Biomedicine on Display

The recently launched online exhibition “Making Visible Embryos“, curated by Tatjana Buklijas and Nick Hopwood, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, and funded by the Wellcome Trust, offers a fascinating tour through a paradigmatic, but also highly controversial, aspect of the history of medicine: the engagement with and displaying of human embryos.

The exhibition invites visitors to move thematically through the development of different aspects of how embryos have been depicted through time. We learn about how research into embryology gradually moves from the secrecy of the laboratory to the public sphere in connection with debates about human development, birth control, and reproductive technologies like IVF. The curators also inform us on pathbreaking visualisation technologies, like ultrasound, and on the cultural impact of popularised images like those produced by Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson.

The exhibition also gives rise to some interesting conceptual questions. To be sure, the images and models, beautifully presented through excellent illustrations and photos, are the kinds of visualisations of the human embryo that have reached the widest audience and which have had the greatest impact. But if the show is really about visualising, and not just depicting and modelling, it seems to me that the centuries-long tradition of making specimens can also be taken as a pivotal technology.

This point is relevant for museums like Medical Museion. Without doubt, the best-known group of objects in Medical Museion is the collection of wet and dry specimens of human embryos, formally named Museum Saxtorphianum.

Like other anatomical specimens, these were produced to facilitate the study of embryology and teratology by making embryos and fetuses visible to researchers. And, as is well-known to any conservator, producing and maintaing these visualisations over time is an arduous and delicate task.

Whereas images and models of the fetus are now everywhere, as the curators of “Making Visible Embryos” state in their conclusion, displaying preserved specimens of embryos is still highly problematic in a museum setting.

The acquisition of medical museum artifacts is usually seen as a job for specialists (curators) with historical training. To curate a collected artifact for later use in exhibitions, you are supposed to know where it came from, how it was produced and used, what meanings were attributed to it, what role it played in medical practice, how it related to other things, and so forth.

In other words, curating museum artifacts is, as a rule, always already a historical practice. The future doesn’t seem to be of any immediate interest for the curator.

Yet the future creeps into the equation, whether the curator wants it or not. When curators handle artifacts from the past, the future of these past times is an integral part of the curatorial practice. The description of, say, the practice of auscultation using the stethoscope in the 1850s will not only depend on one’s knowledge of 18th and early 19th century pathological anatomy, but also on one’s knowledge of later auscultation diagnostics methods. (Pure historicism — evaluating things from the interpretative horizon of the historical actors at the time the thing was produced and used only — is a nice scholarly ideal, but not meaningful in practice.)

In other words, the already-known future is an unavoidable (and mostly valuable) resource for interpreting historical medical artifacts.

But what about the not-yet-known future? Do our more or less shaky predictions about the so far unknown future play any role in the curation of contemporary medical artifacts? For example, will forecasts about the future development of personalized medicine influence the curation of a 23andMe retail DNA test kit? (I’m using it as an example, because Adam will buy a kit and donate it to our collections afterwards — it’s one of his contributions to our joint anthology.)

To what extent does predictions about the future development of biomedicine and medical technologies constitute a cognitive resource for the curation of contemporary medicine? Are the forecasts of possible scientific, technological, social and cultural futures a sine qua non for turning the current medical world into medical heritage?

The number of conferences of potential interest for medical museologists and historians of contemporary medicine is increasing.

Take, for example, the annual conference of the German Society for the History of Technology that will be held at the Hochschule für Gestaltung, Offenbach am Main (close to Frankfurt aM), 22-24 May 2009 — on the theme of the history of robotics.

“If ‘the atom’ and then ‘the gene’ were symbols of the 20th century, then ‘the robot’ is that of the 21st century”, say the organizers. (Especially nanorobots, I guess.) The aim of the meeting is to discuss the historiography of robots and robotics and analyze presentations of robots in museums and exhibits.

