Dissection at Harvard

Just last night, April 7, John Warner and I gave a book talk at the Center for the History of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. The topic: our book, Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage of American Medicine, 1880-1930. The event: opening of an exhibition of images featured in our book, on display at the Countway Library (5th floor) through June. We are greatful to Center Director Scott Podolsky for making this happen.

I traveled from Cleveland to Boston on Monday night, to get a fresh start on Tuesday hanging the show with Dominic Hall, curator of the Warren Anatomical Museum, which is today part of the Center for the History of Medicine. I brought the images, digital prints mounted with labels, and Dominic and I, ably assisted by his intern Alicia Guillama (from Harvard University Extension School’s Graduate Program in Museum Studies), spent Tuesday hanging the show. With everyone pitching in, we got the show up and running by the end of the day, with a few dangling details to be sorted the next morning.

Dominic Hall

Alicia Guillama

Dominic and Alicia

Having taken care of business on the first day, I was free to head over to see Sara Schechner, the David P. Wheatland Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments over in Cambridge on Wendesday. More on that fascinating visit in a coming post…

By mid-afternoon, I headed back to the Countway and rendezvouz-ed with John Warner, who arrived around 4:30, in anticipation of our talk at 6:00, followed by a book signing and reception. We had about 50 persons in attendance (not bad for one of the warmest and sunniest days seen in Boston this Spring). Had a very sympathetic and attentive audience, and a lively question and answer period following our presentation. We then all adjourned for attendees to see the show.

Now back in Cleveland for a quick turnaround, I am off to Cincinnati tomorrow for the Saturday meeting of the Ohio Academy of Medical History. We’re taking off early so we can bake a beeline for the Creation Museum across the border in Kentucky. Can’t wait! Will be reporting our experience here shortly…

Jim Edmonson

Dissection makes the news (again!)

Yet another news piece references our Dissection book. This most recent posting by reporter Kelly Heyboer, appeared in the online version of New Jersey’s Star Ledger on Friday March 26. Heyboer noted that “in recent months, medical schools around the nation have begun re-examining their ethics codes after a string of disturbing cases in which students photographed or videotaped cadavers and posted the images on Facebook and YouTube.” While acknowledging the troubling ethical impact of images conveyed by social networking tools, she also observed that “Taking photos with cadavers is nothing new. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, medical students regularly posed with cadavers. Some took darkly humorous shots with the dead bodies posed or dressed in costumes. Others took serious classroom photos mid-dissection.” To support this assertion, Heyboer featured an image from the Dittrick’s collection that appears in Dissection.

We will have another opportunity to promote Dissection in early April, when John Warner and I will make a presentation at the Countway Library of Harvard Medical School. On April 7 we will be mounting an exhibition of dissection images there and talking about the book. Those in the Boston area are welcome to attend and may find event details here.

Jim Edmonson

Man-midwifery under assault (again)

Man-midwifery got enough bad press in its day, in 18^th century London. Smellie, Hunter, and their confreres have been amply vilified, justly or unjustly, for medicalizing the birth chamber. These chaps have since been heroes of the OB world on one side, and paragons of misogyny on the other. Without wishing to take sides, I couldn’t help but be amused by the latest assault on man-midwifery in the British press, particularly the online versions of The Guardian and the Daily Mail. It appears that New Zealander Don Shelton, writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, now wants to paint them as serial murderers. Specifically, Shelton mounts the “case showing Smellie and Hunter were responsible for a series of 18^th century ‘burking’ murders of pregnant women.”

The anatomy of the human gravid uterus exhibited in figures, by William Hunter. London, 1774.

Shelton’s article is largely devoted to providing a statistical look at the supply of bodies, most notably of pregnant women, available for dissection in 18^th century London. He concludes that “the chance of them [Smellie and Hunter] receiving an undelivered corpse was tantamount to nil.” Shelton then asserts that their only recourse “must” have been ‘burking’ and hence rendered them at least accessory to murder.

Since I’m a historian by background and training, I prefer more convincing evidence than John Hunter’s “implied admission.” Others have voiced the same objection. Shelton’s conclusions have sparked a somewhat testy debate, especially on the blog Georgian London. Wendy Moore, biographer of John Hunter, offers this assessment in her comments on the JRSM site: “So while it is not impossible that the women in Hunter’s and Smellie’s atlases were murdered (it is not correct to describe them as being ‘burked’ since that term did not come into use until after the Burke and Hare murders in 1827) it is not possible to make out a case based on laws of probability.”

Or perhaps I prefer the Scots law verdict invoked by Wendy Moore: Not proven.

Jim Edmonson

p.s. – thanks to Christine and Marsha for the heads up on this one.

A curator's Paris journal : Librairie Alain Brieux

International networking with medical museums has been important to the Dittrick since Howard Dittrick first visited Henry Wellcome’s curator, C. J. S. Thompson, in London in 1928. I’ve been active in the European Association of Museums of the History of Medical Sciences (EAMHMS) since 1984, and that’s been a key venue for learning what’s happening in our field. I now serve on the Association’s governing council and that took me to Paris last fall. I set aside time to seek out some museums of medicine and science that I hadn’t yet seen. I thought I’d offer a series of postings on these off-the-beaten-track places, which you won’t find in Fodor’s, Frommer’s, or Rick Steves’ Europe through the back door. So here goes…

Librairie Alain Brieux 48, rue Jacob - 75006 Paris

Any visit to Paris today by collectors or curators would be incomplete without a visit to the Librairie Alain Brieux, the premier rare book shop that features medical antiques as well. Located in Saint Germain-des-Prés, just a stone’s throw from the Sorbonne’s medical school, Brieux’s shop resembles a museum with its collection on sale. While there Dara Asken Teste showed us a c.1750 anatomical atlas featuring color plates by Gautier d’Agoty (price only $85,000).


Not too long ago, the Dittrick bought from Alain Brieux a 1902 lithograph of a striking dissection scene, Une Fin À l’École Pratique [An End At the Practical School] by Camille Félix Bellanger (1853-1923). I first saw this work in the Brieux window after hours on a Saturday night, and it really surprised me. I thought that I had just about seen most images depicting dissection over the years, but Bellanger’s work was totally unknown and fresh. A phone call once back in the States secured this beautiful lithograph for the Dittrick, happily. Read more about it in the Spring 2008 Newsletter of the Cleveland Medical Library Association.

Tout à l'heure

Jim Edmonson

Dissection images on Facebook?

John Warner forwarded an intriguing article by Jill Laster in the Chronicle of Higher Education discussing the use of Facebook to share images from the dissection lab. As with photos created by medical students a century ago, some are not so flattering to the judgment of students, or to the dignity of the cadaver. The article explores many of the issues that John Warner and I addressed in Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine, 1880-1930 (Blast Books, 2009). Ms. Laster references the book directly and quotes John, and features an image from the Dittrick’s collection of dissection images. Nice to see the book finding relevance in this discussion, even as anatomy and dissection wane in the medical school curriculum...

Jim Edmonson