Blog

The programme for the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health Conference 12-15 September 2007 — focusing on environment, health and history — has just been published on-line. The meeting takes place at the Brunei Gallery in London, and there is still time to register (but of course too late to send in papers). For general […]

Today, Friday the 13th, our summer-minded readers may be interested to know that triskaidekaphobia has received some serious attention in the medical literature over the past twenty years. A search for ‘Friday 13th’ in PubMed reveals that as much as ten articles have been written so far, including three in the British Medical journal, and two in The […]

We have once already (July 2005) advertised for OEDILF (the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form), and now it’s time (summer-time) to do it again. Here’s mephistopheles‘s simple explanation of a cell membrane: The membrane designed to divide Extracellular stuff from inside Does exceedingly well At defining the cell With a border two molecules wide. Much […]

Those who would like to do history of medicine research in the UK, should note that the Wellcome Trust has made some significant changes to their History of Medicine application schemes. 1) Some applicants for Research Fellowships will now be shortlisted and interviewed before a funding decision is reached, and therefore there are only two annual deadlines for these applications, viz., 1 […]

The Institute for the History of Medicine of the Robert Bosch Foundation in Stuttgart is organising a conference on nursing history, 12-14 March, 2008. As the history of professionalization of nursing is meanwhile rather well explored, we would like to focus on the history of everyday nursing. This includes nursing practice (transfer of knowledge, conflicts between […]

… and we’re slowing down for a while. Biomedicine on Display doesn’t stop posting completely during the summer vacation, but you may have to wait longer for news.

The biosciences are not only in dialogue with the humanities and social sciences. Theologians and religious studies scholars are involved too. One of the major funding bodies for this kind of work is the John Templeton Foundation which generously supports research projects, conferences and lectures about different aspects of science and religion (read Christianity). One of their many sponsored events […]

If you happen to be in Oxford on Saturday, don’t miss The Museum of the History of Science‘s celebration of the-once-in-a-century date 07-07-07, “a day of talks, activities, tours, trails, music and film” revolving around the number 7. For example a series of seven talks: “Seven Days in the Week” by Stephen Clucas, “Seven Seas” by Elizabeth Baigent, “Seven Years […]

Eventually, the Wellcome Collection has opened after almost two years heavy reconstruction of the Wellcome Trust‘s old headquarters on Euston Rd, London. The building now contains a conference center in the basement, a commendable eating place and a medical bookstore at the ground level, followed by a huge gallery space and the expanded Wellcome Library on the following floors; and finally offices […]

A conference and PhD course titled “Telling the Past Now: Historiographies for the 21st Century” will be held 22-24 November at the University of Aarhus. “Telling the Past Now” brings together leading scholars from a variety of fields in an interdisciplinary effort to discuss the challenges, possibilities and modes of writing history today and for the […]

At the weekly staff meeting today we discussed our experiences from the ‘Archaeology-of-contemporary-biomedicine-garbage-day’ last Thursday (see earlier post with pics here). Here are some of the points that came up in the discussion: We were happily surprised by the interest and generosity that researchers and technicians at the medical faculty showed for the collection project; i.e., people were expecting us, they […]

Scenes with groups of inanimate objects and tools that come to life when the human beings turn off the light, leave the room and close the door have a long tradition in the animation movie industry (from Disney to clay movies). The San Diego based, transnational biotech company Illumina which specialises in DNA and RNA analysis has produced a […]