In science fiction, visions of the future were and are being constructed about the possible use of robots. These visions often show a rather ambivalent view of these machines. Even current robotics casts both positive and negative lights on them. Thus, developers and producers promise that in the future robots will contribute to the solution of such large and manifold problems of humanity as environmental catastrophes or caring for the elderly.

A particularly controversy of the topic lies therein that robots appear not only to be surpassing humans in regards to particular activities, but also to be replacing them: with regard to heavy labor in industry, particular cultural skills such as arithmetic or music, or in social work, such as in the care of the handicapped, children or the sick. Therefore, a challenge is to research if these developments will change the self-conception of people in its relation to itself and to machines.

Possible topics include:
 
History of the vision of the future for robots
Interaction between science fiction and robotics
Historical change in the perception of the man-robot relationship
Robotics in international comparison
Application errors of robotics and its history (industry, medicine, military, service, toy industry)
Historical decisions regarding the use of robots in particular sectors
The sociality of robots
The design of robots in the course of time: humanoid robots as a model?
Historically based technology assessment
 
Proposals for presentations (max. 350-400 words) should be sent along with a one-page curriculum vitae before 6 January, 2009 to Catarina Caetano da Rosa, caetano@histech.rwth-aachen.de.

In her short obituary of George E. Palade — who was the first to identify what was later called ribosomes (thus a shared Nobel prize in 1974) — Andrea Gawrylewski, staff writer at The Scientist, refers in passing to something that Palade wrote in his autobiographical essay:

My father had hoped I was going to study philosophy at the University, like himself, but I preferred to deal with tangibles and specifics, and - influenced by relatives much closer to my age than he was - I entered the School of Medicine of the University of Bucharest (Romania) in 1930.

Interesting opposition between philosophy and medical science as dealing with ‘tangibles’ and ’specifics’. Wonder if this is valid for historians too? Is there an opposition between being interested in the philosophy of history and preferring to work with historical tangibles and specifics, as we do in museums?

I for my part believe it is possible to embrace both (but maybe I’m just naïve). In fact, most people I know are either philosophically minded or tangible-oriented. Does this have anything to do with personality structure? Or is it an institutional thing?

The next issue of the Vienna science magazine heureka! will feature an overview of the most evil, base, fraudulent and slimy scientists in history — a Hall of Shame — “um das breite Spektrum an ethisch verwerflichen und fragwürdigen Motivationen abzubilden”.

Not only Nazi scientists, but all kinds of ”Menschenhasser und skrupellose Experimentatoren, die übelsten Plagiatoren und Betrüger, die größten Neider und die hoffnungslos Verblendeten” (sounds much better in German than in English, especially when you read it out loud!).

The inclusion of “hoffnungslos Verblendeten” is probably a mistake, because if this criterion is taken literally, heureka! will be thicker than Who’s Who in Science. But otherwise, send your suggestions (with short motivations) to the editor, Oliver Hochadel (hochadel@falter.at) before Friday 24 October.

The initiative has already given rise to protests: Stuttgart professor in history of science and technology, Klaus Hentschel, finds it “HÖCHST fragwürdig” because he believes it feeds into a public tendency ”zur Schwarz-Weiß-Malerei”, like in “US-Cowboy-Filmen” (from today’s Oldenburg-list).

‘An unbelievably romantic prize with beautiful colours’ [’ett otroligt romantiskt pris med vackra färger’] — that’s how an inorganic chemist at the University of Gothenburg characterizes today’s news about the Nobel prize in chemistry.

I’m not sure I understand what he means by ’romantic’. I would rather call it a ‘medical’ prize in disguise, like most chemical Nobel prizes these days. Because the green fluoresent protein (GFP) and other GFP-like proteins in a variety of fluorescent colours are widely used in basic and clinical medical research.

(glial cells expressing GFP among red neurons: credit: RICCARDO CASSIANI-INGONI / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY)

And the colours are beautiful indeed. They’ve been a standard illustration theme on bioscience journal covers for years now.

The press release and the excellent scientific background information material contains all that needs to be said about the importance of GFP and GFP-ish proteins at the moment (historians of contemporary biomedical sciences will undoubtedly add more later).

