Historians of medicine have largely eschewed notions like ‘progress’ and ‘advance’ in medical science and medical practice in favour of more historicist and relativistic understandings. But for medical practitioners and patients alike, the notions of ‘progress’ and ‘advance’ usually make more sense. Some philosophers too think it is time to refocus on the idea of ‘medical progress’.

A forthcoming conference at the University of Bristol (13-15 April 2010) will address the following topics:

To identify progressive trends in current medicine, we need to understand the nature of historical progress more clearly. Has medicine always progressed? If not when did it begin to progress, and why? Historians have long debated these questions. Most recently, David Wootton’s controversial argument that medicine only started to progress in the late 19th century, has renewed interest on the nature of progress in medicine. These questions invite the following further questions.

We need to understand how progress in medicine should be measured. The range and effectiveness of available interventions is an obvious metric, but there has been considerable recent interest in preventive medicine. What are the limits of preventive medicine? Are preventive strategies truly medical, or an admission of the limitations of medicine?

There is a need for greater clarity on the nature of health and disease, if we are to understand progress in promoting the former and treating the latter. Are these concepts biostatistical (as Boorse argues) or partly normative (e.g. Kingma)? What role do social pressures, such as conceptions of acceptable weight, height or sexual characteristics play in shaping the distinction between medically necessary and elective interventions? Is health just the absence of disease, or does modern medicine need to acknowledge a more inclusive notion of well-being?

There is a particular need for greater clarity on these questions as they apply to psychological disorders and the various psychiatric, psycho-therapeutic, and psycho-pharmacological interventions designed to deal with them. The distinction between health and disease is especially unclear in the psychological case, and the history of medicine shows it to be especially fluid.

It is necessary to differentiate the perspectives of medical scientists, clinicians, and patients concerning the nature of progress, and related notions such as a successful treatment outcome. The most dramatic illustration of this need is perhaps the recent controversy on voluntary euthanasia, where Hippocratic principles appear to be at odds with patients’ own desires.

To further medical progress, it is necessary to identify its causes. Is progress driven by advances in basic physiological science? Or by clinical need? By some combination of these—in which case how do they interact?

Insofar as medical knowledge progresses, is there a single, unified methodology for generating that progress, e.g. ‘the scientific method as applied to medicine’? Recent debates concerning Evidence Based Medicine and randomized controlled trials have highlighted the need for clear answers to this question. Is the RCT a “gold standard”, or are there a number of ways of coming to know in medicine? Are these ways incommensurable, or does can a “hierarchy of evidence” (such as that advocated by proponents of EBM) provide a clinically useful basis of comparison and ranking?

The conference will encourage the involvement of methodologically interested medical professionals, philosophers of medicine and historians of medicine. More here.

We here at Medical Museion are always on the outlook for new and interesting institutional experiments to learn from. This week’s announcement of up-coming events at OBSERVATORY is inspirational:

The Culture of Curiosity is everywhere these days. Wunderkammern appear in popular art, cutting-edge fashion, film, books and museum exhibitions. This aesthetic has proved surprisingly durable and popular for over 600 years. From temple to home to museum, the Culture of Curiosity continues to exert an irresistible pull on our collective psyches, and it shows no signs of falling from favor any time soon.

I guess our (formerly) own Camilla — who has specialised in how the practice of the Wunderkammer can be transferred to present-day museum practice — couldn’t have said it better. (By the way, her book on Ole Worm’s Wunderkammer, Genstandsfortællinger, is about to be published in Danish…).

So here is OBSERVATORY’s current event programme:

• Friday, November 13th: The Culture of Curiosity – with Evan Michelson, co-owner of Obscura Antiques & Oddities(AKA “The Morbid Anatomy Gift Shop”).
• Sunday, November 15th: Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius – with Colin Dickey.
• Saturday, November 21st: Opening of OBSERVATORY’s next art exhibition, ALL SORTS OF REMEDIES: work by Herbert Pfostl.
• Friday, December 4th: Occult America – a talk by Mitch Horowitz.
• Thursday, December 10th: Exquisite Corpses – Illustrated Lecture and Artifacts from the Mütter Museum with the museum’s director, Robert D. Hicks.
• Friday, December 18th: Art as Magic and the Cold Hard Facts of Life: Herbert Pfostl in conversation with James Walsh.

