Wellcome to the South Pole

Last Sunday, BBC2 broadcast The Secrets of Scott's Hut, a documentary which featured presenter Ben Fogle journeying to Antarctica, to observe the work of a team of conservators, attempting to preserve the hut of the explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott. The hut acted as both accommodation and research centre during Scott's attempt in 1911 to reach the South Pole. It was then abandoned, leaving behind 10,000 items: the everyday and scientific materials of Scott and his men.

We've written before of the connection between Burroughs Wellcome & Co (BW&Co) - the pharmaceutical company co-founded by Henry Wellcome - and Scott's Antarctic Expedition, so it was nice to see within a few minutes of the documentary, Fogle and two conservators unpacking a surving medicine chest, which included Burroughs Wellcome & Co products.

More BW&Co chemicals were visible on screen when the documentary discussed the role of Herbert Ponting, the photographer on the Expedition. To illustrate the importance of Ponting's role, Scott's hut even had a dedicated dark room set outside for Ponting to develop his photographs. And there on the shelves of the dark room... developer supplied by Burroughs Wellcome & Co.

The Wellcome Foundation Archives held in the Wellcome Library include more details on the role Burroughs Wellcome & Co played in this and many other expeditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The Secret of Scott's Hut is available on the BBC iPlayer to viewers in the UK until Sunday April 24th.

Images:
- Medicine bottles in Scott's hut. On the right is Burroughs Wellcome & Co 'Tabloid' Liquorice Compound Powder, to soothe upset stomachs. Taken from this BBC Slideshow.
- Advert for 'Tabloid' 'Rytol' showing Herbert Ponting, official photographer to the British Antarctic Expedition, 1910, developing a plate with 'Tabloid' 'Rytol' in his dark-room in the hut featured in the documentary (WF/M/PB/25/01/10).

Tick… Tick… Tick…

As the last hours of 2010 elapse, let’s look forwards to the new year. January is always significant for a repository that holds archive material: each new year brings the opening of new material to the public, material that was already catalogued but could not be made available because of its sensitivity. This is doubly significant for the Wellcome Library, of course, as we hold a large amount of material relating to the medical issues of named individuals, and this is a category of material that the UK’s Data Protection Act highlights as particularly sensitive and in need of careful handling. (Our access policy, setting out how we deal with this material and the demands placed by legislation, can be seen on our website at http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/node159.html: see the first bullet point under Access.)

Full details of the material newly-opened, of course, will have to wait until the new year! For the moment, although we cannot open the files for you, we can list the materials whose closure expires at midnight. Chief among them are papers from Churchill’s personal physician, Lord Moran; files on various rare conditions collected by the physician Donald Hunter during his many years at the Royal London Hospital; files on recipients of the Beit Memorial Fellowship; ledgers from two mental hospitals, the Holloway Sanatorium in Egham and Ticehurst House in Sussex; and some staff records from the Wellcome Foundation. The full list is below. Only a little while to go…

