Biomedicine on Display on RSS Mixer
Medical Museion @ University of Copenhagen
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Museums and biographies
Posted 2 days agoI've always found it difficult to bring together my two core professional interests. On the one hand, I've spent many years working on scientific biography and have been engaged in scholarly discussions about scientific auto/biography as a genre (see, e.g., this book). I'm fascinated in how texts, memories, interviews and personal (self)knowledge can be used construct the ... -
Curating medical artifacts with an eye to the future
Posted 2 days agoThe 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 ... -
Why do we blog and other important questions (reply to Martin Fenner, Nature Networks)
Posted 2 days agoLast week, Martin Fenner at Nature Network Bloggers Forum asked his fellow science bloggers nine inquisitive questions about their experiences with the genre. Several people --- e.g., Eva Amsen; Henry Gee; Clare Dudman; Steffi Suhr; Stephen Curry; Massimo Pinto; Larry Moran; Kristi Vogel; Maxine Clarke; T. Ryan Gregory; Mike Haubrich; John Wilkins; Paulo Nuin; Heather Etchevers; Lee Turnpenny; Ricardo ... -
Museum ethics
Posted 2 days agoEthics looms large in the museum world. For example, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) has an elaborate Code of Ethics which is translated into many languages and distributed to all its members. The latest addition to the field of museum ethics is an Institute of Museum Ethics (IME) at Seton Hall University, NJ. Its mission is: to promote accountability, ... -
Next SymbioticA Biotech Art workshop in Stavanger, Norway, 18-21 November
Posted 8 days agoJens Hauser has just written to tell us that SymbioticA’s next Biotech Art workshop takes place in Stavanger, 18-21 November 2008 (part of the Stavanger ARTICLE BIENNALE 15-30 November. The workshop will accommodate 15 participants to learn techniques of microbiology, DNA extraction, genetic transformation of bacteria, gel electrophoresis, tissue culture and ... -
Coffee and the body
Posted 8 days agoCannot resist bringing this coffee cup collection by Dutch designer Joep Van Lieshout, available at Illy: showing four organ systems that are affected by drinking coffee (i.e., caffeine). (from Vanessa) -
Digestive system house (CasAnus)
Posted 8 days agoDutch designer Joep Van Lieshout's website displays quite a few interesting works of interest for medical museum designers, like CasAnus (2007), a house which is (reasonably anatomically accurately) shaped like the human digestive system. It's made to function as a small hotel, with bed- and bathroom. I thought it would be great to enter it through the inflated anus, but there ... -
The presence of biomedical identity trumps mundane identity in the night hours
Posted 10 days agoJust an afterthought to the earlier post (of 29 September) about biomedical versus mundane personal identity in the neonatal clinic: What remains in my memory now, seven weeks later, is the strong presence of the surveillance monitor displays, especially in the night hours. During day hours, our embodied newborn and the monitor display competed with each other ... -
Baltic-Nordic network for medical museums
Posted 11 days agoLast week, ten representatives of the major medical historical collections and museums in the Nordic and Baltic countries --- i.e., Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden --- gathered for a two-day meeting in Uppsala, Sweden, with three aims in mind: to create a network between individuals and institutions in the Baltic-Nordic region about the development of ... -
Useful list of medical history museums worldwide
Posted 13 days agoTravellers who would like to visit local medical history museums may find the list below useful. The list --- which is taken from the website of the German Central Medical Library (Deutschen Zentralbibliothek für Medizin) --- begins with German museums followed by museums in other countries, including a few web-based virtual museums. For example, ... -
A rebuilt museumblogs.org — please save the archive!
Posted 14 days agoThe museum blog-feed aggregator MuseumBlogs.org, launched by Jim Spadaccini (Ideum) in 2006, is a major source of information about what museum affiliated bloggers think. Due to overload it has now been rebuilt with a lot of structural changes, a somewhat revised interface design, and (claims Spadaccini) much better performance. It now carries feeds ... -
The recent history of personal genome service — next week is deCoDEme’s and 23andMe’s 1st year birthdays
Posted 14 days agoIt's only one year ago that the first commercial personal genome services became available to ordinary customers, thus initiating what might become a new major postgenomic health industry. deCODEme was launched on 16 November, 2007, and 23andMe three days later. As Attila Csordás points out, the media (and blog) coverage of 23andMe has been far more intense than that of ... -
History of robotics — in medical museum exhibitions etc. (CFP)
Posted 15 days agoThe 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 ... -
Is ‘Biomedicine on Display’ a metamedical object?