Wish I lived in Brooklyn, NY. For CO2-reasons, I wouldn’t even think of flying over there. For more information, see www.observatoryroom.org

Guess what’s currently the most popular history of medicine topic among American science readers. Plague? Noops — it’s dissection and body parts: John Harley Warner and Jim Edmonson’s beautifully illustrated Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930 (see earlier post about the book here) is right now among Amazon’s Top Ten Best Books of Science (in Science Editor’s Picks). Congrats, dear colleagues!

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 become a nexus for worries about empiricism and standards of evidence, instruments only rarely feature as primary sources for scholars in the history and philosophy of science. Even historians of technology have been accused of underutilizing the evidence embodied in material objects (Corn 1996). The fundamental questions are not settled. First, there is no general agreement as to what counts as a scientific instrument: Are simulations instruments? Can people function as instruments? Do economic or sociological instruments operate in the same way as material instruments? There is a second, related debate about how scientific instruments work: Is there a unified account? Do instruments produce knowledge or produce effects? Do they extend our senses (Humphreys 2006) or embody knowledge (Baird 2006)? Third, HPS has seen a variety of approaches to fitting instruments into broader historical and philosophical questions about scientific communities and practices: Shapin and Schaffer (1985) relate instruments to the scientific life, Galison (1997) gives instrument makers equal footing with theorists and experimentalists within the trading zone of scientific discourse, and Hacking (1983) elevates instruments to central importance in the realism-antirealism debate. Finally, it seems plausible that there are methodological concerns specific to scientific instruments: What lessons can we draw from anthropology, material culture, and other allied fields?

I hardly need to emphasise that many instruments for medical and biomedical research fall into the category of ‘scientific instruments’ — so, if you’ve got a good idea for a 1000-3000 word essay, don’t hesitate to send your submission before 26 February 2010.

For more details, see http://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/SpontaneousGenerations

University of Copenhagen has several museums (among them Medical Museion). And our university isn’t alone. Many, if not most, universities around the world have their own museums, or at least historical collections. There are in fact so many of the kind that the international museum council (ICOM) has set up a subcommittee specifically for university museums and collections (UMAC).

What defines a ‘university museum’? The only criterion for membership in UMAC seems to be that the museum shall be part of a university organisation — contentwise it can be about almost anything related to the university. So from UMAC’s point of view, a ‘university museum’ is primarily defined by ownership.

Fair enough, but otherwise, when thinking of ‘university museums’ most people probably think in terms of content — i.e, ‘university museums’ are institutions that collect and display the history of the university. (In the same way that we think of an ‘army museum’ as one that collects and displays artefacts from the history of the armed forces, irrespective of whether it is owned by the army or by the city.) A ‘university museum’ has all kinds of stuff from good old university days, maybe even the university’s archive and image collection.

However, in our internal discussions here at Medical Museion I have often thought of ‘university museum’ in a third sense, namely as a museum that functions as a university unit. And this in turn has everything to do with criteria for success.

The usual basic success criterion for museums is the popularity of their exhibitions and the number of visitors; the success criterion for university units on the other hand is the quality and originality of their research.

What distinguishes a ‘university museum’ in this third sense is that its criterion for success lies closer to that of the university than that of the ordinary museum. It’s the quality and originality of its research, curatorship and exhibition work that defines it as a ‘university museums’.

Of course, university museums want people (in large numbers) to see their exhibitions. But that aside, the basic criterion for success is whether their research and curatorial work contributes to new museological agendas or not. Better provide original solutions to small but fundamental display problems than build big and popular exhibitions.

In other words, in contrast to museums in general, which are institutions with a broad, popular appeal, ‘university museums’ are basically elitist institutions.