Lord Moran papers
PP/CMW/D.1/2: Minutes, 2nd-4th meeting, 22 Jul, 29-30 Dec 1949 and 17-18 Jan 1950; 1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.1/3: Agendas and minutes, 5th-13th meeting; Jan-Dec 1950.
PP/CMW/D.2/1: Official lists of consultants and proposed awards (papers A3-A7, A12-A16); Jan-Feb 1950; Also lists of regional hospital boards, chairmen of medical committees of teaching hospitals and notes on grading of specialists.
PP/CMW/D.2/2: Further official lists of doctors and recommended awards with associated documents (papers A21-24, A28-29, A31-33); Feb-Mar 1950.
PP/CMW/D.2/3: Review of the Committee's Work up to June 1950' (Paper A35); Jun-50.
PP/CMW/D.6/1/2: Lists for London regions, some headed 'not on photostat list', surgeons (carbon typescript) with covering letter to selectors Jan 1950, paediatricians (carbon typescript), general medicine (carbon typescript), lists of surgeons (pencil manuscript, not Moran); c.1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/2: Schedules of consultants listed by speciality for Professional Assessment Committee; c.1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/2/1: South East metropolitan region, with recommendations; c.1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/2/2: South West metropolitan region, annotated by Moran with recommended grades; 1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/2/3: North West metropolitan region, Supplementary list, annotated by Moran with recommended grades; 1950. .
PP/CMW/D.6/3: 'Results of 1950 Voting'. Manuscript lists, annotated by Moran, for Birmingham, Bristol, East Anglia, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford, Sheffield, Wales and London regions; 1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/4: Surgeons. Lists of recommendations by Association of Surgeons and Royal College of Surgeons; 1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/5: Whole-time clinical teachers. Lists and manuscript notes by Moran; 1950.
PP/CMW/D.13/1: 1950 (?) Awards; 1945-1950.
PP/CMW/D.13/1/1: Bristol, Sheffield, North East, North West, South East Metropolitan Regions, Association of Surgeons (with partial index); 1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.13/1/2: London Teaching Hospitals (with index); 1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.13/1/3: 'Faculties', Anaesthetics, ENT, Orthopaedics, Radiology, Ophthalmology, Royal College of Surgeons and Royal College of Physicians recommendations. All areas; 1945-1950.
PP/CMW/K.5/1/1: Casablanca (1st Version, with Sir Desmond MacCarthy's comments), covering Jan-Feb 1943; c.1950.
PP/CMW/K.5/1/2: Untitled typescript, with Desmond MacCarthy's comments, covering Feb-Oct 1943; c.1950.
PP/CMW/K.5/1/3: Red Twinlock, revised version of Casablanca by CMW with comments and annotations by CMW, John Wilson and others. Covering Dec 1941-Feb 1945; c.1950.
PP/CMW/K.5/5/1: Mr Churchill's fall from Power, '1st typing, with Sir Desmond MacCarthy's comments'. Period covered Feb 1945-Dec 1947; c.1950.
PP/CMW/K.6/1/1: 'Mr Churchill's Fall from Power' (1945 period); c.1950.
PP/CMW/K.6/2: Early revisions of war-time volumes; c.1949-1950.

Donald Hunter papers
PP/HUN/C/1/2: Acromegaly; 1923-1937.
PP/HUN/C/1/16: Chloroma; 1913.
PP/HUN/C/1/38: Grave's disease; 1928-1929.
PP/HUN/C/1/66: Pigmentations; 1919-1937.

Beit Memorial Fellowships
SA/BMF/A.2/102 : Lythgoe, Richard James; 1926.
SA/BMF/A.2/103 : Burnet, Macfarlane Frank; 1926.
SA/BMF/A.2/104 : Frew, John Glover Hugo; 1926.
SA/BMF/A.2/105 : Goldblatt, Maurice Walter; 1926.
SA/BMF/A.2/107 : Stephens, John Gower; 1926.
SA/BMF/A.2/108 : Woolf, Barnet; 1926.

Mental After Care Association
SA/MAC/G.2/6: Case Agenda Books; Jul 1925-Dec 1926.

Wellcome Foundation records
WF/CA/07: Staff Index Cards; c1898-c1933; Contents of six wooden filing drawers, originating from a larger series, containing staff index cards, arranged alphabetically by surname. Cards record: name, staff number, age and date of birth, start and leave date, reasons for leaving, department and wages. These cards refer to staff overseas as well as in the UK and include staff at WPRL.
WF/CA/07/01: Brown - Carnay; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/02: Carnay - Cook; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/03: Cooke - Cooper; Hasleden - Hopkins; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/04: Horley - Huckstep; Hum - Judges; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/01/05: Judson - Ken[?y]ie; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/06: Mee - Narayen; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/07: Nash - Noye; Oakes - Pearson; c1898 - c1933.

Holloway Sanatorium
MS.5161: Females no. 28: Certified female patients admitted November 1924-October 1926; 1924-1926; Notes mainly by Elizabeth Casson and C Rutherford.

Ticehurst House
MS.6277: Medical journal; 1905-1910.

Image: detail from a computer graphic by Rowena Dugdale, depicting costs of long-term care: from Wellcome Images.

Cataloguing of Sir John Vane’s Papers

The papers of Sir John Vane are now available for consultation in the Wellcome Library(PP/JRV).