Posted 16 days ago"Can something that exists with no physical form be considered an object?", asks Amber Arnold on Sev Fowles's Columbia University "Thing theory" class web site. The answer is 'yes, of course'. Computer people operate with virtual 'objects' all the time. Amber's conclusion --- "Although blogs are virtual things in the electronic world, their role ... -
Museological empiricism — impressions from the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow
Posted 17 days agoI haven't had a chance to see the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow yet. But Øystein Horgmo (The Sterile Eye) has just written an enthusiastic comment on their permanent exhibition, 'A Healing Passion', which is based on William Hunter's big anatomical and pathological collections. Like myself, Øystein has no patience for long texts in museums: This exhibition however, is visual ... -
Using imaging technology to buy shoes — the ‘Schucoscop’
Posted 18 days agoImaging technology in museums is not just about sublime high-tech artefacts to be admired by the esoteric few. As Bente points out on our Danish parallel blog, one of our most popular imaging artefacts is a shoe-fitting fluoroscope (a “Schucoskop”), on display in our x-ray study collection. The 'Pedoskop' as it was called in German was quite common in shoe stores ... -
Our museum guest-book — a source for romantic encounters
Posted 21 days agoThe thick guest-book for the Oldetopia-exhibition is filled up with visitors' comments and we had to buy a new one. As Bente (our outreach officer) says, an exhibit guest-book is a wonderful medium for public response --- because it conveys people's immediate reactions: their thoughtful critical remarks, their enthusiasm, and even occasional ... -
Hall of Shame — the most fraudulent, vile, depraved, despicable, base, evil, wretched and slimy scientists of all times
Posted 21 days agoThe 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 ... -
Cellular trees towers and other encounters of art and technology
Posted 21 days agoReport from Artefact meeting no. 13, October 5-7, 2008. Artefacts was initiated in 1996 by the three institutions: the Science Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Deutsches Museum. The aim was and still is to promote a meaningful dialogue about the value of objects to serious studies of the history of science ... -
The recent history of evidence-based medicine
Posted 21 days agoThe emergence of evidence-based medicine is one of the most interesting issues in the history of contemporary medical history. Wish I were in Stockholm on Monday 3 November when Ingemar Bohlin from the STS Section at the University of Gothenburg will speak about evidence-based decision making in a science-based society and the origin, distribution ... -
Philosophy of history vs. museum tangibles and specifics
Posted 21 days agoIn 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 ... -
Material worlds (Leicester, 15-17 December) — draft programme
Posted 21 days agoThe 'Material Worlds' conference at the University of Leicester, 15-17 December 2008 --- marking Susan Pearce's long and distinguished contribution to the field of material culture studies, museum studies and archaeology --- will take a broad look at material culture and theoretical approaches to it. Themes include how to deal with museums and heritage, the roles ... -
Music from the inner ear
Posted 21 days agoJacob Kirkegaard's spectacular sound work 'Labyrinthitis' --- originally commissioned by Medical Museion, first performed in the anatomical theatre at Medical Museion on Sunday, 2 September 2007, and again at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, September 2008 --- is now for sale on CD. You can order it ... -
An art historian’s concern with high-tech baby making
Posted 21 days agoWe all know how babies can be conceived in test-tubes, that we can clone eggs in petri dishes, and that embryos can be stored in the freezer. Old-fashioned sex is increasingly substituted with artificial conception. But what does a leading bio-artist and art historian think of all this? Suzanne Anker from the School of Visual Arts, NYC, gives a seminar ... -
Auctioning imaging diagnostics — another step in the marketization of medicine
Posted 21 days agoTelemedicine has already been around for a while --- especially in image-based diagnostics where specialists can, in principle, be located anywhere in the world when they interpret, say, photos of dermatological conditions or CT/MRI scanning images (and have flexible working hours and earn a lot of money). Telemedical practices thus sustain the general trend of out-sourcing and marketization ...