Slideshow: Wellcome Collection

A pair of phrenological busts, 1821

Plaster death mask of Victorian murderer James Bloomfield Rush

Stuffed coiled snake, 1897

Bezoar stone from cow’s stomach, Nicaragua, pre 1925

Mechanical 'VeeDee' vibrator, English, 1900-1915

Roman votives. Romans would offer models of afflicted body parts to a god to beg or give thanks for cures. The model on the left is also Roman but was not one of these votive offerings. It came from Pompeii, where it may have adorned a shop front

Surgical instrument set, inscribed 'W. Ward, Army Surgeon 1812'

English pharmacy leech jar, 1831-1859

Storage bottles painted with monastic arms, probably Spanish

Models of human skulls in ivory, silver and wood

Ivory anatomical figures, 17th-18th century

Scold’s bridle from the Tower of London, pre 1800

Cat o’nine tails, English, probably for naval use, pre 1900

Collapsible parturition (birthing) chair, pre 1830

Wax model of decomposing body in coffin, Italian, late 1700s

Wax model head of a bearded man, c1930

Shrunken head, Shuar people (indigenous to Ecuador and Peru)

Plated metal artificial nose, European, probably 18th century

Malleus Maleficarum. The 'Hexenhammer', or 'Hammer of Witches', was a manual for European witchhunters. Sample question: 'Whether Witches may work some prestidigitatory illusion so that the male organ appears to be entirely removed and separate from the body.' This copy was published in Nuremberg in 1494

Liberian scroll. A Mandingo scroll of Islamic invocations presented in 1848 to Thomas Hodgkin, the English pathologist who described the disease that now bears his name, by the first president of Liberia, in recognition of Hodgkin’s support for the establishment of Liberia as a state for freed slaves from America