Biomedicine on Display

Some years ago, I wrote a pretty critical review of the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington DC. Now the museum has reopened on the new site in Silver Spring, Maryland, a little further north of DC.

The new building features, they say, “a state-of-the-art collections management facility” to house the museums 25-million-object collection (that sounds pretty much, and it’s probably because they have a rather unusual way of counting their artefacts, but nevertheless, their collection aren’t exactly miniscule).

The first exhibits available to the public will feature artifacts and specimens related to Civil War medicine and human anatomy/pathology.

See more on their website: www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum and Facebook page: www.facebook.com/MedicalMuseum.

The 16th biannual conference of the European Association of Museums of the History of Medical Sciences (EAMHMS) will be held in Berlin, 13-15 September 2012 on the theme “Hidden Stories: What do medical objects tell and how can we make them speak?”.

Here’s the call for papers from Thomas Schnalke, director of the Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum:

Dear friends and colleagues!

After a highly inspiring conference of the European Association of Museums of the History of Medical Sciences (EAMHMS) in Copenhagen in 2010, it is my pleasure to invite the members of the association, as well as interested scholars and curators from the community of medical history collections and museums to join in and actively participate in the next meeting of the organisation. The conference will be held at the Berlin Museum of Medical History at the Charité from 13 to 15 September 2012. As we all profited from the vibrant culture of debate and discussion, Thomas Söderqvist and his team had generated in Copenhagen, we would like to keep the idea of pre-circulating extended abstracts plus a short oral presentation of the core ideas in the conference (10 mins!). Beamer and laptop will be provided for Power-Point-Presentations. The language for abstracts, talks, and discussions will be English.

While the Copenhagen conference opened and fuelled the still ongoing debate on how to collect and present medical and medical history issues in times when objects tend to fade into the invisible and intangible cosmos of the virtual and nano biology, we want to address the attention back to the physical things we have and deal with: the objects in our collections, depots, and museums. These items are a mystery. They present strangely curved and shiny surfaces. They perform in all different shapes, materials and colours. And they are quiet. They usually don’t talk. But, and this is our chance and challenge, ideas and concepts had been inscribed into their physical make. Medical theories and practices as intricately mixed epistemic processes had found their specific materialisations in the defined structures of such things. Over the times of their preservation they might have lost their primary functions, won secondary ones, but more crucial: They have gained meaning for which we can seek, if we decide to take these objects as serious sources for our work as historians of medicine, science, technology, culture, art, humanities etc.

What we have to do is asking for the “text” in the object, i.e. sometimes a real text in, with or around the thing (may this be only a code, a chiffre or a number), or a “subtext” somehow embedded in the shaped materials implicitly or connected with the object but detached from it and stored elsewhere, as in added files, fascicles or publications. With the clues and information we get from there we can move on to reconstruct the object’s context. Only within this context, the object begins to speak. We can tell its story and biography.

The conference will therefore focus on objects, asking always for the hidden “texts” and “subtexts” on two different paths—a more practical and a conceptual one:

1. Hidden stories. What do medical objects tell?
We ask for papers that really focus on one medical object from your collections, depots or show rooms. Please slip into the role of a Sherlock Holmes to solve the case of this very object, i.e. by observing and describing the thing accurately, looking for clues (“texts”) and additional information (“subtexts”) and presenting your spiral analysis and interpretation around the item, thus telling us the full object story. You may chose any medical object of your personal interest—an ancient mask, medieval blood letting device, a scientific kymograph or a modern gene sequencer—from any time, culture and geographical zone. The only aim we ask you to keep in mind is to show us how far you get with your object-centred research, how far you can draw your interpretation surely consulting secondary archival material and relevant literature. Please also reflect on the limits of this approach.

