Historic films reveal medical progress in the 20th century
6 November 2009
Material is available to watch via the Wellcome Library's website from Wellcome Film's homepage, with many also available on Wellcome Film's YouTube channel.
In addition, all material can be accessed via the JISC-funded Film and Sound Online service. JISC Collections provided part funding to digitise the material, adding Wellcome Film to the 16 other collections in Film and Sound's online portfolio.
For the researcher, the scholar or the naturally curious, Wellcome Film chronicles the history of medicine over the last 100 years, from early research into typhus and cholera to reconstructions of the experiments in Ivan Pavlov's laboratory.
There are also educational and training films from the 1920s and 1930s, material made by the Wellcome Foundation Film Unit from the 1940s and 1950s showing the work of the pharmaceutical business, and more recent titles made by the Wellcome Trust about tropical diseases such as malaria.
The collection contains some films that are useful for medical and healthcare education but would not be suitable for viewing by the general public due to the sensitive nature of the subjects being covered. By making these films available in Film and Sound Online, staff, students and researchers in universities, colleges and research councils in the UK can have access to this essential material.
It also features historical medical films that have a practical application for contemporary healthcare and medical issues, such as a series of films on clinical nutrition that may be useful for the treatment of obesity.
Other items of interest are 100 public information films and videos produced by the Central Office of Information, 1940-1980s, on subjects such as immunisation and smoking, and campaign films about cerebral palsy from the charity Scope (formerly the Spastics Society).
Image credit: Wellcome Film
Contact
Michael Regnier
Media Officer
Wellcome Trust
T +44 (0)20 7611 8866
Notes for editors
The Wellcome Library is an unrivalled resource for the study of the history of medicine, to collection includes: 700 000 books; a film and audio collection of 2500 titles; 600 archival collections; and more than 100 000 paintings, prints and photographs. Over 100 000 images in Wellcome Images have been sourced from the Library's collections. The Library is part of the Wellcome Trust.
The Wellcome Trust is the largest charity in the UK. It funds innovative biomedical research, in the UK and internationally, spending around £600 million each year to support the brightest scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust supports public debate about biomedical research and its impact on health and wellbeing.
JISC Collections was established as a mutual trading company by the UK further and higher education funding councils in 2006 to negotiate with publishers of online information and other owners of digital content. The range of resources licensed for use by such agreements constitutes a large national collection of online resources for education and research. JISC Collections is funded by JISC.