congenial, too. Here, a Victorian Englishman could have enjoyed foreign travel whilst feeling that the people around him were almost British themselves: sensible, sober people not given to continental vices such as riots, revolutions or too much gesticulation. One of the strangest survivors of this nineteenth-century kinship stands in the London district of Brixton, one of the capital’s poorer neighbourhoods: in the midst of a 1960s housing estate is a pub called “The Hero of Switzerland”, the sign showing the iconic scene in which William Tell aims his crossbow at an apple on his son’s head. The building is modern but stands on a site used for a pub of that name since at least 1901.

As one might expect, many of the Swiss items in the Wellcome Library relate to British travellers. In 1817 Joseph Jackson Lister (1786-1869), wine merchant, microscopist and later to be father to the founder of antiseptic surgery, was one of the British subjects flocking across the Channel to see the European sights that had been off-limits for a generation and were now finally opened to them by the victory over Napoleon. His travels are recorded in a tiny, neat diary, illustrated with pencil sketches and watercolours that track his journey across France to the Alps and then back to Britain down the Rhine (MS.6962).

Lister's journeys took him to the foot of the Gotthard Pass, into territory that was still quite wild and woolly for the average traveller. Later in the nineteenth century an expanding tourist industry had made the mountains more accessible, with mountain railways making it possible for ordinary tourists to reach summits previously thought of as the haunt only of ghosts and dragons. The surgeon Charles Brodie Sewell (1817-1900) visited Switzerland repeatedly from the 1860s to the 1890s and his detailed travel journals give an indication of how domesticated, comparatively, the Alps were becoming: photographs show us the rack-railway climbing to the summit of the Rigi, one of two that were built to this peak. Many other papers in the Library collections document similar holidays, up to the mid-twentieth century. The diary of Dr Forrest Leon Loveland, a general practitioner from Topeka, Kansas, documenting a trip to Europe in 1931, is particularly colourful, with photographs, cuttings and ephemera pasted into a large diary-cum-scrapbook (MS.7974). Shadows are cast on this tourist idyll, however, by one item Loveland includes: next to a painting of Zürich and photographs of the railway up the Pilatus is a monochrome newspaper cutting whose title declares "Germany's 100,000 on fighting edge", next to which a member of the Wehrmacht blows a purposeful bugle. Particularly poignant reminders of the world beyond the Alps come in the papers of the psychoanalysts Siegmund Heinrich Foulkes (originally Fuchs) (1898-1976) and Elizabeth Therese Fanny Foulkes (née Marx) (1918-2004). The couple collected postcards when on holiday, and their papers include blank undated cards from all over the world, Switzerland included. The Swiss cards appear to date from between the wars and it is probable that whichever of the Foulkes collected these (they were not married to each other at that time) would still have been a German citizen, since each was born German but was forced to emigrate to the U.K. by Nazi persecution of Jews.

We have focussed so far chiefly upon foreign visitors to Switzerland, but of course Swiss material is also present in the collection. Our manuscript medical recipe books include Swiss items such as MS.7908, a collection of medical recipes originally put together by a priest in Birmensdorf (canton Zürich) in the early seventeenth century. Perhaps the most striking of our Swiss holdings, however, are among the most recent. The Library's Iconographic Collections include a large number of Swiss public health posters, warning against AIDS and counselling condom use (as ill-luck would have it, AIDS arrived at about the same time that Switzerland underwent a large increase in intravenous drug use, making the problem even more pressing). The posters - available, of course, in various languages including those of immigrant communities such as Turkish, as well as the country's official languages - come in various styles, from the oblique to the downright startling and explicit. Backgrounds to the messages vary from nightclubs in, presumably, the grittier city neighbourhoods, to the chocolate-box Switzerland of Alps and meadows, in which a Heidi-milkmaid brandishes a condom and proclaims "Ohne? Ohne mich." (An idiomatic translation might be "Doing without [a condom]? Do without me."). In one particularly pretty series, the instantly-recognisable skylines of various Swiss cities are shown at night, lit only by the stars and a strange, pink moon that turns out on closer inspection to be a condom.

August 1st has provided us with a reason to dig out some of our Swiss holdings: but, of course, there are many more and they are available all the year round. All these and more can be consulted in the Library (and images of many Swiss-related items can be found on Wellcome Images). You are invited to come and explore, whether it that takes the form of rambling over Alpine meadows or looking at the many inventive uses graphic designers can find for the humble condom.