2. How can we make our objects speak?
Here we ask for papers that reflect on a more conceptual base on how we can deal with objects in three different arenas:
- Research: Medical objects and collections form a unique source in performing research on various topics in the history of medicine and the sciences. What prerequisites and infrastructures do we need to study our objects effectively? What are innovative modes and approaches in a material culture of performing research on, with and around our objects? What forms of networking and funding do we need to support an object-centred research? What are adequate and new formats of publication for our object studies?
- Teaching: Medical Objects and collections offer a unique chance for visual and haptic forms of teaching in many fields. Can you share your thoughts and experiences on this field with us? What are the features, values, and potentials of an object-based teaching? What are possible limits here (delicacy of objects, climate, access, etc.)? What formats of object-based teaching have been tried out (best practice) or ought to be developed further towards a better training in the medical (historical) fields? What links of object-based teaching to research and public outreach have been built up and tried out with what results?
- Presenting: Medical Objects and collections form the core items for our exhibits. What do we want to achieve with our object presentations? What is the very nature, what are the features of exhibitions in our fields? Whom do we want to reach? What are good and innovative formats to make our objects speak and perform for a wider public in our showrooms? What connections with the arenas of research and teaching are possible and sensible? What is the status of an object-based thematic exhibition in our own eyes, in the minds of our external audiences, including the general public and the scientific community?

We ask you to choose a topic from the above-mentioned issues and send your abstract (maximum 700 characters) with a title, your name, the name of your institution (if you are attached to any) and your contact data (preferably e-mail address) until 31 October 2011 to thomas.schnalke@charite.de. A programme committee will select from the abstracts to compose a hopefully inspiring programme. If your contribution was chosen, you will be asked to work out and hand in an extended abstract (2 to 5 pages) until 15 May 2012. All papers will be put together in one pdf-file and sent out to all participants in time before the conference starts in Berlin on 13 September 2011. We will ask the participants to have read the papers, so that a short presentation (10 mins!) will be enough to focus on the core arguments.

Please help us to put together an inspiring conference. See you all in Berlin 2012.

Best wishes

Thomas Schnalke

It’s notoriously difficult to display invisibles in medical exhibitions. And what’s more invisible than pain? When you break a leg, the lesion is visible, but the pain is not. A mostly subjective sensation, chronic pain has few, if any, visible physical correlates. How do you display headache?

I came to think about this when I heard about the Birkbeck Pain Project, which invites contributions to a workshop organised by Daniel S. Goldberg, titled “The History of Pain Without Lesion in the Mid-to-Late 19th Century West”. The workshop will deal with the social, cultural, and medical status of what we might now refer to as chronic pain sufferers, including labels and complaints, like neuralgia, neurasthenia, hysteria, railway spine, spinal irritation, spinal concussion, headache, dysmenorrhea, and pain without lesion.

Read more here. If you consider attending, send up to 450 words submissions + cv to painproject@bbk.ac.uk, not later than 30 November, or contact the organiser directly, goldbergd@ecu.edu.

One of the inspirational sources of Oslo terrorist Anders Behring Breivik’s peculiar manifesto ’2083: A European Declaration of Independence’ is the anonymous blogger Fjordman, who has been a leading intellectual in the international anti-Jihad movement for almost a decade.

In a recent circular mail, Oslo historian of science Vidar Enebakk draws the attention of his Scandinavian colleagues to the fact that Fjordman has not only written about history, religion and politics in general, but also quite a lot about the history of science and medicine to ‘prove’ that modern science and medicine could only have emerged under the umbrella of European Christendom, and definitely not in Islamic cultures.

I’ve now read a few of his many articles (originally published on a variety of extreme anti-Islamic blog). One thing is Fjordman’s extremely one-sided anti-Islamic and pro-Christian interpretation; another thing is that he/she is quite well-read in the history of science and medicine. I’ve made a few Google searches on random stretches of text, which show that Fjordman doesn’t seem to have cut-and-pasted, but apparently has written these articles him-/herself. It’s not original research, but from a technical point of view it’s quite well-written popular history of science and medicine.

Probably only a person with a basic academic training in history of science could have written these texts. As Enebakk points out, we’re probably talking about a person who many Scandinavian historians of science and medicine may already know as a colleague or (former) student, and he therefore suggests us to take a closer look at the texts — analysing arguments, interpretations, stylistic features, etc. — to try find out who hides behind the Fjordman pseudonym.

