The Spectator

What was in the Wellcome Collection’s Medicine Man exhibition?

[Wellcome Collection] 
issue 03 December 2022

Not Wellcome

The Wellcome Collection closed its own Medicine Man exhibition on the history of medicine, complaining that it was racist. Some of the treasures it displayed:

– Wax and cloth head of Elizabeth I, half of which shows a face and the other half a decomposing skull being consumed by insects.

– Pair of bellows used for blowing smoke into the rectum of people fished out of the Thames, which some doctors believed could revive them after near-drowning.

– Charles Darwin’s walking stick, topped with a skull.

– Napoleon’s toothbrush, made from silver and horsehair.

– A Japanese papier-mâché figure adorned with acupuncture points, used as a teaching aid.

Zero out

How do China’s – official – Covid figures compare with the rest of the world?

– China has recorded 9.6 million cases, equivalent to 683 per 100,000 population, and has suffered 30,010 deaths, a rate of 2.14

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