Just a couple of more images. First the playful signature of the Tsien lab webpage painted with different GFP and GFP-like proteins.

And then the so far best publicly known GFP art work — Eduardo Kac’s ‘GFP Bunny’ (2000). Not great art perhaps, but a creative use of one of the most displayable chemical Nobel prizes in many years.

Next year is 50 years since C. P. Snow delivered his famous lecture ‘The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution’, suggesting that as cultured citizens we need to know as much about the second law of thermodynamics as the plays of Shakespeare.

To celebrate this event, and to raise the question whether Snow’s notion has any relevance today, Science Museum and Tate Modern are organizing a two-day event on the theme ‘Art and Science Now: The Two Cultures in Question’:

In a world of increasing disciplinary specialisation in which there has been exponential growth of sub-disciplines in both science and the humanities, it will also ask whether the distinctions between and indeed within the two cultures might have become further entrenched. The most fundamental question this celebration of 50 years since Snow’s lecture will ask, though, is how the terms of the debate may have changed.

There will be an academic conference at Science Museum on 23 January and a more public meeting at Tate Modern the day after. The Science Museum conference will consider questions such as:

• How have new technologies such as the internet and new resources like Wikipedia reconfigured our sense of disciplinary boundaries, hierarchies of knowledge and the places where cultural capital is held?
• Has the new dominance within general culture of ideas drawn from the ‘life sciences’ — molecular biology, genetics and biochemistry, ecology, epidemiology — and their unpredictable pressings upon fundamental questions of how and why humans and other organisms should find themselves and their relationships defined in particular ways, led to an ever more complex and porous boundary between science and the humanities?
• How are Snow’s notions of disciplinary and national cultures to be rethought through the paradigms and politics of globalisation?

Good questions, especially the second one. I guess you could say that parts of medicine has always been a meeting ground between science and the humanities.

If someone would like to present, then send a 200-word abstract by 1 November to Laura Salisbury, School of English and Humanities, Birkbeck College, l.salisbury@bbk.ac.uk

Camilla’s post about Robert Wilson’s recent lecture at Stanford reminded me of David Pantalony’s essay in the July issue of the History of Science Society Newsletter:

Why does a control panel for a computer from 1950 attract several viewers in the architecture and design galleries of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, while similar objects rest unnoticed in storage rooms and science museums around the world?

Referring to Joshua Taylor’s Learning to Look (1981), David reminds us that we too often stop considering objects as soon as we have recognized them. Putting them in other surroundings (like the control panel in MOMA), however, makes it easier to reconsider them. Thus, the main challenge with recent technological artifacts, David points out, “is to prod researchers, the public, and students to move beyond recognition, and to stimulate alternative perspectives and inquiry”.

One way of doing this is to teach history classes about material history. David shares his experiences from teaching an artifact-based historical seminar for University of Otttawa students at the Canada Science and Technology Museum (where he works as a curator in physical sciences and medicine). He begins the artifact sessions´— which take place in the aisles of the storage facilities — by asking the students to examine the basic properties of the artifacts: ”materials, colors, finish, markings, modifications and manufacturing labels”, followed by questions about their history, design, and function. Then follows more analytical questions about the identity of objects and their aesthetic qualities, etc:

The key to this exercise is a careful and wide-ranging interrogation of artifacts. The more the students examine, the more questions appear. With persistent questions, they begin to transcend the traditional narratives determined by the artifact’s name and classification. They start thinking critically about specific features and how these features represent choices and context of makers and users. Where there is choice there is culture, context, and history. Why these kinds of markings? Why this construction? Why this style of container? Why this kind of component over another? Why this kind of material?

The cultural analysis of artifacts requires students to ask about “hidden beliefs, values, associations, and meaning”. They also learn to examine artifacts from a different culture, for example, contrasting Western post-war medical technology with healing artifacts from aboriginal cultures.