Images:
Aerial illustration of the Vierwaldstättersee (also known in Britain as Lake Lucerne), from the diaries of Dr Forrest Leon Loveland, general practitioner of Topeka, Kansas, documenting a trip he made to Europe with his wife Helen in 1931 (MS.7974).
Postcards collected on Swiss holidays, mostly showing the Berner Oberland, in the papers of S.H. Foulkes (PP/SHF/A/C/7).
Title page, MS.7908: 17th century recipe compilation.
"The Hero of Switzerland" pub, Loughborough Road, London SW9: image copyright Christopher Hilton, made available under Creative Commons via the Geograph website.
A square and fountain in Zürich, drawn by Joseph Jackson Lister in MS.6962.
The Vitznau-Rigi railway, from the 1885 travel diary of Charles Brodie Sewell (MS.4509).
AIDS-Hilfe Schweiz and Swiss Federal Office of Public Health: poster warning of the importance of condom use, 1990s.
AIDS-Hilfe Schweiz and Swiss Federal Office of Public Health: poster warning of the importance of condom use, 1990s.
Swiss Federal Office of Public Health: poster warning of the importance of condom use, 1990s, showing Luzern by night.

Spreading the Word

From the 15th July until 28th August 2011, an exhibition consisting of reproduction posters entitled Spreading the Word: AIDS posters from Around the World, will be on display at the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in Leicester. The Wellcome Library has worked closely alongside curator, Dr. Sarah Graham, from the University of Leicester to supply the posters for the exhibition. Out of 3000 posters held by the Wellcome Library, 23 posters from five different continents have been chosen to display the ways in which various organisations inform the public about HIV and AIDS.

The date of the exhibition is certainly significant, as July 2011 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the first reported cases of the disease.

The range of posters is particularly diverse. Many appeal to individuals, whilst others are directed at whole communities. For instance, the poster targeting Indian women shows a pledge for women to fight against AIDS. The traditional meaning of the bindi is transformed to act as a symbol of empowerment, mirroring the importance of the red ribbon with regard to AIDS awareness.

Similarly, the poster aimed at the Jewish community reiterates the idea that AIDS can affect all communities, showing the universality of the illness. The poster provides a message of support as opposed to a message of judgement and stigma.

Whilst I enjoyed viewing all the posters on display, I particularly liked the poster, ‘Be a good sport,’ from the Terrence Higgins Trust. This poster reflects the nature of the world-wide epidemic, represented by the 5 rings to show the 5 different continents, epitomising the message of the two aforementioned posters. The colour of the condoms on the white background stand out to present a powerful image which is underlined by the humorous quote of ‘be a good sport;’ a poster that could be aimed at anyone, symbolising that, like sport, AIDS can bring nations together.

The space chosen for the exhibition at the New Walk gallery could not be more perfect. Beautifully displayed, positioned near the entrance, the posters are unavoidable. Indeed, visitors will be unable to escape a confrontation with this world-wide illness, as the exhibition provides a thoroughly thought provoking visit to the gallery.

Spreading the Word: AIDS Posters from Around the World, New Walk Museum, 53 New Walk, Leicester LE1 7EA (Friday 15th July 2011 - Sunday 28th August 2011)

Author: Alice Calloway

Images:
- A woman with a red Bindi spot representing a pledge to fight AIDS; an advertisement by the Arcon, the Lions Club of Bombay Hilltop and the HIV/AIDS Information and Guidance Centre in Bombay (Wellcome Library no. 677265i)
- The star of David incorporating a needle; representing AIDS among Jews and the work of the Jewish Aids Trust. Black and white lithograph (Wellcome Library no. 666512i)
- Two rows of Olympic coloured condoms; advertisement for safer sex by the Terrence Higgins Trust for those affected by HIV/AIDS (Wellcome Library no. 666857i

Archives and Manuscripts cataloguing: January 2011

A new year, and more new material made available for research. During January, nearly four hundred new database records were created for archive material, one hundred and fifteen becoming visible online during that month. As the disparity in numbers indicates, much work went on behind the scenes on collections that are not yet ready for release but which will appear in their entirety in due course. (And, as has been noted before, outside the database retroconversion work continues on the catalogue of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists (SA/CSP).)

Two complete collections were made available this month (and described in a recent blog post): they comprise data gathered by ESDS [Economic and Social Data Service] Qualidata at the University of Essex, which acquires digital data created during the course of qualitative research across a wide range of social science disciplines.

'AIDS-relevant cognitions in Dundee and Kirkaldy' (GC/252), consisting of transcripts and tapes of interviews with children and students in those towns, 1988-1990, to elicit their understanding of AIDS and their attitudes towards it.

'Project SIGMA (Socio-sexual Investigations of Gay Men and Aids)' (GC/260), meanwhile, is mostly made up of microfiche copies of anonymised diaries in which gay and bisexual men recorded their sexual behaviour during 1987-1994. The diarists recorded any sexual activities every day for a month – details including partner/s involved, day, time and setting, and the precise details of what happened to whom in what order.

