Science Museum launches Jewish Culture Month trail on medical breakthroughs

The Science Museum in London has published a self-guided trail for Jewish Culture Month (16 May – 16 June 2026) highlighting eight medical innovations by Jewish scientists and doctors. The trail, located in the Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries, features objects including an Omniskop X-ray apparatus (c.1925-1935) owned by German-Jewish doctor Ernst Rachwalsky, who fled Nazi Germany and re-established his practice in London; a PillCam capsule endoscopy camera invented by Israeli-Jewish engineer Gavriel Iddan and Dr Paul Swain in 1999; Rosalind Franklin's X-ray crystallography work that led to the discovery of DNA's double helix structure; a Stoke Mandeville bed cycle designed by Dr Ludwig Guttmann, a Jewish neurosurgeon who founded the Paralympic Games; an implantable cardioverter defibrillator invented by Polish-born Jewish doctor Mieczysław Mirowski; penicillin apparatus used by German-Jewish biochemist Ernst Chain, who helped turn penicillin into a usable medicine; an amuletic iris root carried by Jews in Whitechapel around 1900; and a Milton Roy kidney dialysis machine (c.1966) used by patient Moreen Lewis, treated by Dr Stanley Shaldon from an Orthodox Sephardi Jewish family. The trail emphasizes the contributions of Jewish refugees and immigrants to medical science.