Wellcome Films

The Wellcome Film collection has now been added to Film & Sound Online. The 212 films in the collection, which illustrate the use of film as a communication tool in the medical sciences, were previously only available to researchers visiting the Wellcome Institute.

The earliest footage is of archaeological digs in the Sudan, at Jebel Moya, featuring the founder, Sir Henry Wellcome himself (A day at Gebel Moya, season 1912-13), as well as more jaunty corporate fare about the business of running a pharmaceutical company (Looking Around, The Story of the Wellcome Foundation).

Many of the films were originally made for professional audiences such as doctors, surgeons, nurses and students of medicine, so be prepared for some “hands-on” footage of clinical procedures and actual operations.