We have just submitted an application for a major new gallery based on our anatomical and pathological specimen collections — and the in-house discussions are already becoming vigorous.

How to find conceptually interesting ways to display cancer tumours, conjoined twins, and twisted torsos? What’s the balance between spectacular engagement and ethical concerns? How to make the historical collections of the macroanatomical past work together with the microanatomical and molecular collections of present biobanks?

During the next couple of years we will embark on a more detailed planning process — we will engage medical experts, medical historians/sociologists, museum colleagues and the general public in a discussion about the best ways to build such a gallery and how to combine it with other activities in the museum.

One of the interesting perspectives is to what extent such a gallery might still play an educational role. Browsing the literature for inspiration, I fell upon an article in the journal Anatomical Sciences Education suggesting that despite the current emphasis on digital learning, some medical schools and many of their students still find collections of anatomical and pathological specimens useful for educational purposes.

As the authors remind us, anatomy and pathology collections (‘medical museums’) were central to medical education in the 19th and throughout most of the 20th century. But the role of such collections have diminished dramatically in recent years, mainly, they suggest, because of the use of information technology and web-based learning.

Accordingly, many medical schools have abandoned their museums and/or given away the collections. A few schools still think their museum collections are important, however, and some have even updated them and equipped them with new technological gadgets to support the interaction with the objects.

The authors point to the Anatomical Museum of Leiden University Medical Center and the Medical Museum of Kawasaki Medical School in Kurashiki as two prime examples of such upgraded museums.

The main use of the Leiden museum, says its website, is for medical and biomedical instruction, but high school biology teachers and pupils can visit it too. The showcases above contain over 800 medical specimens and models and were set up in 2007.

The Kawasaki museum (below) is huge, with about 2700 specimens on display on three floors in a specially designated building that focuses on contemporary medicine:

I guess most Western medical gallery curators would consider such displays terribly out of fashion. But although both these museums are a far cry away from what we here at Medical Museion will probably think of when we design the new gallery, we shouldn’t forget that such displays may work well for educational purposes. Actually, surveys at the Leiden museum suggest that virtually all students found audio-guided museum tours in the collection ”useful for learning” and that a majority (87%) of the students found guided tours in them “to be clinically relevant”. (On the other hand, 69% felt that “museum visits should be optional rather than compulsory within the medical training curriculum”; quotes from the abstract).

I’m definitely not a fan of visitor survey ‘research’, nor do I think the main function of a medical museum today is educational — but it’s nevertheless a perspective worth keeping in mind when we start discussing the design of the new gallery in more detail.

I was in London last week to attend a workshop organised by Robert Bud and the medical curatorial staff at London’s Science Museum.

They had invited some 20 people from a variety of academic backgrounds to discuss the future redevelopment of their medical galleries.

The day before the workshop we prepared ourselves by a guided tour to the present medical galleries:

• Science and Art of Medicine from 1981, which the museum describes as “an object rich treasure trove that relates the history of Western Medicine according to a broadly chronological (‘Plato to Nato’), encyclopaedic approach”; a later addition to ‘Science and Art of Medicine’ called ‘Living Medical Traditions’, which examines four contemporary non-western medical traditions.
• Glimpses of Medical History from the late 1970s, which “examines the changing patient-practitioner encounter through a series of dioramas” and also features the ‘Mind your Head’ psychology exhibit.
• The Health Matters gallery from the 1990s, which focuses upon “the unique practices of modern medicine – the technologies of clinical medicine; the application of epidemiology and population statistics to public health; and the proliferation of basic and applied medical research”
• The recent Who Am I? exhibit in the Wellcome Wing building, which explores “how scientists are trying to understand human identity, however medical and human health improvements via genetics, genomics and neuroscience feature prominently” (quotes from Science Museum material distributed before the meeting).