Sir John Robert Vane (1927-2004) was an eminent pharmacologist, who published over 900 scientific papers, was joint editor of 20 books, and received over 50 awards and medals, including Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians. He is perhaps best known for his work in helping to solve one of science’s longest running puzzles, how aspirin worked, for which he shared the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1982. Is it a reflection on society’s view of scientists that Sir John Vane’s Wikipedia entry is so short? It reads as follows:

Sir John Robert Vane (29 March 1927 – 19 November 2004) was an English pharmacologist, born in Tardebigg, Worcestershire. His father was the son of immigrants from Russia and his mother came from a Worcestershire farming family. He was educated at King Edward's School in Edgbaston, Birmingham, and studied Chemistry at the University of Birmingham in 1944. Vane completed a doctorate in pharmacology from the University of Oxford in 1953. He held a post at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences of the University of London in the Royal College of Surgeons of England for 18 years. During that time he developed certain bioassay techniques that led to important scientific discoveries. He won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1982 for his work on aspirin in which he discovered it inhibited prostaglandin biosynthesis. In 1973, Vane left academia and took up the position of director of research of the Wellcome Foundation. He was knighted in 1984. In 1985 he returned to academic life at the William Harvey Research Institute at the Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital (now Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry). He died on November 19, 2004 in Princess Royal Hospital, Kent from long-term complications arising from leg and hip fractures he sustained in May of that year.

For a much better reflection of his full contribution to the field of Pharmacology, there is an excellent entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Other biographies and obituaries can be found in The British Medical Journal, vol.329 no.7479, p.1406, 11 December 2004; The Times, 25 November 2004; and Prostaglandins & Other Lipid Mediators, vol.78, December 2005.

Sir John’s papers, newly catalogued and now available in the online catalogue of Archives and manuscripts, cover primarily the period of his life from his University days in the 1940’s and 1950’s at Birmingham, Oxford and Yale up to the end of his time at the Royal College of Surgeons in the early 1970s.

Vane graduated with a BSc in Chemistry from Birmingham in 1946. He was not particularly enamoured with the actual practice of chemistry and when he learned that Harold Burn in Oxford was seeking graduates to be trained in pharmacology, he took the opportunity to pursue this field. Vane graduated with a BSc in pharmacology at Oxford in 1949 then spent a year as a researcher in the pharmacology department at Sheffield University. In 1953 Vane was awarded a D.Phil. from Oxford. As was typical at that time for newly qualified postdoctoral scientists Vane chose to gain experience in the USA, and he joined the department of pharmacology at Yale as an assistant professor. The papers in this collection, held from his time in academia, include his notebooks, lecture notes and course papers and perhaps most interestingly his experiment results notebooks from both Oxford and Yale. These notebooks not only give an insight into the direction of his scientific interests but also shed light on the importance and development of animal experimentation in medical science at the time. Full details of the methodology and results of his experiments are included in the notebooks.

In 1955, Vane returned to the UK and joined W. D. M. (Bill) Paton's department of pharmacology at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, originally sited in Queen's Square in London, but subsequently relocated to the Royal College of Surgeons in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Vane rose quickly through the academic hierarchy, becoming a reader in 1961 and gaining a personal chair in 1966. The bulk of the collection papers originate from this time at the Royal College of Surgeons and include further experimental notebooks, numerous photographs of the experiment results (chemical outputs) and graphs. In addition there is an extensive collection of Vane’s published papers from the 1960s and early 1970s, most produced in collaboration with other pharmacologists, most including drafts with extensive annotation, which give an insight into Vane’s thought processes.

1973 saw a change in Vane's circumstances, with the break-up of the Royal College of Surgeons group and Vane was offered the position of group research and development director of the Wellcome Foundation. Vane went on to publish many more papers but the published papers in this collection cease at this point.

There are few of Vane’s personal papers amongst the documents, and the personal correspondence that does exist relates mainly to correspondence from the 1970s in relation to the British Pharmacological Society. Vane had been the General Secretary of the B.P.S in the early 1970s and he maintained a close relationship with some of its officers after he had stepped down. These papers do give some insight into the character of Vane, but given that the majority of the letters are those received by Vane rather than copies of letters sent by him, they perhaps give a better insight into the thoughts of his friends and colleagues at the B.P.S. rather than his own.

The archives of the Wellcome Foundation Ltd, held by the Wellcome Library, also contain material relating to John Vane, during the period when he was Group Research and Development Director, 1973-1985 (see notably WF/E/13 and WF/M/AV/O/02-03). This includes an audio tape and transcript of an interview with Vane conducted in 2001 as part of the Wellcome Foundation Oral History Project (Ref: WF/M/AV/O/02/33). The papers of William Paton are also held in the Wellcome Library, as PP/WDP.

