Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine

Freely Available Online

Edited by members of the History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group

The volumes in this series contain transcripts of the Witness Seminars at which significant figures in twentieth-century medicine are invited to discuss specific discoveries or events in recent medical history. All papers and records collected during the organization of the meetings and editing of the transcripts are deposited in Archives and Manuscripts, Wellcome Library, London, in collection GC/253.

What is a Witness Seminar?

Dr Stephen Lock and Professor Sir Christopher Booth at the Witness Seminar on ‘Medical Ethics Education in Britain, 1963–1993’ on 9 May 2006'This is oral history at its best. Regardless of your own areas of interest, all the volumes make compulsive reading because the participants tended to "let their hair down" and talk more freely than they would have at a scientific meeting. They discussed openly the hidden realities of the evolution of medical practice and medical research. But the witness seminars are more than just fun to read. They are, primarily, important historical records.'
Irvine Loudon, medical historian, BMJ.

All volumes are available to download electronically on this site, or hard copies of volumes 21–42 may be purchased from www.amazon.co.uk or www.amazon.com or from good booksellers quoting the ISBN for £6/$10 each plus postage.

To browse the catalogue of Witness Seminar volumes, and to download a digital copy of a volume for free (NB: .pdf document, requires Adobe Acrobat) click here.