All these galleries are very impressive, of course, like everything the Science Museum does. They are extremely object-rich — containing almost every significant medical scientific and technological artefact from ancioent times to the late 20th century, mostly things collected when Britain was a leading imperial scientific and technological power — and very skilfully curated. But they are also (sorry to have to say this!) pretty boringly designed. British science, technology and medical museums have not been famous for their approach to exhibition design, and although not as badly designed as most of their American counterparts, the Science Museum galleries clearly need an overhaul in this respect.

In my view, it’s difficult to think about the content of museum galleries isolated from their design. Marshall McLuhan‘s famous slogan ‘The medium is the message’ may be a gross exaggeration, but it’s at its truest when applied to museum exhibitions.

In this meeting, however, design questions were almost absent. The academic group around the table included medical historians, general historians, scientists, and a few science communication people, but few exhibition curators (unless yours truly could be classified as one :-).

The planning group’s initial ideas about the future medical galleries focused on content too, with a strong bias towards the history of medicine. In their view, the future galleries will be based on “a broad definition of medicine”, be “global in scope”, and “feature a better balance of stories relating to mental and physical health”, and they “will feature a plurality of voices and perspectives” and continue to utilise “a chronological classification but introduce more thematic approaches”. Furthermore they will use the history of medicine website to ”engage audiences with our collections in an encyclopaedic way” and finally what they call “Public history [i.e., participation in a broad sense] will play and integral part within the gallery development process” (quoted from Science Museum material distributed before the meeting).

Based on this general frame for the future galleries, the planning goup asked us to discuss a number of questions, like:

To what extent should we continue with a chronological structure? What are the strengths or weaknesses of such an approach?

To what extent might we adopt a thematic structure? Incorporating broad taxonomies such as Trust, Belief, Evidence and Practice, Controversies and Orthodoxies, Infectious disease, Chronic illness, War and Accidents?

Should future galleries be broadly shaped around our encyclopaedic collections or should they be more directed by people and stories?

Should extensive collecting – particularly of contemporary material – play a significant role in guiding the development of the new galleries?

How ‘global’ can we really aspire to be? What should the place of non-western medical/healing traditions be within the future galleries?

Should we characterise biomedicine as one tradition alongside others?

What weighting should be given to the presentation in the Science Museum of ‘the history’, ‘the contemporary’ and ‘the future’ of health and medicine?

What extent of coverage should we give to more contemporary medical practices (ie post-War to now) and how should it be represented?

Should concepts of ‘health’ sit at the foreground or be more in the background of the medicine galleries?

Where do we want to draw the boundaries between ‘health’ and ’medicine’?

To what extent should future displays consciously foreground the history of its collections – specifically the act and intention of collecting and representing medicine?

All in all, great questions, which all medical museums ought to answer before they embark on new galleries.

Unfortunately, I cannot relate the discussions in any objective way. But I posted a stream of Twitter posts (see here, scroll down to 30 June), which reflect my immediate impressions as the round-table developed in the course of the day. I will return to these impressions in later posts.

Thanks Robert et al. for a very inspirational meeting!

Just saw this on Danny’s blog. Artist meta-comment on entire museum: 

The former London home of Sigmund and Anna Freud, now the Freud Museum, is enveloped in a cats cradle of rope made of dolls’ hair. Standing as it does on a prosperous suburban street of imposing redbrick villas, the bound house looks like a scene from a dream itself, a dream of home denied. Such dreams are typically untangled on a therapeutic descendant of the very couch that sits inside the museum; the fairytale Rapunzel tress-ropes also suggest the kind of psychological decoding of myth and culture that Freud indulged in.

It’s interesting how an entire exhibition can transform and be experienced in a whole new way through one persons art-work derived from subjective associations. She hasn’t changed anything in the exhibition, just put the doll-hair-ropes around like a giant meta-comment.

Prompted by a recent guest blog post on the Scientific American site, I’ve just revisited an almost 40 year old essay titled “Discovery and understanding” by the Finland-Swedish neurophysiologist and Nobel Prize Winner Ragnar Granit.

