medical scientific instruments

Recently I announced a quiz to get more information about a historical syringe that a couple of friends had bought for me. This quiz was far from easy since we had no information on the syringe whatsoever. Medical Museion’s guest researcher and former chief physician Sven Erik Hansen was the first to make a suggestion on our Danish blog — he thought it might […]

Medical museums are usually full with old and new medical science instruments. But they tend to be kept in storage because it is difficult to display them in a meaningful way. It’s much easier to put moulages, pickled organs and surgical instruments on show. Medical science instruments usually need truckloads of description and contextualisaton to […]

A couple of friends who know about my interest in the history of disease recently gave me a historical syringe as a gift. They bought it in a flea marked, so unfortunately I don’t have any information about its provenance. Ion Meyer (conservator and head of collections here at the Medical Museion) suggests, with some help from catalogues of medical equipment, that it […]

The 15th biannual conference of the European Association of Museums for the History of Medical Sciences (EAMHMS) will be held at the University of Copenhagen, 16–18 September, 2010. This year’s conference focuses on the challenge to museums posed by contemporary developments in medical science and technology. The image of medicine that emerges from most museum […]

One of the challenges for a museum of medicine intent on collecting recent and contemporary medical artefacts is to get an overview of the historical development of medical instruments, medical technological systems and the medical device industry. Trade shows and their catalogues (published or online) are excellent sources. But memoirs and reminiscences of people who have been […]

The creative editors or Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science (see earlier mention here) are planning a focused discussion section on scientific instruments in a forthcoming issue of the journal. With the “practical turn” in history and philosophy of science came a renewed interest in scientific instruments. Although they have […]