Both these collections of course document material that is potentially highly controversial. Controversy stalks another figure in this month’s statistics: MS.8758 comprises a letter by Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (1721-1765), ordering the release of funds to an army surgeon under Cumberland’s command in the Low Countries. “Butcher” Cumberland, second son of George II, is of course still a highly controversial figure for his role in the 1745-6 Jacobite rising, in which the Jacobites were killed in huge numbers at the Battle of Culloden and captured stragglers were subjected by Cumberland to “military execution” or extra-judicial shooting.

Maybe our most significant cataloguing highlight, however, is one that is still invisible: the final tranche of our catalogue of the papers of Francis Crick (PP/CRI) will be released in the next month and considerable work is going on behind the scenes to prepare this, both physically (boxing up the material in appropriate, acid-free containers) and intellectually (over 900 database records requiring fine-tuning). There will be more to report on this in the next cataloguing summary, a month from now.

Image: a detail from MS.8758, showing the flowing hand of an Army clerk and the slightly less fluent signature of the Duke of Cumberland.

Investigating responses to AIDS in the late 1980s

Two small archive collections that have just been made available provide rather different insights as to the impact of the AIDS/HIV epidemic on different populations in the UK by the end of the 1980s, the decade in which it first became perceived as a problem and pervasively associated with gay men. These collections were both received from ESDS [Economic and Social Data Service] Qualidata at the University of Essex, which acquires digital data created during the course of qualitative research across a wide range of social science disciplines, and passed on the non-digital materials generated by these projects to the Wellcome Library.

GC/252, 'AIDS-relevant cognitions in Dundee and Kirkaldy', consists of transcripts and some tapes of semi-structured anonymised interviews conducted with school children and university students in those towns, 1988-1990. These were intended to elicit their understanding of AIDS and their attitudes towards it.

GC/260, 'Project SIGMA (Socio-sexual Investigations of Gay Men and Aids)', consists of microfiche copies of anonymised diaries (only age and occupation were recorded) of sexual behaviour kept by gay and bisexual men, in connection with this longitudinal survey conducted 1987-1994, along with some associated documentation. The diaries were developed as a method within Project SIGMA (which was supported by grants from the Medical Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, and the Department of Health) to provide unique and detailed information about gay and bisexual men's sexual activity and the contexts within which it occurred. Diary keepers were asked to keep a diary on a daily basis for the period of a month, referring not only to the partner/s involved but also to the day, time and setting in which the sexual activity occurred. The data give information on the sequence in which things happened, on the roles (solo/active/passive/mutual) taken. If ejaculation occurred, its destination (in/on a partner, into a condom) was also noted. Any use of toys, "poppers", drugs etc. were recorded in the context in which they were used. Recall biases were lessened because diaries were filled out on a daily basis. Further information of Project Sigma and the sexual diaries as a research method can be found at its website.

These collections add to the already significant holdings in the Wellcome Library relating to AIDS/HIV and the medical and social responses. There is a substantial collection of AIDS ephemera, and a very large collection of public health posters from all over the world, most of which have been digitised and can be seen in Wellcome Images

World AIDS Day: from despair to defence

During the year since World AIDS Day 2009 the Wellcome Library has continued to add to its already substantial collection of AIDS posters. This (left) is the first to be received from Tajikistan; indeed it is only the ninth work from Tajikistan (these are the nine) in the entire Wellcome Library catalogue (which as of today contains records for 704,361 works). Although created with support from international organizations, its depiction of a family at dinner and other scenes is thoroughly local. In showing nothing amiss, it resembles some of the earliest AIDS posters from Asian countries. The poster was donated through the good offices of Dr Nikolaj Serikoff of the Wellcome Library.

By contrast the earlier posters from Europe did not hesitate to pile on the agony of HIV infection, and this tactic is still shown in this poster (right) from Antwerp published in 1991. The design was selected through a competition held for Flemish art students in April 1990.

The German-language AIDS posters appear to be all now in the Wellcome Library catalogue – "appear" because it is possible that we still have some more somewhere that have not yet been catalogued; and many of the earlier records are first-draft records that need subsequent upgrading. Their completion (as it may well be) is thanks to Anna Ostrowska of the Wellcome Library, who had already catalogued the Polish ones. Many of the more recent posters (published in 2000 and subsequently) show more confidence than their predecessors in defending the status of the HIV positive, and less despair about their future, which may reflect the introduction of Retrovir and improvements in combination therapy. It also suggests that the earlier generation of poster designers and activists had been successful in their aim of taking the stigma out of AIDS.

Defending is the very subject of this poster (left): four defenders for FC Bayern Munich, all of non-German ancestry, represent the "defence" of immigrant HIV positive people against discrimination on World AIDS Day 2003: Willy Sagnol (French); Owen Hargreaves (English); Sammy Kuffour (Ghanaian); and Robert Kovač (Croatian). English Wikipedia says that Hargreaves was born in Calgary, Alberta, of a Welsh mother and an English father, and German Wikipedia says Kovač was born and brought up in Berlin. The nationalities may be somewhat fluid, but if these heroes of Bavaria are perceived as assets to Germany, the message stands: "Defend against exclusion. Live and let live".