Growing out of a talk (see video here) that Granit gave at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in 1972, the essay was published in the Annual Review of Physiology later the same year. I remember dimly having read it when I was a PhD student a few years after it was published, but apparently I didn’t really appreciate it then — and didn’t understand the deeper significance of the message either.

But now I think I’ve got it. And it’s quite interesting for discussions about the culture of science, especially the contemporary political emphasis on scientific competition and race for publication.

The thrust of Granit’s argument is the distinction between discovery and understanding (and later insight) as two separate modes of scientific work that are differentially distributed throughout a scientist’s life-course. Discovery is all-important in the younger, passionate, phase of a scientist’s life, he suggests, whereas understanding and insight is the mark of more mature and detached scientists (which is probably why I didn’t understand the deeper significance of his essay when I was 30).

Young scientist are, he writes, characterised by an “impatient passion” to make discoveries. They want to ”see something that others have not seen”. They are on the outlook for what’s new, unexpected, and exciting, they are ”ruled by ambition”, they crave for “immediate satisfaction” and “instantaneous excitement”.

It’s easy to believe, he continues, that this passionate quest for discovery is the goal of science, partly because discoveries perpetually initiate new lines of experimental work, but partly also because they are more visible through popular media: “It catches the eye and, in the present age [1972] is pushed in the limelight by various journals devoted to the popularization of science”.

But even if the history of science is full of important discoveries that have “led to major advances”, they are nevertheless not what science is fundamentally about; they are just the means for the “real goal” of scientific work, which is “to try to realize some fundamental ideas about biological structures and their functions, that is to promote understanding”. And “gradually understanding will ripen into insight”.

If Granit had lived today he would probably have been horrified by the fetishisation of long publication lists, impact factors, and bibliometrics:

This attitude [understanding and insight] toward scientific work has the advantage of permitting the experimenters to devote themselves quietly to their labors without filling various journals with preliminary notes to obtain minor priorities

Was the distinction between discovery and understanding valid back in 1972? If so, is it still valid? Is there still a divide between the young postdoc’s passionate quest for rapid discovery and fast publication, on the one hand, and the older professor’s slower and more detached search for insight, on the other? And if so, is it only a question of psychology and individual ageing, or are there other, structural, factors at play?

Our colleagues over at the fabulous rete list are just now busy recommending the Museum of Technology
in Hemel Hempstead in northern London. It doesn’t have regular opening hours; one has to make an appointment. Writes Tony Constable:

If you can manage a short trip north of London to Hemel Hempstead there is the excellent Museum of Technology on the old village High Street there. The instruments are very well looked after and well displayed – and there are some good demonstrations. It is run by Trevor Cass and Rosemary Hourihane. Telephone to make an appointment.

And Brian Styles seconds:

Their collection is astonishing and remarkable for the condition of the exhibits and the standard of display. In a modest space, there’s a vast range of items, many of them really scarce. And it’s wonderful to see some things working. I didn’t think I’d ever see a WWI spark transmitter in action, for instance! Exhibits are labelled with just the right amount of detail and, of course, the curators are well-versed in all that’s there. Many a professional operation would do well to pay them a visit …

According to the website, they have an awesome collection of medical instruments too — not all of which seems to be on display though.

“While much has been written on the history of psychiatry, remarkably little has been written about psychiatric collections or curating”, says the back-cover of Exhibiting Madness in Museums: Remembering Psychiatry Through Collection and Display, edited by Catharine Coleborne and Dolly MacKinnon.

A first sketch to a comparative history of collections of psychiatric objects, the volume, which will be published by Routledge in August, investigates collectors, collections, displays, and the reactions to exhibitions of the history of insanity.

Unfortunately, it’s limited to museums in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK, but that’s a good start — we’re eagerly waiting for a sequel treating the many rich psychiatric museum collections in continental Europe.

Of course you can, but few history teachers actually take the opportunity. Museum collections remain a remarkably underutilised resource in academic history teaching. And the history of science, technology and medicine is no exception.

