Review : Mementi mori

Feeling too cheerful at the onset of spring? Get gloomy at the exhibition
“Doctor Death: Medicine at the End of Life” held at the Wellcome Institute for
the History of Medicine, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE until 21 June. The
items on exhibition allow a rare glimpse into a collection that for reasons of
conservation are not usually on public display. Among the mementi mori you’ll
see a tiny gold coffin worn as a pendant, a surgeon wrestling a skeletal death
for the life of a patient, and a daguerreotype of a dead man.