Not only are David’s experiences useful for curators in sci-tech-med museums — they are also an inspiration for those of us who try to integrate university teaching with museum work. Read the whole essay here.

PS: David sends a nod to the discussions on this blog about the use of MRI scanners in exhibitions; see Søren’s post here and Hans’ post here.

A few minutes ago — as I was sitting in my beautiful and quiet room in Schokofabrik (the best B&B in Berlin), struggling with my paper on art and science in medical museums for the SLSA-session on Friday – a mail dropped in announcing a lecture by science writer Phillip Ball on Thursday 10 July, which may be quite interesting for us in the medical museum business.

Phillip Ball lecture is occasioned by his receipt of the 2007 Dingle Prize for communicating the history of science and technology through his book Elegant solutions: Ten Beautiful Experiments in Chemistry (Royal Society of Chemistry, 2005):

Scientists frequently talk about ‘beauty’ in their work, but rarely stop to think quite what they mean by it. What makes an experiment beautiful? Is it the clarity of the design? The elegance of the apparatus? The nature of the knowledge gained? There have been several recent attempts to identify ‘beautiful’ experiments in science, especially in physics. But Philip Ball argues that, not only is chemistry often neglected in these surveys, but it has its own special kinds of beauty, linked to the fact that it is a branch of science strongly tied to the art of making things: new molecules and materials, new smells and colours (my emphasis)

The making of new molecules and materials, smells and colours isn’t restricted to chemistry, of course. Same with biotechnology, tissue engineering, etc. The beauty of, say, a new bladder tissue should then lie, pace Bell, in its new materiality, smells and colours. Good point. Must read the book!

The Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle Street, London, at 7pm

(thanks to Patricia for the mail).

A couple of months ago the Danish Society for Anaesthesiology and Intensive Medicine asked Medical Museion if we were interested in making a small exhibition about the history of Danish anaesthesiology and intensive care in connection with the fourth Annual Meeting of the European Society of Anaesthesiology (Euroanaesthesia 2008) in Copenhagen.

With 5000 potential exhibition visitors in mind, we said yes, of course! So during the last two months Søren Bak-Jensen and Nicole Rehné have worked hard planning the exhibition and setting it up. The European society has supported us with ~10.000 euros, and we have received valuable help from specialists and a few companies (see credits below).

And today it opened in the west end of the main hall of the Bella Center. An 80 sq.m. display area with a Dräger iron lung from 1952 as the iconic object of modern intensive care placed in the middle:

encircled by showcases that display a number of exquisite artefacts from our collections, including, for example, Ruben resuscitators and a curare flask from the turn of the last century. We have also borrowed some objects from medicotechnical companies Radiometer, AMBU and an evocative movie from Klinisk Film.

Here are some more pictures from first couple of hours when the meeting participants streamed into the huge congress building:

And finally the credits:

Special thanks to Dr. Hans Kirkegaard, Chairman of the Danish Society for Anaesthesiology and Intensive Medicine and a specialist on curare, who took the initative in the first place — here photographed while he is inspecting one of the showcases:

The exhibition closes on Tuesday.

No doubt, this kind of exhibitions is a great opportunity to foster contacts between the medical profession, the medicotechnical industry, medical historians and medical ethnographers. We’ll soon be back with more pictures and reflections on this particular kind of extra-mural medical historical object exhibitions.

It took the local university bookstore for ever to get my copy of famous molecular geneticist James D. Watson’s Avoid Boring People. Lessons from a Life in Science (Knopf 2007) ordered and shipped – so apologies for this late review.

Like biographies, autobiographies are written and read for a multitude of purposes, from trying to settle priority disputes to producing a piece of literature. Watson (who shared the medical Nobel Prize in 1962 for his construction, with Francis Crick, of the double helix model of DNA, and then played a significant role in the subsequent triumph of molecular biology) has chosen another option. He has penned the history of his life in the form of a “recollection of manners” deployed to navigate in Academia. A self-help book for scientists and academics “on their way up”, as he puts it.