Here at Medical Museion we have occasionally brought material objects into our medical history courses and also into the course we’re giving on medical science and technology studies for medical engineering students. We have plans to do much more, especially when it comes to integrating traditional academic and curatorial perspectives on material objects, and we are very eager to learn about other university museums with more teaching experience than we have.

Therefore, the initiative taken by The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies to organise a ‘Using Museum Collections in Teaching History of Science, Technology and Medicine’ workshop on 14 June is much welcomed. The aim is to bring together people teaching history of STM in higher education with staff from major science, technology and medicine museums throughout the UK. The workshop will look at how the study of museum collections can be incorporated into standard taught courses and used for dissertation purposes. Confirmed speakers include Claire Jones (Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Warwick); Jo Booth (National Media Museum); Delphi Tatarus (Thackray Museum); John Beckerson (Manchester Museum of Science and Industry); Tim Procter (National Railway Museum); Alison Watson (Royal Armouries); and Richard Dunn (National Maritime Museum and Subject Centre for PRS)

Attendance is free of charge, but places are limited. Register here, before 1 June.

Representing one the peripherally participating institutions in the Nordic Network for Medical History, I’m pleased to broadcast the good news about the upcoming summer course on ‘Historicisation’ to be held in Bergen, 24–26 August, 2011.

The aim of the course is to teach postgraduate students how medical historical research can be ‘historicised’. As the organisers write, “just how historians, social scientists and others proceed in order to do this varies”:

For instance, the ‘proper’ context in which an object of study can be placed may look rather different for historians and medical scientists – as may indeed what constitutes the object of study itself. Historicisation may imply a denaturalisation of certain objects of study, such as the body, illness or disease categories – or an evaluation based on our prevalent knowledge of nature of how specific diseases have historically been dealt with. The narratives into which certain objects of study are written may differ for social scientists and historians: for instance, the historical development of medical institutions may be inscribed in historical narratives as examples of broad societal processes such as ‘modernisation’– or be seen as effectuating social changes in a specific place at a specific time. This part of the summer course discusses the various ways of historicising common objects of study within history of health and medicine. What does it mean to historicise diseases, medical practices or technologies, and how do we go about doing it? What differences are there between historical, social sciences and medical approaches towards understanding historical phenomena, and which consequences follow from different approaches to historical understanding?

Best of all, there is no course fee; the organisers will cover accommodation and meals (but you have to pay for your own travel). Write to magnus.vollset@ahkr.uib.no with information about your name, project title and disciplinary background. Indicate whether or not you read any of the Nordic languages, and whether or not accommodation in a double room is ok with you. If you have any questions concerning the course please do not hesitate to contact Magnus Registration deadline is 1 May 2011.

On top of this they are circulating a useful reading list:

• Ankersmit, Frank. Historical representation. Cultural Memory in the Present. Stanford, 2001. Ch. 3 (”Gibbon and Ovid: History as Metamorphosis”, pp. 107-122, and ch. 4 (“The Dialectics of Narrativist Historism”, pp. 123-148.
• Hammerborg, Morten. Spedalskhet, galeanstalter og laboratoriemedisin – endringsprosesser i medisinen på 1800-tallet i Bergen. Ph.d.avhandling, Universitetet i Bergen 2009, pp. 19-41 (kapittel 1: Beretningen om et sammenbrudd).
• Lie, Anne Kveim. Radesykens tilblivelse. Historien om en sykdom. Dr.med.avhandling, Universitetet i Oslo 2008, pp. 11-29, 209-226.
• Davidson, Roger and Lesley A. Hall. Introduction. In Davidson, Roger and Lesley A. Hall. Sex, Sin and Suffering. Venereal Disease and European society since 1870. London and New York 2001. pp. 1-14.
• Dinges, Martin. Social History of medicine in Germany and France in the Late Twentieth Century: From the History of Medicine toward a History of health. In Huisman, Frank and John Harley Warner (eds). Locating Medical History. The Stories and their meaning. Baltimore and London 2004, pp. 209-236.
• Duffin, Jacalyn. Lovers and livers: disease concepts in history. Toronto: University of Toronto  Press, 2005.
• Jordanova, Ludmilla. The Social Construction of Medical Knowledge. In Huisman, Frank and John Harley Warner (eds). Locating Medical History. The Stories and their meaning. Baltimore and London 2004, pp. 338-363.
• Roelcke, Volker. Changing historiographies and professional identities: nazi medical atrocities in post-World War II German psychiatry. In Andresen, Astri, William Hubbard and Teemu Ryymin (eds). International and Local Approaches to Health and Health Care. Oslo 2010, pp.49-78.
• Rosenberg, Charles E. Explaining Epidemics. In Rosenberg; Charles E. (ed.). Explaining Epidemics and Other Studies in the History of Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 293-304.
• Warner, John Harley. The History of Science and the Sciences of Medicine. Osiris 10 (1995), pp. 164-193.
• Wilson, Adrian. On the History of Disease Concepts: The Case of Pleurisy. History of Science, 38:3, 2000, pp. 271-319.

