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Friday, May 31, 2013

Medical trade literature

One of the strengths of the NMHM's archives is it's trade literature / advertising material in the GMPI collection. Here's Steve Heller's Daily Heller blog pointing out the designer of Upjohn's Scope magazine

5.31.13 / Will Burtin's Beauty

 


The May-June 1955 issue of Print magazine, co-edited by Leo Lionni, was pretty special. In addition to Lioinni's bi-monthly injection of art and art history into the editorial mix of the magazine, an insert written and designed by Will Burtin titled "A Program in Print: Upjohn and Design" is seamlessly folded into the magazine.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Eben Smith, Civil War amputee

Eben Smith's case is well-documented because he's one of the rare survivors of an amputation at the hip. More images can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=99129398@N00&q=eben



 
"Indomitable Will" saved local Civil War amputee
Fenceviewer
Photo Courtesy Surgeon Genera;'s Office, Army Medical Museum FRANKLIN — Bayview Cemetery is the final resting place of a Civil War soldier who survived ...

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Slate finds some posters from the Medical Museum

As far as I can tell, these were never put into production


 
Four WWII Posters That Taught Soldiers How To Identify Chemical ...
Slate Magazine
The advent of chemical warfare during WWI was traumatic, and the stories from the front ... Thanks to Eric Boyle of the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

With all due respect to my friend, Eric, back when I was the archivist of the Museum, I put these and other pictures of chemical warfare up on Flickr in 2006 at http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=99129398@N00&q=mustard 
 
Since I left in the fall of 2011, they haven't added any images to the almost 4,000 I loaded here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/medicalmuseum/ 
 
Similar World War II posters can be seen at the National Library of Medicine's Images in the History of Medicine website.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

CNN's World's 10 weirdest medical museums



 
World's 10 weirdest medical museums
CNN International
In honor of International Museum Day on May 18, here are the world's weirdest medical museums. Bart's Pathology Museum, England A university collection ...



Friday, May 10, 2013

Body Worlds plastination exhibit opens in NYC

Comfortable Out of Their Own Skin
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
New York Times May 10 2013

Three rare photographs of the US Navy Museum of Hygiene

All three images are bound in a copy of "Catalogue of The Exhibits in the Museum of Hygiene. Medical Department of the United States Navy." Compiled by Philip S. Wales, Medical Director, U.S.N. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1893 now held in BUMED's Office of Medical History.

13-0103-003 The Museum. Present Home. 1707 New York Avenue, N.W. 1887-1893.
13-0103-003
13-0103-002 The Museum. 2nd Home. S.E. Corner 18th & G Sts, NW. 1882-1887. 13-0103-002 13-0103-001 The Museum. Birth-place. 18th + K Sts, N.W. 1879-1882. 13-0103-001

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Posters at the National Library of Medicine

'Could you poison your child?': images from a century of medical propaganda; Health, history, and design collide at the National Library of Medicine
 By Amar Toor
The Verge April 12, 2013
The first image, about a sailor blinded at Pearl Harbor, is by the noted cartoonist Alex Raymond.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Medical museum in Bangkok


 
Bangkok's macabre museum of death
New Zealand Herald
By Emily Gibson Emily Gibson discovers the gruesome displays on offer at Bangkok's Siriraj Medical Museum - the Museum of Death.



Monday, May 6, 2013

Friday, April 26, 2013

New medical museums article out

Stephen C. Kenny. "The Development of Medical Museums in the Antebellum American South: Slave Bodies in Networks of Anatomical Exchange." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 87.1 (2013): 32-62.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

New article on Body Worlds and the tradition of displaying human remains

"Skinless Wonders": Body Worlds and the Victorian Freak Show
Nadja Durbach
J Hist Med Allied Sci (2012)
 
This was an overview article - interesting, but not too theoretical.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

New article on Body Worlds and Victorian freak shows

  1. J Hist Med Allied Sci (2012) doi: 10.1093/jhmas/jrs035

"Skinless Wonders": Body Worlds and the Victorian Freak Show

  1. Nadja Durbach

+ Author Affiliations

  1. Department of History, University of Utah, Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building, 215 South Central Campus Drive, Room 310, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112.
  1. Email: n.durbach@utah.edu