Consequently each of the 15 chronologically ordered chapters ends with a number of succinct “remembered lessons” statements with snappy titles, like “Have a big objective that makes you fell special”, or “Sit in the front row when a seminar’s title intrigues you”, or “Delegate as much authority as possible” – 109 altogether. Here’s one which I hope many colleagues in my generation will read and contemplate:

Never be the brightest person in a room.

Getting out of intellectual ruts more often than not requires unexpected intellectual jousts. Nothing can replace the company of others who have the background to catch errors in your reasoning or provide facts that may either prove or disprove your argument of the moment. And the sharper those around you, the sharper you will become. It’s contrary to human nature, and especially to human male nature, but being the top dog in the pack can work against greater accomplishments. Much better to be the least accomplished chemist in a super chemistry department than the superstar in a less lustrous department. By the early 1950s, Linus Pauling’s scientific interactions with fellow scientists were effectively monologues instead of dialogues. He then wanted adoration, not criticism.

One must admit that Watson has more often than not lived up to this particular advice. Last autumn’s row over his racist statements, during the promotion tour for this book, about the innate intellectual capacity of black people certainly didn’t bring much adoration.

But this aside, the self-help book format is an excellent idea. During the 19th century, scientific lives were often written and read for their instructive value, but since the beginning of the last century, self-help biographies and autobiographies of scientists have been virtually extinct as a genre. I find it hard to believe that Watson has deliberately chosen to rejuvenate this old practice, however, or even that he has been aware of the history of autobiography. His choice of this unusual format is probably rather a case of independent genre construction, and if so, it is yet another indication of Watson’s greatest personality trait: his independence and creativity.

I’m afraid this is all I can say in favour of this book, however. The rest of Avoid Boring People is a conventional, unengaging and, yes, boring autobiographical story. Too many banalities, too many unnecessary details, too few surprises. I read on, page after page, just to find out that nothing has really caught my interest. As we’ve seen so many times before, succesful scientists are not necessarily succesful autobiographers. 

Even the “remembered lessons” are becoming somewhat trite. Admittedly, some of them are excellent, worth copying and hanging above your desk as daily reminders (“Two obsessions are one too many”, is my favourite one). But others are self-evident, or a trifle too idiosyncratic (like “Avoid gatherings of more than two Nobel Prize winners”, or “Spend your prize money on a home”).

And as the book advances you begin to realise that these self-help lessons are really of a quite different kind than those of the ancients. 19th century self-help biographies were aimed at cultivating the virtues of the reader, not his individual career and success. With few exceptions, however, these 109 Watsonian lessons are all about making it to the top. Many advices could as well be directed to a CEO, or a budding presidential candidate.

Generally, there is very much fascination with success and fame in this book, but very little evidence of Watson’s fascination with science. So little that, after having finished Avoid Boring People, I began to wonder if the famous Jim Watson has ever been really passionate about science. Or did he take up science just in order to make success and become a celebrity? Has his obsession with success excluded his obsession with science? And if this is so, is this really a lesson one wants to give on to one’s students?

PS: My hardback copy presents an enigma. The Avoid Boring People title of Watson’s autobiography is printed on the spine, in the front matter of the book, on the dust cover, and in the Library of Congress catalogue entry. But – in certain angles of light the title on the dust cover changes to ‘Avoid Boring Other People’ (not visible on the cover pic above). Which, of course, give an extra dimension to the lessons presented here. It’s thus not just a question of egotistically avoiding the bores of the world, it’s also a reflexive imperative: avoid boring them as well! But why is this printed on the dust cover only? And why is there no hint to this alternative title in the book? Has Watson okayed the dust cover copy? Or is it a joke of a Knopf editor?

PPS: It’s not the first time orders through our university bookstore are delayed; we’ll soon have to find another supplier.

