Just got a letter from the University of Bath librarian, who says that the National [i.e., UK] Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists is closing 31 October. That’s sad, because in the 22 years since the unit moved to Bath, it has been instrumental in securing nearly 200 scholarly archives in institutional libraries around the UK — a very important contribution to the preservation of an important part of the contemporary scientific and engineering heritage. I haven’t heard about any similar closures in other European countries, so let’s hope this is not the beginning of a broader tendency to neglect the history of contemporary science, technology and medicine.

Medgadget believes there is a good reason why their blog mainly covers medical devices and technologies coming from the United States, namely the great American healthcare system, “equipped with the latest technologies, smart doctors and clean hospitals … a system that delivers unbelievable technologies to help patients day in and day out”.

“There must be a reason”, they add, “why we almost never see anything interesting coming out of France, Greece, Spain, Italy, or most other European countries (Germany being the clear exception)”.

Medgadget asks this rhetorical question as an argument against the Obama administration’s health care plan. But besides the pros and cons of Obamacare, I wonder if the claim is really true. Is the US really the motor of medical device innovation? Do Europeans not produce any interesting medical technologies?

Historically, this is of course an outrageous claim. Brought up in technologically innovative Sweden and now living in a small country (Denmark) with a plethora of small and large medical device companies, I intuitively know it is plainly wrong. And I can easily substantiate my intuition with a lot of anecdotal evidence — Coloplast and Oticon in Denmark, Gambro, Getinge and Elekta in Sweden, just to name a few.

The combined annual production value of the Danish and Swedish medical device industries is around 90 billion DKK (~15 billion USD). In the light of a total population of around 15 million this is a pretty impressive achievement. (And note that these are countries with strong national health care systems!)

But I must confess that I don’t know if this high productivity is the result of innovations of the past. Is the innovation rate still high? A 2007 report from the Royal Institute of Technology, the Karolinska Institute and Karolinska University Hospital indicates that many of the most important Swedish innovations are 30-50 years old and that there are signs that the rate of innovation is declining. Maybe the situation is similar in Denmark? That would make Medgadget’s claim somewhat less outrageous.

But that said I believe there are more obvious reasons for why Medgadget almost only covers medical devices and technologies coming from the US, namely the fact that the editors are situated in the US, that they are thus familiar with US industrial culture, have a tendency to follow American websites, and (most importantly) cannot read the current of daily tech news published in Danish, Swedish and other European languages. In other words, Medgadget’s medical device universe is nationally myopic.

There are several kinds of cooperations between sci-med-tech museums, and I’m not particularly critical of any of them (except one). But I’m nevertheless waiting for someone to take the initiative to a SciMedTechMusGang.

I’m thinking of something analogous to the BioGang — “an informal, distributed collection of geeky life scientists who have come together to try and think of cool problems and ideas that can be solved collaboratively”. Neil Saunders characterizes a biogang as a group with “lack of respect for institutional boundaries and restrictions”.

Someone might say that sci-med-tech museum people aren’t geeky enough, or that we are not confronted with any particularly cool problems, or that the fact that we work in very stable institutions will usually make us skeptical to people of lack respect for institutional boundaries.

But that aside, I believe that the creation of new interesting future sci-med-tech museum practices— especially practices on the border between physical museums and web solutions — would benefit from a SciMedTechMusGang.

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 200 years, the early development of surgical specialities, changes in theatre design and the history of local instrument manufacturers.

It is on show at the Medical School, Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, until 29 November.

Judged from their website the exhibition concept and design looks pretty traditional — but the artefacts seem to be gorgeous.

Michael Kimmelman’s article in yesterday’s New York Times on why so few museum visitors seem to take their time to really look at things is inspirational. Not to mention the 419 readers’ comments. If you ever needed a set of arguments for the benefit of more intense looking in museums, here they are. Next question is — what can museums do to support the culture of slow looking?

(thanks to Mike for the tip)

Two months ago I praised John Harley Warner’s and Jim Edmonson’s book Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in America, 1880-1930.

As Kirsten Jungersen points out in a comment, one of our former staff members here at Medical Museion, Mikkel Jessen, wrote about dissection as a rite-of-passage in an article in the journal Bibliotek for Læger already in September 2002 (pp. 260-69).

Mikkel’s is a short but excellent article on four different ways in which dissection has been displayed: Rembrandt’s ‘De anatomishe les’, Hogarth’s ‘The four stages of cruelty’, Simonet’s ‘La autopsia’, and a photo of a staged dissection at the Royal Academy of Surgeons in Copenhagen, where the medical students are trained in ‘the necessary kind of inhumanity’.

