The Phantom Museum: And Henry Wellcome's Collection of Medical Curiosities

by Peter Blegvad

Businessman and philanthropist Sir Henry Wellcome—co-founder of Burroughs Wellcome & Co., one of the first giant pharmaceutical companies—was fascinated by anthropology and the history of medicine. His great ambition was to trace the story of the human body, in sickness and in health, through the entire sweep of history. By the time he died in 1936, he had built up one of the largest and most extraordinary museum collections in the world. Estimated to be five times the size of the Louvre, his collection is now scattered among a hundred institutions, including the Wellcome Trust, the British Museum, and the Science Museum in London. Beautiful, mysterious, and often disturbing, the objects Wellcome collected range from the ancient to the magical, the religious to the scientific. The Phantom Museum offers some personal responses to this vast but little-known collection. Playful and thought-provoking contributions combine text and images, fact and fiction, to consider how objects can be read depending on who views them and when.

Genres: Short Stories, Medical

206 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2003

About the author

Peter Blegvad is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and cartoonist. He was a founding member of the avant-pop band Slapp Happy, which later merged briefly with Henry Cow, and has released many solo and collaborative albums. He is the son of Lenore and Erik Blegvad, who are respectively, a children's book author and illustrator.

From 1992 to 1999, The Independent ran Blegvad's strangely surreal, comic strip, Leviathan, which received much critical praise for blending some of the most interesting elements of Krazy Kat with a coming-of-age-esque story akin to Calvin and Hobbes. Some of the strips have been collected in the 2001 volume The Book of Leviathan . Other comics and illustrations by Blegvad have appeared in The Ganzfeld and Ben Katchor's Picture Story 2 .

Reviews

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

so this is a collection of (mostly) fiction based on this one crazy man's collection of all things medical and bodily. i wanted it only because of the blegvad because i heart book of leviathan like crazy. and it's fine - the images are great - artificial limbs galore and a delightful shrunken head. but some of the stories (and there are only 6) are eh. the a.s. byatt one i hated, truly. the blegvad is good, but i just think it is cute that he has a milk obsession. it makes him even more charming. i would love to have this collection in my house. so - someone- get on it. sigh.. i mean, get on it, please.

come to my blog!

[Emily Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

other than the first story (which is way too long and not interesting at all), these stories are very creative--the wellcome museum asked six authors to write about anything in the museum, creating six widely different stories, some fiction, some not. the best are by hari kunzru and peter blegvad.