At the occasion of the 60th birthday of Svante Lindqvist, Director of the Nobel Museum in Stockholm (and member of our Advisory Board), a one-day celebration seminar will be held on Friday 25 April. Under the heading ”Science on Stage”, John Heilbron, Tore Frängsmyr, Paolo Galuzzi, Sven Widmalm, Jim Bennett, and Kjell Espmark will raise questions about the role of science in public life and the relation between science, theatre and music, and their talks will be interspersed by music and theatre performances. Access is restricted to registered participants—contact Ulf Larsson, ulf@nobel.se, before April 14. Full program (in Swedish) below:
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During the cold war years, the international congresses of history of science used to be rather dull events, with too many local dignitaries involved and too many talks by people who apparently had never been in contact with major intellectual streams in the field.

But post-1989 globalisation has gradually beefed up these meetings. So there is every reason to go to Budapest 26-31 July 2009 for the XXIII (23rd) Congress of the History of Science and Technology (they brought technology in after the last congress, in Beijing, in 2005).

The broad heading of the meeting is ”Ideas and Instruments in Social Context”. Here’s an excerpt from the circular:

All kinds of scientific and technical instruments as preserved in museums, descriptions, memories and in art belong to the topic of the congress. The influence of the instruments on the culture of the laboratories and on everyday life in the different periods is also a highly appreciated topic of the congress. The history of all kinds of „instruments” that helped or hindered the development of science and technology like legislation, international, state or local influence institutions are incorporated into the second part of the topic. For much of the history of our discipline, two separate and sometimes antagonistic approaches to the history of science have focused on the study of ideas, and on the study of instruments. However, in the past few decades, more and more scholars have striven to integrate both aspects, showing that instruments not only constitute the material culture of science, but also shape and even embody ideas.

(see more on the congress website).

Looks like an opportunity to organise a session around the establishement of medical instrument collections and their role for the understanding of the history of contemporary science, technology and medicine. (Medicine is still not formally included in the congress, but medical science and medical technology is, of course.) The only thing that could keep me away is the mean July temparature in Budapest—27 degrees!

‘Artefacts’ is a network of academic and museum-based historians of science, technology and medicine who are interested in promoting the use of objects in scholarly work. The network started in 1997 and recent meetings have dealt with ‘Exploration’ (Oslo 2007; see also here), ‘Constructing and Deconstructing Icons of Achievement in Science and Technology’ (Stockholm 2006), ’Globalization’ (Washington 2005), and ‘Scientific Instruments as Artefacts’ (Utrecht,2004). Six proceedings volumes have been published so far.

The 2008 meeting will be held in Washington DC, October 5-7. The subject for this year’s meeting is the relationship between art and science/technology, broadly understood (not medicine? I thought we agreed on that in Oslo last year?). Possible themes include:

• How aesthetic considerations have influenced scientific instruments.
• How design concepts have affected invention.
• The ways in which scientific and technical developments have entered into the practice and works of artists.
• How views on the art-science/technology relation have influenced museum practices of collecting and exhibition.

The ‘Artefacts’ meetings are informal and pleasurable gatherings without keynotes, formal receptions or other kinds of unnecessities. Each accepted contributor gets his/her 20 minutes talk + 10 minutes discussion slot. For further info and paper proposals, write to one or several of the organisers: Barney Finn (finnb@si.edu), Robert Bud (robert.bud@sciencemuseum.org.uk) Helmuth Trischler (h.trischler@deutsches-museum.de), and Martin Collins (collinsm@si.edu). They want suggestions before the end of May; accepted abstracts (to be circulated before the meeting) are then due by September 7. And don’t forget that Washington is beautiful in October!

A propos our historical and curatorial interest in invisibles (see earlier post here)—the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford is inviting to a lecture on Wednesday 5 March by renowned philosopher of science Rom Harré, who will talk about one the most common assumptions of modern science, “namely that our experience of the natural world is to be explained in terms of tiny entities”. What kind of knowledge can we have of this invisible world?

The lecture is titled ’Big questions about small worlds” and takes place in the museum building on Broad Street. For small inquiries, contact Stephen Johnston (who has co-curated the exhibition ‘Small Worlds’, which opened last October and runs until 6 April; see earlier post here).