Category Archives: Anatomy

I am excited to announce a call for papers for the 16th biannual conference of the European Association of Museums of the History of Medical Sciences (EAMHMS). The call is issued by Thomas Schnalke, director of the Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum, the museum which will be hosting the 2012 conference, and reads as follows:

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 [at] 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

Found on the always wonderful Biomedicine on Display. Image sourced here. Hope to see you there!

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So by now I imagine we have all heard the sad news of Steve Jobs' death. What is really interesting to me is how his death has had the curious side effect of bringing a discussion of mortality and the contemplation thereof as a road to wisdom and a good life in the mainstream media. Steve Jobs' words on death, which are being excerpted in many online eulogies, are drawn from a commencement address he gave at Stanford University in 2005; they ring very true and refreshing, and are worth quoting here in their entirety:

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

You can read the full text of Steve Jobs' commencement address at Stanford University in 2005 here.

Image of memento mori figure sourced here.

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Solitary vice? Sex and dissection in Georgian London
An illustrated lecture with Dr. Simon Chaplin of the Wellcome Library, formerly of the Hunterian Museum
Date: This Tuesday, October 4
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

In his watercolour of a 'Persevering Surgeon', the British artist Thomas Rowlandson made no bones about the darkly erotic nature of anatomical dissection. Poised over the body of a naked woman, erect knife in hand, Rowlandson's anatomist conjured images of the other solitary vice that consumed later 18th century moralists and medical men. But like Rowlandson - who combined popular satirical illustration with a more discreet trade in pornographic imagery - anatomists maintained a delicate balance between personal pursuits and public propriety. In this lavishly illustrated lecture, Simon Chaplin explores the sexual undertones of the anatomy schools of Georgian London, in which students dissected grave-robbed bodies in the back-rooms of their teachers' houses, while their masters explored new strategies for presenting their work to polite audiences through museums and lectures.

Dr Simon Chaplin is Head of the Wellcome Library in London. Before joining the Wellcome he was Director of the Hunterian Museum in London, one of the world's oldest anatomy collections. His research interests include the history of anatomy, surgery and museums, and his doctoral thesis explored the relationship between dissection and display through the work of the Hunterian Museum's founder, the surgeon John Hunter (1728-1793).

Image: Thomas Rowlandson, 'The Persevering Surgeon', late 18th century, from the collection of the Hunterian Museum, London

Born of the Floating World: A Brief Exploration of the Japanese Graphic Narrative
Illustrated talk with Japanese Scholar Dev Avidon
Date: This Thursday, October 6th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy and Oxberry Pegs

In 1988, the anime adaptation of Otomo Katsuhiro's perennial serialized manga Akira was released in Japan, shattering domestic attendance records for an animated film. Shortly thereafter, its distributor presented it to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as the ideal anime for English-language adaptation. The two dismissed it offhand, deeming the very concept of a cerebral, macabre, challenging animated film as “completely unmarketable” in the United States. Animation in America was the sole purview of children, they reckoned, and throughout the 90s, those few anime that were adapted for the American market were heavily edited to remove any and all controversy or 'adult' themes, thus rendering them safe for Saturday mornings. In 2001, however, Disney took a chance, bringing a largely faithful, unedited translation of Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away to theaters. It was an astounding success, enjoying uniform critical acclaim and record profits for a foreign animated film, and sparking an unprecedented interest in anime and manga in America.

A decade later, with anime and manga's popularity in the United States at an all time high, Dev Avidon will present a brief history and overview of the two forms, and examine their provenance in 17th and 18th century Japanese pictorial narratives such as the Kibyoshi – arguably the first graphic novel in human history. What spawned anime and manga as media, and what defines them? How did their visual and narrative tropes and themes evolve from both a Japanese cultural tradition dating back as early as the 9th century, and a cross-pollination and interplay with Western art and animation styles during the 19th and 20th centuries? And how can we, as American viewers, reconcile our preconceptions of the 'cartoon' and 'comic book' with the realities of two artistic forms that, collectively, account for over half of all visual media produced in Japan annually?

Dev Avidon is a Brooklyn-based jazz composer/singer, sound engineer, small business owner and Japanese scholar. During his time in the Government and East Asian Languages and Civilizations departments at Harvard University he specialized in Japanese neo-nationalism and Japanese popular art, from the ukiyo-e and kibyoshi forms of the Edo period through the modern day Neopop and Superflat movements. His thesis for the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University, Allegories of the Empty Center: A study of Modern Japanese Nationalism explores how Japanese neo-nationalism as exemplified in cultural movements such as Superflat problematizes the core tenets of modern nationalist theory. He also played an instrumental role in the founding and cataloging of the anime and manga collections at the Harvard Yenching Library. A well-published author and scholar, Dev Avidon's current focus is on his upcoming sophomore album, Tears of Men, and melding the hard science of audio technology with the clean lines of Japanese aesthetic design and the artwork of master jewelers with his line of audiophile cables for Frost Audio, a boutique audio company he owns and co-founded in 2010. Visit him at http://www.devavidon.com or http://www.frost-audio.com.

Image: Hokusai's Manga

The Rest of October:

• October 13: The Empire of Death: Spectacular Ossuaries and Relics in the 16th and 17th Centuries: An illustrated lecture with Dr. Paul Koudounaris, author/photographer of The Empire of Death
• October 14: Blake Leyh of “Treme” and “The Wire”: Screening, Moderated Discussion, and Reading with Author John Swenson
• October 17: A Dead Animal Man: Screening and Q & A with Film Maker Lily Henderson
• October 20: From the Magnificent to the Macabre: Send-Offs for the Dead: Illustrated talk and book signing with Sarah Murray, author of Making an Exit: From the Magnificent to the Macabre---How We Dignify the Dead
• October 22: Halloween and Day of the Dead Party featuring brand new episodes of Ghoul A Go-Go and The Midnight Archive, costumes, piñata, music, beverages, sugar skulls, a costume contest and more!
• October 24: Freaks and Pornography: Victorian Popular Anatomy Museums, Sex and the Unusual Body: Illustrated talk with author Sarah Kathryn York

NOVEMBER:

• November 6: Class: Mummification: Learn the art and ritual of animal mummification with instructor Sorceress Cagliastro *** Limited Class Size; Please RSVP to morbidanatomy [at] gmail.com

You can find out more--and get directions to Observatory--by clicking here.

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Swiss visual artist Ivan Ebel looks like he’s been dabbling with the anatomical designs of the human body.

His paintings and illustrations reflect the representation of the body and the symbolic notation of the body.

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There is soo much more where this came from! I wish I could post it all, but Ronit Baranga is just pumpin’ way too much awesome into the world.  I know I always suggest heading to said artist’s website, but this lady is definitely not going to disappoint. Be sure to check out all of the collections in her gallery!

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The work of Brazillian street artist, MEDO, has recently shifted from dark, often geometrical human-like figures to the anatomically correct abstraction.  The subject of his work comprises “cathedrals, monasteries, sacred art and the horror of the inevitable.”

His almost sacred figures stood amidst the crumbled locations like Incoherent saints with void as eyes staring at the skies for impossible answers.
There is a Dreary quality in their faces and gestures but also a glimpse of compassion and maybe true hope.

I love the selection of anatomical elements he places together.  They have a silliness and sense of desperation to them.

View all of Medo’s street art on his Flickr!

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