Midwifery on The ONE Show

Last night's edition of BBC's The ONE Show included a feature on the history of midwifery.

Filmed in the Medicine Man gallery of Wellcome Collection, the sequence featured an interview with Prof Elaine Hobby (Loughborough University), who illustrated her account of the changes in practice with the Wellcome Library's copy of Jane Sharp's The Midwives Book.

The episode is available for viewers in the UK for the next seven days through the BBC iPlayer.

Rabies on The ONE Show

Fears of Rabies in the UK were resurrected on BBC1 last night, in a feature on The ONE Show, as part of their 'Panic' week.

In a segment shot in the Wellcome Library, Dr Neil Pemberton, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester, discussed both UK Government Public Health posters which warned against Rabies in the 1970s and 1980s, and also the sensational novels of the period which played upon contemporary fears of the disease.

The episode will be available to viewers in the UK through the BBC's iPlayer service for the next seven days. For more on the UK's relationship with rabies, an article by Pemberton and Professor Michael Worboys on the topic is available through the website of History Today.

Image: Neil Pemberton and Michael Worboys, Mad Dogs and Englishmen: Rabies in Britain, 1830-2000 (Palgrave, 2007)

The One Show

Items from the Wellcome Library's collections featured on last night's edition of BBC1's early-evening magazine programme The One Show.

Reporter Gyles Brandreth told the story of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, pathologist and so-called 'Father of Forensics'. As discussed in previous Wellcome Library Blog posts, we hold nearly 7,000 cards detailing autopsies carried out by Spilsbury.

The show not only included a film - partly shot in the Wellcome Library - in which Gyles discussed Spilsbury's achievements and but also featured Gyles showing presenters Matt Baker and Christine Bleakley some examples of the Spilsbury cards we hold.

This edition of The One Show is available for the next seven days for readers in the UK, through the BBC's iPlayer.