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medicine

Trainee Assistant Digital Curator, Gabrielle Bryan-Quamina, delves into our collection to tell the story of the Radium Girls, the first casualties of industrial radium poisoning.

Spring has sprung, summer is heating up; insects and creepy crawlies are starting to buzz, wriggle, and flutter once again. Often these animals are treated as pests, yet bugs and insects play a very important role in our ecosystem. But more than that, many of these insects also have a long and important historical role in medical treatment and healthcare – a tradition that is continued in modern medicine. Here we explore some examples of these helpful bugs – all of which continue to be used by the NHS today!

infant feeding bottle

Assistant Curator Miriam Dafydd looks back at some of the objects used to support parents in feeding babies over the centuries.