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This article examines the changing nature of public health services and their relationship with the public in post-war Britain by an analysis of the exhibitions mounted by Medical Officers of Health (MOsH) in London. Focusing on the period 1948-71, the article explores a time when public health practice, and the problems it faced, were in flux. A decline in infectious disease and an increase in chronic conditions linked to lifestyle required a new role for public health services. Exhibitions were one of several methods that MOsH used to inform the public about dangers to their health, but also to persuade them to change their behaviour. The exhibition, though, offers a unique insight into the relationship between public health authorities and the public, as exhibitions brought MOsH into direct contact with people. It is suggested that in the MOsH exhibitions we can find signs of a new relationship between public health practitioners and the public. Whilst elements of the pre-war, often moralistic ideology of public health services could still be detected, there is also evidence of a more nuanced, responsive dynamic between practitioners and the people. By the end of the 1960s, 'the public' was increasingly being thought of as a collection of 'publics', including individuals, target groups and vocal respondents.

Despite efforts to lay out the Great Exhibition in a rational arrangement, it was so vast and variegated and overwhelming in its single 18-acre building that it was literally indescribable. Robert Hunt in his Synopsis argued that every visitor needed to find a thread - any thread - through the labyrinth; but this proved elusive, even for professional journalists, who must overall be judged to have failed. With description impossible, journalists tried other strategies, notably epistolary form, and also fiction, which excused the writer from providing any more than a few personal impressions. The legacy of the Exhibition is ambiguous: judged at the time an overwhelming success, it proved to be all too easily forgettable and ephemeral., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

As part of the Darwin celebrations in 2009, the Natural History Museum in London unveiled TREE, the first contemporary artwork to win a permanent place in the Museum. While the artist claimed that the inspiration for TREE came from Darwin's famous notebook sketch of branching evolution, sometimes referred to as his "tree of life" drawing, this article emphasises the apparent incongruity between Darwin's sketch and the artist's design -- best explained by other, complementary sources of inspiration. In the context of the Museum's active participation in struggles over science and religion, the effect of the new artwork is contradictory. TREE celebrates Darwinian evolutionism, but it resonates with deep-rooted, mythological traditions of tree symbolism to do so. This complicates the status of the Museum space as one of disinterested, secular science, but it also contributes, with or without the intentions of the Museum's management, to consolidate two sometimes conflicting strains within the Museum's history. TREE celebrates human effort, secular science and reason -- but it also evokes long-standing mythological traditions to inspire reverence and remind us of our humble place in the world.

The Science Museum in London has over a hundred dioramas in its holdings, prepared at various times since 1931 for a range of exhibitions and displays. These have become simultaneously more interesting as artefacts in their own right, and more threatened as display fashion changes and their original purpose is less relevant to today's audiences. Nonetheless, they are immensely powerful as devices for communication to audiences and their own histories add depth to our understanding of how museums work.

'Body Worlds' is an exhibition of human bodies that is currently touring Europe, the Far East and the USA. The public display of 'real' human bodies has caused public controversy and debate about the moral and educational value of the exhibition. Relatively little academic research, however, has been undertaken to explore how visitors see and reflect on the exhibits. In this journal, Tony Walter recently examined messages people left in the exhibition's comment-books to reveal how people saw the bodies. His investigation provides interesting insights into people's understanding of and attitude to Body Worlds. This paper complements Walter's findings by analysing video-recordings of visitors looking at the 'plastinated' bodies at the showing of Body Worlds in London in 2002/03. The analysis reveals how people anatomise the exhibits and consider them in the light of their knowledge and experience of 'real' human bodies, such as those of other people and their own. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the observations and findings from the analysis bear upon debates on Body Worlds and in the sociology of health and illness.

A remarkable photographic record of Bethlem Hospital patients of the mid-1850s, now on show in London, gives flesh and form to those who might otherwise have remained 'invisible'. Mark Crail took a look.

There were 152 entries for the Medical Arts Society's annual exhibition and all were shown at the Westminster Gallery, London on October 14-19, last year. The show displayed an exhibition of skill in the mediums of painting, printmaking, sculpture and drawing and prizes were awarded on merit.