The illustrations both show Vane; in the lower he is in a Wellcome Foundation laboratory.

Author: Jon Cable

Sir James Black (1924-2010)

Sir James Black, Nobel-Prize winning pharmacologist, died on Sunday at the age of 85.

Between 1978 and 1984, Black was Director of Thereapeutic Research at the Wellcome Research Laboratories (these laboratories being part of the research wing of the Wellcome Foundation, the pharmaceutical business co-founded by Sir Henry Wellcome).

His Nobel Prize - awarded in 1988 for Physiology or Medicine - was shared with Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings, for their work on drug development (Elion and Hitchings also had strong ties to the Wellcome Foundation, working for almost all of their professional careers for the American wing of the business).

Obituaries have hailed Sir James Black's achievements, particularly his work on beta-blocker drugs (Black is credited with discovering them in 1962). Such drugs now play in a vital role in the treatment of heart attacks and angina.

The Wellcome Library holds a number of items relating to Black. The Wellcome Foundation Archive contains a selected amount of material, with editions of Foundation News (the organisation's in-house publication) contextualising Black's work during his 6 years with the Foundation.

Black also contributed to two Wellcome Witness seminars: Peptic Ulcer: Rise and Fall (Vol. 14) and Clinical Pharmacology in the UK, c. 1950–2000: Influences and institutions (Vol. 33), (these being seminars at which "...significant figures in twentieth-century medicine are invited to discuss specific discoveries or events in recent medical history"). Copies of these works are held by the Wellcome Library and are also freely available online.

Opening of the Wellcome Historical Medical Library

As we often celebrate anniversaries on this Blog, it seems only fitting that we draw your attention to a short article from the British Medical Journal, 10th December 1949 (and freely available through PubMedCentral).

The piece reports on the formal opening of the Wellcome Historical Medical Library, at 183 Euston Road, London, at a luncheon given by the Directors of the Wellcome Foundation, on 2nd December 1949. It offers a brief overview of the Library’s collections, noting their diversity (“alchemy, occultism, veterinary medicine and folklore...”) and their scale (“200,000 books, pamphlets, and journals, 5,000 manuscripts, and 100,000 autograph letters”). The image accompanying the article - also shown above - shows how much the Library's Reading Room has changed since 1949.

As the luncheon took place on the 2nd, all available evidence suggests the Wellcome Library opened to the public the next day, the 3rd, 60 years ago today.

So - Happy Birthday to us!

(For more details on the development of the Library – both before 1949 and after – a brief history is available on our website).

John Symons

We were saddened to learn of the death last week of John Symons, former Curator of Early Printed Books and a long-time member of the Library's staff. Though John had suffered from ill health since his early retirement in 2005, he kept in touch with old friends and only recently attended the retirement party for Professor Vivian Nutton (a long time colleague and friend) held in the library.

After reading Greats at Oxford, and attending the library school at University College London, he joined the Wellcome staff in 1968 as an Assistant Librarian, specializing in early printed books. Here he stayed, succeeding Harold Denham as Chief Cataloguer in 1982, and gaining an unrivalled knowledge of the bibliography of medicine. He was appointed as the first specialist Curator of Early Printed Books in 1988.

John will be remembered as a supremely dedicated rare books librarian with an encyclopaedic knowledge of both the Library's collections and internal Wellcome history. His history of the Wellcome Institute, published in 1993, only hinted at the many ways in which he had sought out members of staff, some from the 1920s, and their families, and collected documents and reminiscences. He was joint compiler of the third volume of the Wellcome Catalogue of Books printed before 1850, and was responsible for its continuation – the fifth and final volume being published in 2006. Its completion was a fitting monument to his devoted work over a lifetime of bibliographical scholarship. He was always eager to place his learning at the service of scholars and many within and beyond the Library will have cause to remember his myriad kindnesses in assisting them with enquiries and more extensive research questions.

Few former Wellcome Library staff have made a greater impact on the Library as experienced by its users over time, and surely none ever will again.

Breaking the Mould

As part of their War Beneath the Skin season, BBC4 last night broadcast Breaking the Mould: The Story of Penicillin.

Details:

"Whilst it is widely recognised that Alexander Fleming was the man who discovered penicillin, the truth is a bit more complicated than that and the extraordinary story of Professor Florey is hardly known.

