news

While eagerly waiting for Jonas’ reports on medical museums in southern France, I’m reading the news about the recently opened exhibition ‘Delicate Operation: the History of Surgery in Tayside’ at the Tayside Medical History Museum in Dundee. The exhibition traces the history of surgery in the Dundee region, exploring the careers of some of the region’s most eminent surgeons of the past […]

Here are some pictures from the opening of Split and Splice last Thursday, 11 June — parts of the audience, the opening speakers and lots of invited guests in the exhibition rooms and the reception tent afterwards:                                                      […]

Last Thursday, we opened our new temporary exhibition Split and Splice: Fragments From the Age of Biomedicine (Danish: Del and Hel: Brudstykker fra biomedicinens tid) here at Medical Museion. In the next couple of days, we will hopefully be able to upload some images from the opening (depends on when Benny has sorted out the […]

The big news in US health politics this week was that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Salmonella as a food stuff. Hundreds of food manufacturers have been busy reorienting the production lines for this fabulous new market possibility, for example these brand new Salmonella-enriched cereals: Read more in The Onion here.

Tilli Tansey — historian of contemporary medicine, a specialist in oral history, and the prime mover behind the famous Wellcome Witness Seminar series — will give her inaugural lecture as newly appointed professor at UCL on Monday 9 March 2009 @ 6.30 pm (Ambrose Fleming Lecture Theatre, London). The lecture is titled ‘Models and Mechanisms: Aspects of Biomedicine at UCL in […]

Just received a reminder about nominations for this year’s Dibner Award for Excellence in Museum Exhibits. The award was established in 1985 to recognize excellence in museums and museum exhibits that interpret the history of technology, industry, and engineering to the general public. The jury pays special attention to good design and production, of course, but also to whether the […]

Over and over again I’ve praised Derek Lowe’s blog ‘In the Pipeline’ (see for example here). Derek delivers almost daily insights into the world of drug research, from chemical lab work routines to Big Pharma management and economics. Yesterday’s post (‘A cure for the common cold …’) is a fine comment on the problematic quality of pharma communication on the mass media. I quote […]

In today’s online issue of Computerworld, Mike Elgan makes a convincing argument for the break-through of the e-book. What will propel the so far failing e-book into a strong market position, he believes, is Amazon’s awaited release of the Kindle platform on mobiles. Elgan’s six arguments, especially that of the deepening recession and the mobile habits of youngsters, are compelling. […]

Artist Phillip Warnell (see earlier posts about his movie ‘The Girl With X-Ray Eyes’ and his pill camera installation) is just now visiting Medical Museion, where he is researching possibilities for a number of visually and conceptually driven projects. Firstly, Phillip is guest-editing an issue of The Performance Research Journal on the theme ‘Transplantations’ (see more here). As well as inviting contributions from an […]

The European Association for the History of Medicine and Health (EAHMH) invites submissions for its bi-annual meeting in Heidelberg, 3-6 September 2009. The general theme of the meeting — “Global Developments and Local Specificities in the History of Medicine and Health” — includes issues like: the impact of globalisation processes (political, economic, means of communication etc.) on local […]

University Museums and Collections Journal is a new, peer-reviewed, on-line journal (ISSN 2071-7229) published by the International Committee for University Museums and Collections (UMAC; part of ICOM). Editors are Sally MacDonald, University College London; Nathalie Nyst, Université Libre de Bruxelles; and Cornelia Weber, Humboldt University of Berlin. The journal website looks pretty raw at the moment, but it will probably improve soonish. UMCJ […]

Dutch designer Joep Van Lieshout’s website displays quite a few interesting works of interest for medical museum designers, like CasAnus (2007), a house which is (reasonably anatomically accurately) shaped like the human digestive system. It’s made to function as a small hotel, with bed- and bathroom. I thought it would be great to enter it through the inflated anus, but there seems to be a door behind the […]