Cannot understand why I haven’t come across The Neuro Times blog — a historical blog dedicated to neurology and the neurosciences — before. Full of good stuff and a good example to follow.

In the process of selecting objects for a new exhibition, I (re)discovered this room:

It is located beneath the roof of the museum, and contains, as the picture shows, literally hundreds of small glass vials with various chemical labels. Most are empty, but a few still has the original contents.

Aside from being a treasure chest for our exhibition, the room also reminded me of the degree to which being in a house filled with things makes me think differently about the history of medicine. This might not exactly be a groundbreaking insight, but is bears repeating often. The material environment we occupy is foundational for our cognitive states. This sentiment is expressed in the following quote from Claude Lévi-Strauss, which, although it is aimed at ethnographical collectors, seem to me to ring true for medical historical collections as well:

The museographer enters into close contact with the objects: a spirit of humility is inculcated in him by all the small tasks (unpacking, cleaning, maintenance, etc.) he has to perform. He develops a keen sense of the concrete through the classification, identification, and analysis of the objects in the various collections. He establishes indirect contact with the native environment by means of tools and comes to know this environment and the ways in which to handle it correctly: Texture, form, and in many cases, smell, repeatedly experienced, make him instinctively familiar with distant forms of life and activities. Finally, he acquires for the various externalizations of human genius that respect which cannot fail to be inspired in him by the constant appeals to his taste, intellect, and knowledge made by apparently insignificant objects.

Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The place of anthropology in the social sciences and the problems raised in teaching it,” in Jacobson and Schoepf (eds.): Structural Anthropology, 1963.

Hopefully, being in the room and selecting vials for the exhibition will nudge us curators towards an exhibition that tries to establish a sense of how foundational the relationship between the individual and the physical environment is. Showing how what we inhabit is what we get, so to speak.

My curiosity was just raised by a mail inquiry by Stuart Tallack, who’s asking members of the UK Medical Collections Group for help to clarify a memory from the late 1950s:

I visited a company that prepared and articulated skeletons. A room at the back of the premises contained two tanks, one of caustic solution and the other of plain water. Both had gas flames beneath and were used to clean the skeletons of earth and tissue. I do not remember the room where they were articulated with springs and wires but I do recall the office and its cabinet of older and more interesting specimens. I seem to remember shaking the hand of a seven foot Russian, long dead, but still impressive.

The company must have been near University College Hospital as I went via Goodge Street station and crossed to the Gower Street side of Tottenham Court Road. For personal reasons, I would like to find out who the company was and where it was located. My visit would have been in about 1957.

I’m sure Stuart would appreciate some additional help from readers of this blog as well. And maybe others have similar experiences.

But more interestingly — how common were such companies preparing and articulating skeletons? They were producing for school and med school purposes, I presume? Was there one company delivering throughout Europe, or many regional/local companies delivering to local schools?

Where did they get the bodies from? And when did this practice end (i.e., when did plastic skeletons take over)? Topic for a Master’s thesis?