What triggered this post, however, is that Mikkel’s article is yet another example of how the work of young scholars in small countries remain largely unread outside the small national circle (Bibliotek for Læger publishes in Danish only). Had Mikkel written his piece in English it would have been recognized several years before John and Jim published their excellent book. I mean, he could have been recruited as a PhD-student at Yale, where John works, or whatever.

So Mikkel’s article reminds me how many good opportunities are lost because too many young Danish (Swedish, Norwegian, Estonian etc.) scholars restrict themselves to writing in their mothertongues. Use the current lingua franca, please!

Our outreach officer, Bente Vinge Pedersen, has transformed Medical Museion’s newly opened temporary exhibition Split + Splice: Fragments From the Age of Biomedicine into a web exhibition.

See it here (for English, press ‘in English’ in the upper right corner).

But remember — the web version is a poor substitute for the real stuff.

Anastasia Filippoupoliti at the Democritus University of Thrace, Greece
(afilipp@gmail.com) and Graeme Farnell at MuseumsEtc, UK (graeme@museumsetc.com) are soliciting papers for a forthcoming book that will explore:

• the processes involved in developing new science exhibitions in and for museums
• the issues involved in transforming scientific ideas or events into exhibitions
• the challenges faced by museums in communicating science to a wide audience.

Much has been written about the difficulties of disseminating science to the public through a variety of new and traditional media. It is, indeed, a complex subject to tackle in the exhibition space, yet a challenging and multidimensional one.

How best to understand the process of working from scientific data to the ideas-based exhibition? What exactly is lost during the transformation of factual information into an exhibition environment? And more importantly, how can the exhibition work most effectively as a tool for narrating science, its past and present?

They welcome a range of submissions including, but not limited to, the following issues/themes:

• both theoretical perspectives and case studies relating to science exhibitions
• exhibition design for science: problems and opportunities
• successful design techniques and approaches in relation to science displays
• science communication in the museum: interpretation issues
• learning activities and science collections
• developing learning resources for science exhibitions
• object stories and science learning
• exhibitions interpreting the history of science

Please submit an abstract (up to 400 words) and a biographical note (up to 250 words) by email to both editors above. Deadline for abstracts and bio 30 September 2009. Selection for inclusion 30 October 2009.

Excellent comment on the alleged Chinese ‘tradition’ for organ trafficking:

Organ Donor Dolls by David Foox, who created these designer vinyl toys in order to bring awareness to the issue of organ transplant and donation. Currently China undertakes around 10,000 organ transplants per year (about the same as the US).

(Thanks to Vanessa for the tip)

Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen, invites applications for a 3-year PhD/2-year postdoc position in the projekt ‘Communicative barriers between biomedical research and everyday health care in a museum context’:

The increasingly important role of biomedical knowledge and advanced medical technologies in Western health systems is a challenge to the public communication of and engagement with medicine, especially in science, technology and medical museums. This project aims to develop the understanding of the means through which esoteric biomedical and medico-technological knowledge and practices can be communicated to lay people in a museum exhibition context, with special emphasis on the use of material and visual cultural practices. The project is expected to help construct new physical and web-based exhibition and display practices for science, technology and medical museums.

Medical Museion is an integrated research and museum institution that focuses on the public engagement with the contemporary biomedical sciences. We are especially interested in the interface between biomedicine, material and visual studies, museum studies and studies of the participatory web. See www.corporeality.net/museion.

The salary level for a PhD-candidate in Denmark is 295,000 DKK (approx. € 39,600/ £ 34,000) p.a.

The salary levels for a postdoc is 370,000 DKK (approx. € 50,000 / £ 42,000) p.a. upwards (depending on earlier experience).

The position is part of a larger cross-faculty research program ‘Dissemination and Innovation: Health in Everyday Life’, which in turn is part of a newly established Center for Healthy Aging at the University of Copenhagen (see http://healthyaging.ku.dk).

Applications for the postdoc level shall include CV and publication list; short description of background and motivation for choosing this research project; project description (max. 5 pages); and copies of degrees.

Application for the PhD level shall include a CV; short project proposal (max. 2 pages); academic transcripts; and copies of degrees.

Deadline is 1 September, 2009 at 14.00. Applications must be submitted electronically and in print (4 copies) to:

Assoc. prof. Lene Otto
Section of Ethnology, the SAXO Institute
Faculty of Humanities, Njalsgade 80
DK-2300 Copenhagen, Denmark
lotto@hum.ku.dk

Further information can be obtained from Professor Thomas Söderqvist, ths@sund.ku.dk, or +45 2875 3801.

For the full text of the announcement in context, see http://healthyaging.ku.dk/vacancies.