Photograph (self-portrait) by John Thomson, 1871. Catalogue no. 19871. A Chinese man holds the breech-block from a Gatling gun or mitrailleuse, while Thomson himself, in European dress, poses ready to crank the handle to fire the gun, perhaps demonstrating to one of the Chinese the pose to be adopted. The collection of almost 700 of Thomson's original glass negatives now in the Iconographic Collections of the Wellcome Library was acquired by Henry Wellcome in the year Thomson died. The subjects of these photographs are mostly Asian countries: China, Taiwan, Cambodia, and Thailand, though Thomson's later visit to Cyprus is also documented. Wellcome was interested in the photographs for the comparative record they provide of civilizations both primitive and sophisticated.