Warren Anatomical Museum Drawing in “Visual Science: The Art of Research” exhibition

By , September 19, 2019

Transverse section of pig embryo at 12 mm, facing, 1903, Warren Anatomical Museum, Center for the History of Medicine, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine

On September 20, 2019 Harvard’s Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments will be opening an exhibition entitled “Visual Science: The Art of Research.” The exhibition, which features images and objects drawn from a variety of disciplines and time periods that show the importance of visual experiences in science, displays a reproduction of a Warren Anatomical Museum drawing of a pig embryo created in 1903. “Visual Science” is open Sunday – Fridays, 11am–4pm, in the 2nd floor gallery of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.

 Harvard Medical School illustrator Florence Byrnes created the original drawing of a transverse section of a pig embryo at 12 mm for Harvard Medical School Professor of Histology and Human Embryology Charles Sedgwick Minot’s 1903 Laboratory Textbook of Embryology. Three other original works by Byrnes of this same pig embryo were also printed in Minot’s textbook.

To make the drawing, Byrnes collaborated with Frederic T. Lewis, then an Instructor in Histology and Embryology. It is a reconstruction derived from hundreds of transverse sections prepared by Lewis. Outlines of individual sections were drawn through a microscope and camera lucida, measured, and compiled into the scale reconstruction by Byrnes. The shading was in part derived from a wax model reconstructed from the embryo sections. Minot believed that reconstructions such as these were highly advantageous in teaching given the very small scale of the original specimens. Despite Minot stating that two of Byrnes’s drawings, including this transverse section of a pig embryo, demonstrated “a special degree of skill and considerable faculty of plastic imagination,” he did not highlight Byrnes as the artist anywhere in the text outside of her signature on the drawings, choosing rather to focus on the histological contribution of Lewis.

Warren Anatomical Museum Exhibition Gallery Now Closed Until Spring 2021

By , August 21, 2019

Life cast and skull of Phineas Gage, Warren Anatomical Museum, Center for the History of Medicine, Countway Library

As of Wednesday, 8/21/2019, the Warren Anatomical Museum exhibition gallery will be closed until Spring 2021 to prepare for its redesign as part of the larger renovation of the Countway Library of Medicine. Throughout August, the exhibits will be taken down both for their protection during the upcoming construction and to allow for the curation of the next iteration of the Warren Anatomical Museum exhibition gallery.

Keep an eye out on the Center for the History Medicine news feed and the Countway Library website for updates on the renovation and ways you can give input on the next Warren Anatomical Museum gallery.

Warren Anatomical Museum Gallery Temporarily Closing Until Spring 2021

By , August 14, 2019

Skull of Phineas Gage, Warren Anatomical Museum, Center for the History of Medicine, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine

This fall, the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine will begin a multi-floor renovation requiring the temporary deinstallation of the Center for the History of Medicine’s Warren Anatomical Museum Gallery on the fifth floor. Throughout August, all of the artwork, artifacts, and specimens in the building are being taken down for their protection during construction. Plans are now underway to design and imagine the Gallery for its re-installation, including bringing new selections from the Museum’s rich holdings to the public Spring 2021.

The Warren Anatomical Museum will continue to offer educational sessions throughout the renovation and host a number of open houses during the fall and spring academic semesters. Please visit our event calendar this September for these limited-attendance programs. Also look for new content about Museum holdings on our new Museum landing page.

The last day to visit the Gallery and the skull of Phineas Gage is Tuesday, August 20, 2019.

 

Nutshell Studies Loaned to Renwick Gallery for Exhibition

By , October 13, 2017
Frances Glessner Lee and Alan R. Moritz working with furnishings for the Nutshell Studies, 1948. Records of the Department of Legal Medicine, Harvard Medical Library

Frances Glessner Lee and Alan R. Moritz working with furnishings for the Nutshell Studies, 1948. Records of the Department of Legal Medicine, Harvard Medical Library

In 1946, Frances Glessner Lee donated the first ten models of what have become known as the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death to Harvard Medical School’s Department of Legal Medicine. She followed that gift with seven more models in 1948, eventually giving a total of eighteen Nutshells to the Medical School. The Nutshells, intricate dioramas depicting mysterious homicides, suicides, and natural deaths, were built by Lee to serve as teaching tools for the Harvard Associates in Police Science seminars that she hosted each year. In 1967, the Department of Legal Medicine closed, and Harvard loaned the Nutshell Studies to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Baltimore, Maryland, where Department of Legal Medicine alumnus Russell Fisher was the medical examiner. Fisher moved the Harvard Associates in Police Science seminars to Baltimore and kept the teaching mission of the Nutshells alive.

For the first time since being loaned to Baltimore, the eighteen Harvard Nutshells will be on display for the public. They are being hosted by the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery for their exhibition Murder is Her Hobby. In addition to the Harvard Nutshells, the exhibition will also display a nineteenth Glessner Lee Nutshell from the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, courtesy of the Bethlehem Heritage Society. The exhibition will run from October 20, 2017 to January 28, 2018. More information regarding Murder is Her Hobby can be found on the Renwick Gallery website, in the Washington Post, and in HMS news.

