I was introduced recently to Wellcome Images. You may be thinking that I just misspelled the word “Welcome” here, but you would be wrong: it is actually the image service for the Wellcome Library in London, named after Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853-1936), a successful businessman after whom the Burroughs Wellcome Fund is named (based locally here in RTP!). Because of their namesake’s interest in medical science, they have an outstanding collection for history of medicine materials. Many of their historic images are now available, under a creative-commons license, for download at their website.

The site may be a little slow right now, as they are in the middle of a PR push, but I imagine soon it will speed up a bit. I was pleased to see that they had a number of interesting sports images, including an interesting one of the famous siamese twins, Chang and Eng, playing badminton.

It’s a really fun collection: I totally recommend checking it out.