Set against the background of the early years of the Second World War, this factually-based drama shows how it was Professor Florey and his team who persevered against incredible odds to make penicillin an applicable medicine, whilst refusing to patent it for commercial gain.

A revealing, poignant and witty character-driven account of a miraculous scientific breakthrough, Breaking The Mould tells the little known story of Professor Florey and the team of unsung heroes from the prestigious Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford University who were behind the discovery of penicillin, that changed the world of medicine forever".

A number of the Wellcome Library’s archive collections have a direct link to the story of penicillin’s development. These include the papers of Norman Heatley, including his laboratory notebooks and correspondence with Florey; Ernst Chain, who shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology applied to Medicine with Fleming and Florey; and Sir Edward Mellanby, Secretary of the Medical Research Council during the period, and an important figure in connecting the disparate research communities working in this field.

That the mass production of penicillin in this country was achieved during the Second World War was due in no small part to the creation in 1941 of the Therapeutic Research Corporation (TRC), a consortium of five leading UK drug companies. One of the members was the Wellcome Foundation Ltd, and the papers relating to the involvement of the company in the TRC are part of the Wellcome Foundation Archive.

Breaking the Mould is available to watch through the BBC’s iPlayer.

25th July 1936

On this day in 1936, the death was announced of Sir Henry Wellcome.

Over his 82 years, Wellcome had overseen the growth of the pharmaceutical company he had co-founded into a multinational concern. Part of the fortune he made from this had been spent amassing a huge collection relating to the history of medicine, which formed the basis of the present day Wellcome Library.

Wellcome's death was widely reported in the newspapers of the day. His obituaries (which were collated, and now form a small part of our Wellcome Foundation Archive) illustrate how Henry Wellcome’s life and achievements were summarised in the aftermath of his death.

The obituaries range from those published in national titles to regional newspapers. They also include a statement read out on the 9.30pm news bulletin of the British Broadcasting Corporation on the 25th July.

These accounts of Wellcome’s life do their best to summarise his achievements. Some examined his business life, whilst others described Wellcome as a "Scientist and Explorer". Bazaar Exchange & Mart focused on Wellcome the collector, commenting that in his purchases from auctioneers:

"...he 'made the market' in the kinds of things he bought – medical relics, ethnological specimens and curious bygones of many kinds".

In this attempt to commemorate the anniversary of Wellcome’s death, the following lines from the The Times obituary seem apt:

“Wellcome insisted that his light should not be hidden and that the name of Wellcome should always be prominent”.

(Image above shows Sir Henry Wellcome lying in state in the Wellcome Research Institution, before his cremation at Golders Green Crematorium on the 29th July).

Wellcome in Space

Over the last few weeks, there have been many commemorations in the media of the 40th anniversary of the first manned mission to land on the moon. We thought we would add to this by flagging up an item from our collections. So – what’s the connection between the Wellcome and this lunar scene?

Shown here is the packaging for the Wellcome drug company’s product, ‘Marzine’, which was used as a precaution against travel sickness. Ships from the Apollo Space programme carried the product, and – as illustrated - the company later utilised this fact in the design of its packaging.

'Marzine' wasn’t the only Wellcome product used in the US space missions: 'Actifed' - for the relief of nasal congestion - was also widely used, as was 'Neosporin' (to clear up bacterial infections of the eye). Indeed, on one mission in the 1970s, Skylab carried a medical kit which included seven products provided by Burroughs Wellcome Co (USA).

It’s rather fitting that the exploration of space in the mid twentieth century utilised Wellcome products, given in the late nineteenth century, Burroughs Wellcome & Co medicine kits were essential components of many expeditions to the farthest flung corners of the Earth - Stanley, Scott and Shackleton all set forth with the company's products.

(The 'Marzine' packaging is a small part of the Wellcome Foundation Archive, which consists of material relating to the Wellcome drug business. As a result of flotations and mergers, the Wellcome drug business itself is no longer in existence. A summary of this is available).

Espionage and forgery in the Wellcome Library

The papers of the Wellcome Foundation Archive – which cover the development of Henry Wellcome’s pharmaceutical business – are not the place you would expect to find a tale of international espionage befitting the pages of a John Buchan novel.

However, in the course of cataloguing this collection, our colleague Chris Beckett has brought to light the case of the ‘Glasgow Spy’: a true story of hidden identities, ciphers and national security on the eve of the First World War. Chris has written up this story for the latest issue of Wellcome News – read all about it here.