Two years ago, in January 2007, our own Susanne Bauer co-organised a meeting titled ‘Contested Categories’ here at Medical Museion. Now, a proceedings volume with the same title, co-edited by Susanne and Ayo Wahlberg (formerly BIOS, LSE), has been published by Ashgate. From the back cover:

Contested Categories presents a series of empirical studies that engage with the often shifting and day-to-day realities of life sciences categories. In doing so, it shows how such categories remain contested and dynamic, and that the boundaries they create are subject to negotiation as well as re-configuration and re-stabilization processes.

Organized around the themes of biological substances and objects, personhood and the genomic body and the creation and dispersion of knowledge, each of the volume’s chapters reveals the elusive nature of fixity with regard to life science categories. With contributions from an international team of scholars, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the social, legal, policy and ethical implications of science and technology and the life sciences.

Contents:
Foreword, Gísli Pálsson
Introduction: categories of life, Ayo Wahlberg and Susanne Bauer
Human and object, subject and thing: the troublesome nature of human biological material (HBM), Cecily Palmer
Substances of the body: blood, genes, and personhood, Malin Noem Ravn
Governing risk through informed choice: prenatal testing in welfarist maternity care, Mianna Meskus
Visualising and calculating life: matters of fact in the context of prenatal risk assessment, Nete Schwennesen and Lene Koch
Serious disease as kinds of living, Ayo Wahlberg
From society to molecule and back: the contested scale of public health science, Susanne Bauer
Life beyond information: contesting life and the body in history and molecular biology, Adam Bencard
The place and space of research work: studying control in a bioscience laboratory, Amrita Mishra
Almost human: scientific and popular strategies for making sense of ”missing links”, Murray Goulden and Andrew S. Balmer

Nikolas Rose and Margaret Lock have written the blurbs:
‘The vital landmarks that humans use to negotiate their existence as living beings are under challenge by bioscientific knowledge and biomedical technique, and an unstable mixture of venture capital and human desire. What is alive? Who is normal? When is sadness a disease? What is natural and what is artifice? Where does my body end and my prosthetics begin? Who can own what when it comes to human bodies? – These questions are not merely philosophically profound but they shape the ways in which human life is managed today. This stimulating collection brings together the reflections of a new generation of scholars, and clearly demonstrates the crucial role that empirical investigation can play in helping us grasp the challenges posed by this widespread contest of the categories we live by.’ (Rose)

‘This path-breaking collection takes the social analysis of emerging practices in the life sciences in an important new direction. Focusing on the labeling and classification of biomedical objects and entities, contributors to this volume make abundantly evident the extent to which the significance and meanings attributed to such entities are transformed and reworked as they travel among laboratory scientists, clinicians, policy makers, and the public. Classificatory practices are never merely “technical” in kind, but exhibit a social life of their own. This book draws readers into a world of boundary making in the life sciences that demands a generous pause for considered reflection.’ (Lock)

The Hunterian Museum in Glasgow is looking for a new director. More here.

The three first weeks in November, we are holding three internal staff meetings here at Medical Museion to discuss our plans for the next three years, 2010-2012 — with respect to research, acquisitions, collection management, exhibitions and web-based outreach. Starting Tuesday, then again next Monday and next Monday again. Here are five headings for the discussions:

1. Focus outreach on the core audience = Danish health system
2. Focus on small, experimental physical exhibitions
3. Stronger presence on the social web
4. Encourage participatory museum practices – a public experimental museum
5. Research focus on the subjective, material, and aesthetic aspects of the participatory museum

I’ll be back with details

A “team of pretty cool people” in Chicago are twittering and blogging under the name ‘Museumist’. “Putting the Museum World on Display” is their motto. We’ll twue them for infringing our precious trade marks (Museionist on Twitter and Biomedicine on Display) 🙂

… who have run a succesful and well-visited blog for a year now and

waxed lyrical about the Library’s collections in the areas of cataloguing and digitisation projects, new accessions, and new discoveries about existing items in the collections; bragged about the use of Library material in the media, news topics about the Library’s activities, and events and workshops going on at the Library or involving Library staff, or pontificated to the wider world about so many other areas of relevance to the Library and the History of Medicine that [they] can’t possibly list them all here.

That’s the spirit!