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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Wellcome
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A name of great significance in British medicine. The pharmaceutical group Wellcome, one of the largest companies in Britain, derives from the firm established in London in 1880 by two American chemists, Silas Burroughs (1846–95) and Henry Wellcome (1853–1936). Wellcome built the firm into a major enterprise, and in his will left the entire company to the Wellcome Trust – a charity to aid medical research. By the early 1990s the Trustees were funding research to the tune of about £100 million per year.
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Related projects are the Wellcome Institute and the Wellcome Museum for the History of Medicine. These have grown from the collections made by Wellcome himself during the last 40 years of his life. The institute, with a magnificent medical library of some 500,000 volumes, is now closely linked with London's University College; and since 1976 the museum has been been on indefinite loan to the *Science Museum, where part of it is on permanent exhibition.
In 1986 the Trustees sold a proportion of the company to diversify their investment. In 1992 another £2bn of shares was placed on the market, further reducing their holding in Wellcome.
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