MUSEUM BLOG
Observations and Lessons from the First Curating Medical Heritage Workshop or How I Spent My Swedish Vacation
I was lucky enough to be part of a contingent of academics from Kingston who travelled to Uppsala, Sweden for the first of a series of workshops on Curating Medical Heritage.
Prescription for Getting Owled: Prohibition and the Medical Establishment
If you wanted to get blotto and you knew your onions, it was duck soup to go to a croaker and dip the bill without resorting to a blind tiger.
A Study in Red (Cross): The Medical World of Sherlock Holmes
A survey showed that, among other medical references, the Sherlock Holmes stories mention 68 different diseases – not bad, considering there are only 60 Holmes stories in total. Holmes, then, seemed the perfect guide for a quick and slightly madcap tour of the Museum of Health Care’s collections.
The Blood of Four Strong Men: Dracula and The Portrayal of Blood Transfusion
Dracula was published in 1897. What was the state of blood transfusion back then?
What Do You Mean Museums Aren’t Forever? The Whats and Whys of Deaccessioning
Deaccessioning is the formal removal of an item from a museum’s permanent collection. The important thing to know about deaccessioning is that it’s mostly about paperwork and about status. An item can be deaccessioned without moving from its spot on a shelf. Physical removal of the item is a different and related process, called disposal (disposal in this case doesn’t translate to “garbage,” it just means putting the object somewhere else). We can deaccession items and not dispose of them, but a museum should never dispose of an item without deaccessioning it.
Medicinal Leeches: Still A Bloody Good Idea
Even people who aren’t up on their medical history tend to know at least one fact: old-fashioned medical doctors used leeches. The leech is almost as iconic a symbol of antique medicine as the head lamp or the beak-masked plague doctor.
So You’ve Got a Curator. Now What?
The Museum of Health Care at Kingston has hired a curator! Huzzah!But some of you may be wondering: what does that actually mean? What on earth is a curator and what do they do? It’s both simple and surprisingly hard to answer. You’re probably at least vaguely aware that a curator is someone who works in a museum. You might have seen a curator in a movie, usually in the form of a pretentious, stodgy academic peevishly insisting that the hero stop touching the exhibits and with pretty even odds on getting murdered by a supernatural force trapped in some ancient artifact (as far as movie professions go, curators tend to have lifespans approximately equal to cops the day before retirement). You may have heard of someone curating a social media feed or a Pinterest board or read a thinkpiece on why calling everyone who collects content a curator will be the downfall of society. All of which can make it hard to figure out what exactly a museum curator does.
A Mere Appendix: Pioneering Surgery in Grand Valley Ontario
The appendix represents quite a mystery. For many years it was believed to be a vestige of our distant ancestors; the trace of a cecum, a part of many animals large intestine. This theory was put forward by Charles Darwin, but was mostly refuted in 2013.