A library treasure
'Les Histoires Prodigieuses', by the French writer Pierre Boaistuau, is a marvellous collection of words and images describing the strangest natural spectacles, including conjoined twins and other birth deformities, unexplainable diseases, extreme obesity and natural disasters.
It was presented to Queen Elizabeth I in 1560 and nearly four centuries later, in 1931, it was purchased by Sir Henry Wellcome at Sotheby's. Now it is part of the historical collections of the Wellcome Library, a unique and freely available repository of works on medicine and the natural world.
Wellcome Library resources
- 8000 Western manuscripts
- 60 000 early printed books
- 16 000 oriental works
- 600 archive collections – including Francis Crick's archive
- Film archives
- Wellcome Images – over 150 000 digital images
- 600 000 general works and many electronic resources.