|
|
|
||
| Line 7: | Line 7: | ||
==History== |
==History== |
||
Many medical museums have links with medical training providers, such as medical schools or colleges, and often their collections were used in medical education. They were often private, "granting access only to students and practising physicians".<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/photos/7-unusual-medical-museums/weird-science|title=7 unusual medical museums|newspaper=MNN - Mother Nature Network|access-date=2016-11-02}}</ref> |
Many medical museums have links with medical training providers, such as medical schools or colleges, and often their collections were used in medical education. They were often private, "granting access only to students and practising physicians".<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/photos/7-unusual-medical-museums/weird-science|title=7 unusual medical museums|newspaper=MNN - Mother Nature Network|access-date=2016-11-02}}</ref> |
||
The starting point of all considerations on the historical development of modern museums is contained in the solution of two problems; collecting problem and institutionalization problem. |
|||
== Collecting == |
|||
A collection is a precondition for the existence of a museum, and the collection and preservation of certain objects is a precondition for the creation of a collection. In this sense, collecting has often been the basis on which significant collections have been formed throughout history. Thus, e.g. collecting a wide variety of objects, from works of art, through scientific instruments, technical inventions to natural rarities, was closely linked to Roman conquests, which ... {{quote | After the conquest of Greece and Asia in the second century BC, and great interest for the Greek cultural heritage that was transferred to Rome resulted in the creation of not only private but also public collections, libraries and botanical gardens. <ref name="JelenaJS"> Jelena Jovanovic Simic, '' Musealizing the History of Medicine in Serbia '' - PhD thesis, University of Belgrade, 2015. p. 22 </ref> |}} |
|||
In addition to collecting rare and marvelous things, collectors also collected medical items, and so many artifacts were found not only in collectors' collections of doctors and pharmacists, but, more or less sporadically, in many offices, churches and even individual homes. This primarily refers to objects that have been attributed to magical, religious and therapeutic properties (relics, bezoars, corals and objects of Narwhal tusk), etc. |
|||
Collections, which at the beginning of the development of human civilization was religious medicine, as one of the earliest represented forms of healing, in Mesopotamia in ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, etc., the first collectors' collections were formed even before the emergence of Renaissance cabinets of rarity - considered the forerunners of modern museums. <ref name = "JelenaJS" /> |
|||
Institutionalization |
|||
Although collecting alone does not always and necessarily lead to its institutionalization, on the basis of current knowledge, studies on presenting the museum's past, these problems are interconnected. <Ref name = "JelenaJS" /> |
|||
Accordingly, the museums of medicine have found out of individuals' preferences for collecting, which has most often been the basis on which significant medical collections have been formed throughout history, and subsequently the medical museums we know today. |
|||
==Ethical debates== |
==Ethical debates== |
||
Medical museums are institutions that store and exhibit objects of historical, scientific, artistic, or cultural interest that have a link to medicine or health. Displays often include models, instruments, books and manuscripts, as well as medical images and the technologies used to capture them (such as X-ray machines).[1] Some museums reflect specialized medical areas, such as dentistry, nursing, this history of specific hospitals, and historic pharmacies.
Professional organisations of medical museums include the Medical Museums Association, who publish The Watermark (the quarterly publication of the Archivists and Librarians in the History of the Health Sciences),[2] and The London Museums of Health & Medicine.[3]
Many medical museums have links with medical training providers, such as medical schools or colleges, and often their collections were used in medical education. They were often private, "granting access only to students and practising physicians".[4]
The starting point of all considerations on the historical development of modern museums is contained in the solution of two problems; collecting problem and institutionalization problem.
A collection is a precondition for the existence of a museum, and the collection and preservation of certain objects is a precondition for the creation of a collection. In this sense, collecting has often been the basis on which significant collections have been formed throughout history. Thus, e.g. collecting a wide variety of objects, from works of art, through scientific instruments, technical inventions to natural rarities, was closely linked to Roman conquests, which ...
After the conquest of Greece and Asia in the second century BC, and great interest for the Greek cultural heritage that was transferred to Rome resulted in the creation of not only private but also public collections, libraries and botanical gardens. [5]
In addition to collecting rare and marvelous things, collectors also collected medical items, and so many artifacts were found not only in collectors' collections of doctors and pharmacists, but, more or less sporadically, in many offices, churches and even individual homes. This primarily refers to objects that have been attributed to magical, religious and therapeutic properties (relics, bezoars, corals and objects of Narwhal tusk), etc.
Collections, which at the beginning of the development of human civilization was religious medicine, as one of the earliest represented forms of healing, in Mesopotamia in ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, etc., the first collectors' collections were formed even before the emergence of Renaissance cabinets of rarity - considered the forerunners of modern museums. [5] Institutionalization Although collecting alone does not always and necessarily lead to its institutionalization, on the basis of current knowledge, studies on presenting the museum's past, these problems are interconnected. [5]
Accordingly, the museums of medicine have found out of individuals' preferences for collecting, which has most often been the basis on which significant medical collections have been formed throughout history, and subsequently the medical museums we know today.
High profile medical exhibitions such as Body Worlds and Bodies: The Exhibition, have spurred debate as to the ethics and value of such displays. Historians such as Samuel Alberti have sought to place this "tension between education and sensation" into a broader historical context of freak shows and anatomy displays.[6]
Projects such as Exceptional & Extraordinary have engaged with such controversy and used it as a platform to "examine our attitudes towards difference and aim to stimulate debate around the implications of a society that values some lives more than others."[7]