The poster above shows a Bavarian maypole decorated with coats of arms, flags, harvest symbols etc. The maypole stands "high", and therefore represents consumers of recreational drugs who have become dependent on them. This often hidden sector of the population is alluded to ironically through the most traditional of public symbols. The photograph is by Andreas Doehring and probably dates from 2003. Though the poster was published by an AIDS support charity (Münchner Aids-Hilfe e.V.), the clinical symptoms of AIDS disappear beneath a strident message in favour of non-bourgeois values.

Credits:
Tajik AIDS poster: Wellcome Library no. 729001i
Despairing Flemish couple: Wellcome Library no. 728713i
Footballers: Wellcome Library no. 728560i
Maypole: Wellcome Library no. 727923i

Library posters featured on BBC homepage

The BBC have highlighted the Wellcome Library AIDS poster collection to mark World AIDS Day today. They have produced a slideshow showcasing a variety of posters from the collection, which numbers nearly 3,000 and represents 99 countries and 75 languages. The posters have been fully digitised, and many of them are now freely available online. The Librarian who manages this collection, William Schupbach, and Julia Nurse, who has catalogued the posters over the past 18 months, provide a narrative explaining the significance of the posters.

World AIDS Day is sponsored by the National AIDS Trust, and serves to raise awareness through a series of campaigns and events on 1 December, annually. This year's highlights include the Respect & Protect campaign, information on preventing, testing for and living with HIV, and a range of personal stories from people who have been affected by AIDS or HIV.

3,000 AIDS posters catalogued

A project to catalogue and digitise the Library's collection of 3,000 international AIDS posters has just been completed. Forming one of the largest collections in the world, almost all the posters were acquired from a single collector based in Amsterdam. They derive from 99 countries and include a staggering 75 different languages. The two largest collections come from the USA and Germany. Posters from the latter country proved also to be the most graphic.

The posters offer an insight into the reactions and prejudices surrounding the worldwide AIDS epidemic during the 1980s and '90s. They were designed to be displayed to warn people against the causes of AIDS, to educate them on the disease and reveal health policies and concerns in specific countries and regions through a variety of words and designs.

Dates of the posters range from 1978, before AIDS became known, to 1998 as it continued to be a concern. The early posters during the 1980s relay simple messages about how the disease is transmitted. Extensive advertising campaigns raising awareness were produced as the AIDS epidemic increased. More complex messages about the signs of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases appear throughout the period but the majority of posters simply hammer home the importance of safer sex and condoms.

Digital images of the copyright-cleared collection (work on this is still ongoing) are freely available online via Wellcome Images. See a selection of posters in the Image gallery. The full range of posters are described on the Wellcome Library catalogue.

Picture: Wellcome Library ref. 666683i

The photographer's view: AIDS posters

All 3,000 AIDS posters held in the Wellcome Library's AIDS poster collection have now been digitised, and are gradually going up online on Wellcome Images as they are catalogued, and as the Library's rights-clearance procedure is carried out.

Photographing the collection has been an enlightening experience. Throughout the process I was particularly struck by the variety of ways in which different countries chose to approach their AIDS awareness campaigns and how they tailored the content to appeal to different social groups.

The photography itself was relatively straightforward, with the greatest challenge being the organisation of varying sizes of posters into efficient workflow batches, as sizes ranged from 21cm to over 2.5 metres. The type of media upon which the posters were printed also kept me on my toes, from highly reflective gloss finishes to almost rice paper-thin substrates, each requiring slightly different techniques.

From the perspective of a photographer the Wellcome's AIDS poster collection, to me, represents a truly valuable resource as a means of tracking graphic design and photographic trends over the past three decades across many different countries and many different cultures. What makes it so interesting in this respect is that ultimately they were all working to the same brief - that of combating the spread of AIDS.

Author: Ben Gilbert

Image: Advertisement for The Naz Project to support Asian communities with AIDS/HIV. Wellcome Library ref: 666554i.

Selma Dritz

Those interested in the twists and turns in the story of AIDS will have noted the death last month of a central figure - the infectious disease epidemiologist Selma Dritz. She will be remembered not just for her professional expertise but for her compassion for those afflicted.
And interestingly for historians she used the techniques first devised by John Snow in the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak to map how this new infection was being spread in the early 1980's. Dritz was instrumental in the public health campaign aimed at closing the San Francisco bathhouses and this is pertinent as we are currently digitising many of those early US campaign posters as part of our programme to digitize our collection of 3,000 AIDS posters.