More information about the Department for Legal Medicine can be found in Corpus Delicti: The Doctor as the Detective, a physical and digital exhibit curated by Center for the History of Medicine Public Service Librarian Jack Eckert.

Phineas Gage 3D Print!

By , December 5, 2016
Phineas Gage 3D Print, Courtesy of Graham Holt, Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Boston Children’s Hospital

Phineas Gage 3D Print, Courtesy of Graham Holt, Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Boston Children’s Hospital

One of the most interesting developments in the renewed teaching capacity and impact of Phineas Gage is the recent establishment of a printable 3D model of well-known patient’s skull. The print file was created by Graham Holt at the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston Children’s Hospital, and is based on the 2004 thin-slice computed tomography scans of Peter Raitu and Ion-Florin Talos. The file grants a tangible portability to the Gage skull given that the original usually stays safety ensconced in the Warren Museum Exhibit Gallery. Holt’s 3D print had been downloaded 725 times as of October 3rd. The project was featured on the May 5th 3D Printing Today Podcast (segment at 1:02:30). The Warren Anatomical Museum has been using its own version of the Holt print in on-site, hands-on educational programs.

The print file for the Gage skull can be found in the following two places:

The capacity to print a version of Gage’s skull is an exciting addition to the Gage educational experience. More about the original CT scan is discussed in Ratiu, P., Talos, I. F., Haker, S., Lieberman, D., & Everett, P. (2004). “The tale of Phineas Gage, digitally remastered.” Journal of neurotrauma, 21(5), 637-643. More about the Phineas Gage case in general can be found on Malcolm Macmillan’s Phineas Gage Information Page.

 

Warren Museum device pictured in Harvard Medicine magazine

By , March 1, 2015
Morrill Wyman "Airmeter", 1867-1903, Warren Anatomical Museum in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine (WAM 20155)

Morrill Wyman “Airmeter”, 1867-1903, Warren Anatomical Museum in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine (WAM 20155)

An unusual device built by HMS alumnus Morrill Wyman (1812-1903)  is depicted in the  Winter 2015 edition of Harvard Medicine magazine. The device is an airmeter or anemometer, and it was designed by Wyman to register air flow and speed. The device has four paper fan blades set in an open metal circular frame. It has a wooden handle so it could be held up to air vents.

Wyman was a pioneer in recognizing the health consequences of poor ventilation in hospitals and public buildings. In 1846, he won the Boylston Medical prize for an essay on the subject, which he then expanded to a 400-page text entitled A Practical Treatise on Ventilation. Wyman published a paper on the health effects of various outlet cowls for chimneys for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences two years later. As befitted his expertise, he served on an inspection committee of army medical facilities during the American Civil War.

Dr. Wyman had a lifelong dedication to Cambridge Hospital (now Mount Auburn Hospital). He served as its president from 1874 to 1892, and was instrumental in the design of the hospital’s physical plant. His particular interest was a novel and elaborate heating and ventilation system. Venting to the outside was conducted through a main chimney linked to vents placed beneath each bed. It was reported that approximately 2,000 cubic feet of air was drawn from the hospital each hour by the system. Towards the end of his career, Wyman would stop by the hospital on his way home from seeing patients to check on the ventilation system. Accounts had him checking the vents with his airmeter just several weeks before his death at 90.

In addition to the airmeter, the Center for the History of Medicine has an architect’s drawing, circa 1903, of the proposed Harvard Medical School quad, which can be seen in the online version of the Harvard Medicine “Backstory.”

Warren Museum Conserves Eustache Belin Phrenology Cast

By , May 25, 2014

Phrenology cast of Eustache Belin, Warren Anatomical Museum, Francis. A. Countway Library [WAM 03235]

Phrenology cast of Eustache Belin, Warren Anatomical Museum, Francis. A. Countway Library [WAM 03235]

The Warren Anatomical Museum recently conserved a phrenology cast of Eustache Belin, formerly of the collection of the Boston Phrenological Society. The Society existed approximately from 1832 to 1842. It possessed a rich cabinet of head, skull and face casts, many of which came from estate of famed phrenologist Johann Gaspar Spurzheim. The Society was formed in Spurzheim’s honor after his death from typhoid in 1832.

The Belin cast was not part of Spurzheim’s collection. The Phrenological Society most likely acquired a copy of a Belin cast from Edinburgh Phrenological Society founder George Combe when his American lecture tour stopped in Boston in 1838. Combe derived his cast from the original cast created by the Paris Phrenological Society. Belin had lived in Paris and died there in 1835.

The phrenologists used the casts of Eustache Belin as evidence of the regions of benevolence and courage. Belin was born into slavery in 1773 in Santo Domingo. During a rebellion on the island in 1791, he was reported to have saved more than 400 people from harm, including the man who held him in slavery, a Monsieur Belin de Villeneuve. Eustache, Monsieur Belin, and a group of refugees escaped Santo Domingo on a boat headed for Baltimore. After this boat was captured by English pirates, Belin led a revolt and overthrew the pirates. When Belin moved to Paris, after obtaining his freedom, he was known to give most of his resources to the disadvantaged.

