LONDON, ENGLAND.- The British Museum presents today "Medicine Man: The forgotten museum of Henry Wellcome," on view through November 16. Henry Wellcome, the great entrepreneur and philanthropist, also built up the world’s largest collection of medical exhibits, By his death in 1936, he had amassed an extraordinary collection of over one million objects related to medical history, ranging from diagnostic dolls and Japanese sex aids to African masks and amputation saws, from amulets and ancient manuscripts to Napoleon’s toothbrush and George III’s hair. Their exhibition brings together the treasures of this vast collection and explores the history of our bodies, in sickness and in health

Henry Wellcome was born in 1853 on a farm in Wisconsin, in the American ’Mid-West’. When he was eight years old his family moved to Garden City, Minnesota. The journey took several weeks by covered wagon, and they travelled with a large group of other settlers for protection from Indians.

Shortly after their arrival, there was an uprising by Sioux Indians living nearby. The young Wellcome helped cast bullets for the volunteers defending Garden City and helped his uncle, who had a medical practice and a drug store, to care for the wounded. The Sioux were finally defeated and their chiefs hanged. This harsh treatment of the native Americans left Wellcome with a lifelong sympathy for the dispossessed Indians and a desire to preserve knowledge of traditional ways of life.

His fascination for medicine also developed at an early age. An English pharmacist called Barton, who had moved to Garden City, fired his youthful imagination with tales of England’s magnificent scientific institutions and gave him his first chemistry lessons. Some of Wellcome’s early experiments resulted in some loud explosions.

His love of chemistry and entrepreneurial streak combined when, aged 16, he launched his first product on the market. Displaying the flair for publicity that was to become his hallmark, he confidently advertised his own brand of homemade invisible ink in the town’s newspaper.

After graduating from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, Wellcome worked as a travelling salesman for a pharmaceutical company in New York. Then, in 1879, he received the letter that was to change his life – and the lives of countless others.

Silas Mainville Burroughs, a friend and Philadelphia College graduate, wrote from London inviting Wellcome to join him there to take advantage of a unique business opportunity. He wanted to set up a partnership to promote the new form of standardized compressed medicines, which had become popular in America, on the UK market.

Burroughs Wellcome & Co. was established in 1880 and flourished in its first trading year, thanks particularly to Wellcome’s inventive marketing methods. As well as advertising in the press and at trade fairs, Wellcome also built up the company’s reputation by offering hospitality for important medical conferences.

Burroughs died of pleurisy in 1895 and the company passed into Wellcome’s hands. From that time until the outbreak of the First World War, Burroughs Wellcome & Co. underwent a period of massive global expansion under Wellcome’s leadership. He took the then highly novel step of setting up research laboratories in London together with a teaching museum for tropical diseases and a medical history museum. And in the Sudan he equipped the Wellcome Laboratores in Khartoum. These enterprises were of so much value to medicine that Wellcome became a leading figure in the British pharmaceutical industry. In 1932, he was both knighted and made an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, a rare distinction for someone who did not hold a medical degree.

In 1901 Wellcome married (Gwendoline Maud) Syrie Barnardo, daughter of Dr Thomas Barnardo, who founded the Doctor Barnardo Homes for children. They had a son, Mounteney, but sadly, the marriage ended in divorce. (Syrie subsequently married and divorced the author Somerset Maugham, before embarking on a successful career as an interior decorator.) Another blow for Wellcome came when it became clear that Mounteney lacked the intellectual acuity and ambition of his father and was therefore unsuited to take over the family business. He never revealed his disappointment to his son, however, and maintained close contact with him throughout his life. Mounteney lived a long and contented life as a farmer, happily married to a woman who shared his interests.

In his early 60s, therefore, Wellcome was left without any close family with whom he could share his deepest interests. For the last 25 years of his life he found satisfaction in his work, travels, and archaeological and collecting interests. With no one to hand over his empire to, he signed his will on 29 February 1932.

He lives on through his remarkable will, which established the Wellcome Trust. The will was the first example in Britain of a bequest, which permanently dedicated the profits from a great trading concern to the advancement of knowledge for the benefit of mankind.