Abstract

In 2002, Gunther von Hagens's display of plastinated corpses opened in London. Although the public was fascinated by Body Worlds, the media largely castigated the exhibition by dismissing it as a resuscitated Victorian freak show. By using the freak show analogy, the British press expressed their moral objection to this type of bodily display. But Body Worlds and nineteenth-century displays of human anomalies were linked in more complex and telling ways as both attempted to be simultaneously entertaining and educational. This essay argues that these forms of corporeal exhibitionism are both examples of the dynamic relationship between the popular and professional cultures of the body that we often erroneously think of as separate and discrete. By reading Body Worlds against the Victorian freak show, I seek to generate a fuller understanding of the historical and enduring relationship between exhibitionary culture and the discourses of science, and thus to argue that the scientific and the spectacular have been, and clearly continue to be, symbiotic modes of generating bodily knowledge.

'Medical museum' auction in Canada


 
Odd sale catalogue rattles a few bones
The Age
The skeletons are among 3000 items from the former medical museum at Kryal Castle theme park, being sold in 291 lots. The skeletons are listed as Lot 285 ...




NLM History of Medicine Lecture: Influenza epidemic

Following on the National Library of Medicine's participation in the recent symposium Shared Horizons: Data, Biomedicine, and the Digital Humanities, and as part of its ongoing cooperation with the National Endowment for the Humanities, you are cordially invited to the next NLM History of Medicine lecture, to be held on Tuesday, April 30, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m., in the NLM Visitor Center, Building 38A on the NIH campus in Bethesda, MD.

The speaker will be Dr. E. Thomas Ewing, from Virginia Tech, who will speak on
"'Scourge on Wane; Fatalities Fewer': Interpreting Newspaper Coverage of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic."

 

Please note that this lecture was announced earlier under a somewhat different title.

 

This lecture will describe how a team of researchers is harnessing the power of data mining techniques with the interpretive analytics of the humanities and social sciences to understand how newspapers shaped public opinion and represented authoritative knowledge during the deadly pandemic that struck the United States in 1918. The research methods developed through this project promise new insights into understanding the spread of information and the flow of disease in other societies facing the threat of pandemics.

All are welcome.

Sign language interpretation is provided. Individuals with disabilities who need reasonable accommodation to participate may contact Stephen Greenberg at 301-435-4995, e-mail greenbes@mail.nih.gov, or the Federal Relay (1-800-877-8339).

Due to current security measures at NIH, off-campus visitors are advised to consult the NLM Visitors and Security website:

 

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/about/visitor.html

Sponsored by

NLM's History of Medicine Division
Jeffrey S. Reznick, PhD, Chief

Event contact:
Stephen J. Greenberg, MSLS, PhD
Coordinator of Public Services
History of Medicine Division
National Library of Medicine,

National Institutes of Health

Bethesda, MD

301-435-4995
greenbes@mail.nih.gov

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

George Marshall Medical Museum in UK profiled


 
TV antiques show to highlight macabre museum
Evesham Journal
A MEDICAL museum based at a Worcester hospital and known for its ghoulish ... The George Marshall Medical Museum, based at the Charles Hastings Education ...



Monday, April 8, 2013

Bontecou's Civil War medical photographs

Yale's Cushing-Whitney Library has a collection of RB Bontecou's Civil War photographs that is similar to part of the NMHM's one. You can see scans at http://cushing.med.yale.edu/gsdl/collect/civilwar/index.html

 

Some are new to me - especially this one with this neat human artifacthttp://cushing.med.yale.edu/gsdl/cgi-bin/library?c=civilwar&a=d&d=DcivilwarBontecouBABJ
 

Friday, April 5, 2013

Metropolitan Museum of Art's Civil War exhibit

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Civil War exhibit includes photographs of wounded soldiers by Dr. Reed Bontecou that are now owned by Dr. Stanley Burns. Bontecou also sent copies of his photographs to the Medical Museum. Dr. Burns recently wrote a book on Bontecou's pictures.