Gender, Medicine and the State in Ireland, 1852–1922

By 1905, Henry Wellcome was extremely wealthy from his patent medicine endeavours and he was populating the eponymous Historical Medical Museum with eth?nographic curios and scientific implements from all over the world. Modern or  ‘Western’ medicine, itself a contested term but generally agreed to mean clinical  or evidence-based practice, had made such an impact globally that Wellcome was  moved to collect vestiges of traditional medicine before they were lost to history.  He wrote to Robert J. Welch, a professional Belfast photographer who would  later achieve international acclaim as the official Harland and Wolff, or Titanic,  photographer, in search of visual representations of Irish folk medicine.