Please note the Pharmacy exhibit is currently closed for maintenance.
Featuring three thousand objects and covering an area equivalent to 1,500 hospital beds, Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries is the magnificent new home for the most significant medical collections in the world.
Showcasing extraordinary medical artefacts from the collections of Henry Wellcome and the Science Museum Group, including the world’s first MRI scanner, Fleming’s penicillin mould, a professional pianist’s prosthetic arm and even robotic surgery equipment, the galleries explore our relationship with medicine and health through more than 500 years of history.
Throughout the galleries you’ll find specially commissioned artworks, including 'Self-Conscious Gene', by Marc Quinn, a bronze sculpture by Eleanor Crook, a series of portraits by award-winning photographer Siân Davey and an installation by Studio Roso, as well as interactive displays, films and audio recordings.
As a reminder of our huge national effort to save lives and protect the NHS, the empty vials of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines used for the first mass vaccinations worldwide, COVID-19 testing kits and signage from the Government’s daily briefings form part of a new COIVD-19 display in the gallery.
Explore the galleries
With five vast and visually stunning galleries containing more than 3,000 medical artefacts, striking artworks, interactive games and immersive experiences, Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries will bring the history of medicine to life.
Take a closer look at what's on display in Collection Online
'Alan Measles - God in the time of Covid-19' by Grayson Perry
A ceramic artwork by the celebrated artist has joined the COVID-19 display in the Medicine & Communities gallery.
© Science Museum Group
'Self-Conscious Gene' (2019), by artist Marc Quinn
This 3.5 metre tall sculpture of Rick Genest (who held the Guinness World Record for his full-body tattoos) is on display in the Medicine and Bodies gallery
Play the Disease Controller game in Medicine and Communities
This gallery explores the medical challenges of living in an increasingly urbanised world, the impact of infectious diseases and how our behaviour can affect our health.
Explore cabinets of objects spanning historic milestones in the Medicine and Bodies gallery.
Listen to experiences of being a client and a therapist in 2019 in Medicine and Treatment
Focusing on personal experiences, this gallery reveals a range of treatments that save, alter and extend lives, exploring their capacity to harm as well as heal.
Explore historic hospital beds and equipment from a 1980s operating set up.
Discuss the importance of objects on display and in our collection with our staff and volunteers. Image taken before COVID-19 restrictions.
Sri Lankan ceremonial masks used in healing rituals
Explore the trust we place in medicine in Faith, Hope and Fear, which features cultural and religious items that represent hopes and fears about our health.
Explore microscopic slides from blood cells to skin cells in Medicine and Bodies
This gallery explores how the quest to better understand the human body has transformed medicine.
Mr Gibson's Pharmacy in Medicine and Treatments: The GSK Gallery
Step inside Gibson’s Victorian pharmacy, brought back to life through an immersive digital experience.
Learn more about our objects through interactive displays in the Medicine and Treatments gallery.
A cabinet of curiosities in Exploring Medicine
Containing a thousand medical objects that are each extraordinary and familiar, globally significant and deeply personal, this gallery explores humanity’s experience of medicine across time and place.
Designed by WilkinsonEyre Architects, the five galleries cover more than 3000m². Watch the team from WilkinsonEyre Architects discuss their approach to the project.
See also
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