The Warren Museum’s cast of Belin had suffered a fracture during one of the Boston Phrenological Society collection’s many moves since it was donated to the Medical School by John Collins Warren in 1849. The fracture had split the back of head away from the main cast. Object and art conservator Nina Vinogradskaya attached the broken elements back to the main cast and consolidated and repaired other broken sections of the cast with excellent results.

 

 

 

 

Warren Museum Conserves New Accessions for “Body of Knowledge” exhibit

By , January 30, 2014
Thomas Dwight lecturing in amphitheater, with Dwight-Emerton skull models, c. 1906., Harvard Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine

Thomas Dwight, Jr. lecturing using Dwight-Emerton skull models, 1906, Harvard Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine

In November 2013 Harvard Medical School’s Program in Medical Education generously donated a series of large papier-mâché models designed by Harvard anatomist Thomas Dwight, Jr. and sculptor J. H. Emerton to the Warren Anatomical Museum. Between 1890 and 1895, Emerton made 20 models for Dwight, many of which have survived and are still used in Harvard’s anatomy classrooms. The donation included a 6.5-foot-tall model of a sagittal section of the human skull, a 5-foot-long model of the bones of the foot, various enlarged hand bones and vertebrae – all by Emerton. Also, included in the gift were two papier-mâché Auzoux models, an enlarged ear and a sagittal section of the face with removable layers.

The skull and bones of the foot models are being loaned for the approaching exhibition Body of Knowledge; A History of Anatomy (In Three Parts). The exhibit is a special collaboration of the Center for the History of Medicine, the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Harvard University’s Department of the History of Science, the Harvard Medical School Program in Medical Education, and the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. The exhibit will open at the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments on March 6, 2014 and run until December 5, 2014. Approximately 50 anatomical preparations, models, artifacts, books and images  from Center for the History of Medicine collections will be displayed.

Object conservator Nina Vinogradskaya working on Dwight-Emerton skull, Warren Anatomical Museum in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine

Object conservator Nina Vinogradskaya working on the Dwight-Emerton skull, Warren Anatomical Museum in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine

After 100 years of active teaching, the skull and foot models acquired their fair share of chips, breaks, and abrasions. The Center and the Ackerman Program on Medicine and Culture funded the conservation and partial restoration of the skull and foot. Skilled object conservator Nina Vinogradskaya carefully cleaned the models, consolidated their deteriorating paint layers, repaired breaks in the papier-mâché and plaster, and even restored large sections of loss in the skull’s maxilla and teeth. The models and Nina’s work will be prominently displayed in Body of Knowledge and at the Warren Museum and Countway Library when they return to the Harvard Medical School campus in December 2014.

Harvard Medical School’s Stephanie Dutchen authored an article on the acquisition of the Dwight-Emerton models and their move across the Medical School campus in the school’s news feed.

New artifacts donated to Warren Museum

By , August 8, 2013

Pocket field surgery kit, used in the American Civil War and found on a battlefield in 1862, Warren Anatomical Museum [WAM 21049], Francis A Countway Library of Medicine

Pocket field surgery kit, used in the American Civil War and found on a battlefield in 1862. Warren Anatomical Museum [WAM 21049], Francis A Countway Library of Medicine

The Warren Museum recently acquired two new artifacts.

R. Bryan and Drew Trainor donated a pocket surgery kit to the Museum that had been passed down through their family. The kit was found on an American Civil War battlefield in 1862 by Julius Reed of 1st Regiment of the Heavy Artillery of Connecticut. Reed gave the kit to the donor’s great-great-grandfather.

The surviving instruments in the kit are mostly made by George Tiemann & Co. and were designed for minor surgery. They include an artery forceps, a  tortoise-shell folding probe, a tortoise-shell folding curved bistoury and tenotome, a tortoise-shell folding gum lancet and tenaculum, a tortoise-shell folding curved bistoury and scalpel and a suture needle. The kit also contained a bullet from a Vanderberg Volley Gun.

Harvard Medical School Associate Professor of Medicine Peter Tishler donated a box of Eli Lilly Liver Extract #343, circa 1929, to the Museum’s collection, marking an important moment in the history of hematology as well as the history of university and industry partnerships. In 1926 Harvard physicians George Minot and William Murphy announced that feeding liver to pernicious anemia patients helped restore their health. By 1928 Minot and Murphy had collaborated with Eli Lilly to create and market Liver Extract#343 to treat the disease. Minot and Murphy, along with University of Rochester’s George Whipple, won the 1934 Noble Prize for their pernicious anemia research.

Eli Lilly box containing Liver Extract #343, dated 1929. Warren Anatomical Museum [WAM 21053], Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine

Eli Lilly box containing Liver Extract #343, dated 1929. Warren Anatomical Museum [WAM 21053], Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine

Patients were instructed to take “3 to 6 vials” of Liver Extract #343 a day, depending on the recommendations of their physicians. Each box contained 24 vials of the compound. The donated box most likely came from a former pernicious anemia patient. Of the 16 surviving vials, 15 have been emptied of their contents.

The Warren Museum is grateful to our generous donors whose gifts will benefit of future physicians, historians of science, and the curious public.

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