tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9673623233214803252024-02-20T15:42:50.549+00:00Wellcome LibraryWellcome Library. Collections of books, manuscripts, archives, films and pictures on the history of medicine from the earliest times to the present day.Christy Henshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13179015500410216822noreply@blogger.comBlogger949125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-7347284950312297122012-11-20T10:17:00.001+00:002012-11-20T10:17:37.692+00:00The Wellcome Library website is changing…On Wednesday, 21st November, visitors to the Wellcome Library website
will notice that we’ve made some changes. We’ve given the whole site an
overhaul, with new branding, a streamlined new design and a lot of new
functionality. The Library blog will be fully integrated with the site,
and we’ve made the site responsive so that it should display clearly
regardless of whether you’re looking at it from a desktop PC, a tablet
or a phone.<br />
<br />
We’ve also taken the opportunity to cut out a lot of
out-of-date content (like most websites, we’d been good at adding stuff
over the years, not so good at taking stuff away). We're focusing on
making it easier to search everything from one place, using the search
box that appears on the home page and in the top right hand corner
throughout the site. But if you prefer them, you can still use the old
library and archive catalogues.<br />
<br />
Why the change? Well, over the
past two years we’ve been working on a project to digitise our holdings,
starting with some of our key collections relating to the history of
genetics. We’ll be launching this pilot project, called Foundations of
Modern Genetics, in March 2013. There will be about a million pages of
archives and over a thousand books available to view online. We hope
this will be the start of an on-going programme that will add about 30
million pages of archives, manuscripts, books and ephemera to our
website by 2020.<br />
<br />
In order to make it easy to view, read, save and
download this material we’ve built a new player, which displays all of
the different content types we’ve digitised (books, archives, artworks
and moving image and sound files). All of this has been done by our
in-house team, with the support of three companies: <a data-mce-href="http://clearleft.com/" href="http://clearleft.com/" target="_blank" title="Clearleft">Clearleft</a>, who’ve led the user experience and design; <a data-mce-href="http://www.digirati.co.uk/" href="http://www.digirati.co.uk/" target="_blank" title="Digirati">Digirati</a>, who actually built the site and the player for us; and <a data-mce-href="http://www.iii.com/" href="http://www.iii.com/" target="_blank" title="Innovative Interfaces Inc.">Innovative Interfaces Inc.</a>, who supply our library management and search systems.<br />
<br />
We
hope that you like what we’ve done, and that you find it easy to use
(and do tell us if this is the case). And despite all of our best
efforts, we are sure that there will be some things that you don’t like,
or which don’t work quite as they should, or which could just be
improved a bit: tell us about these too, so that we can keep on
improving the site for you. Finally, if things go a bit wonky from time
to time over the next month or so, bear with us: we’ve added a lot of
new hardware behind the scenes and despite all the testing we’ve done,
there’s nothing like running an engine hard for the first time to show
up where it needs tuning.<br />
<br />
Author: Dr Simon Chaplin, Head of Wellcome Library Jenn Phillips-Bacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12189410353577451796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-49470485369690320832012-11-17T15:18:00.000+00:002012-11-17T15:18:16.783+00:00Blog and website update<span id="internal-source-marker_0.9439019219644756" style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Update
your bookmarks and blog rolls, and redirect your RSS reader - our blog
is moving! After four years and more than 900 blog posts on Blogger, our
blog and its entire archive will be absorbed into a new Wellcome
Library website. </span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibfp8mYOcf8h948flMzKDBBATgfAgyjHvXYvxX-1Ckxp4STkfxy9UsMr_rV-vt02RxecomXjR7knakXf4LrJNy82KYGN-aMuWC9QU7dbsIF2p9kzzCVmQ_GOxTCzR36d9DOfHCwKju7vw/s1600/muybridge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibfp8mYOcf8h948flMzKDBBATgfAgyjHvXYvxX-1Ckxp4STkfxy9UsMr_rV-vt02RxecomXjR7knakXf4LrJNy82KYGN-aMuWC9QU7dbsIF2p9kzzCVmQ_GOxTCzR36d9DOfHCwKju7vw/s320/muybridge.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Between
now and the week of 19th November, the blog will be given a minimal
makeover while we put the finishing touches on the new site. During that
week, should everything go according to plan, you’ll see a new design
as well as some excellent new features developed as part of our
<a href="http://libraryblog.wellcome.ac.uk/libraryblog/label/digitisation/">digitisation programme</a></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Stay tuned. Thanks go out again to everyone who has responded to our
website surveys and taken part in the many online and in-person tests.
We hope you’ll like what you see -- and if not, we hope you tell us so! </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In the meantime, make sure you don’t miss a single blog post :</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Our new address: </span><a href="http://libraryblog.wellcome.ac.uk/libraryblog"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">http://libraryblog.wellcome.ac.uk/libraryblog</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Subscribe to RSS: </span><a href="http://libraryblog.wellcome.ac.uk/libraryblog/feed/rss/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">http://libraryblog.wellcome.ac.uk/libraryblog/feed/rss/</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>Jenn Phillips-Bacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12189410353577451796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-11605996470884547132012-11-13T17:42:00.000+00:002012-11-13T17:44:51.614+00:00Wellcome Collection Development: drop-in dates for your diaries <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_HRMa_Yg9Mg/UKEYKdRlVxI/AAAAAAAAAQw/PRJBgpmNkPA/s1600/listening.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="336" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_HRMa_Yg9Mg/UKEYKdRlVxI/AAAAAAAAAQw/PRJBgpmNkPA/s400/listening.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Thanks to everyone who has been in touch over the past fortnight with your thoughts on <a href="http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-office/Press-releases/2012/WTP040524.htm" target="_blank">our redevelopment plans</a>. <br />
<br />
We can now confirm the dates and times of our drop-in sessions being held here in the Wellcome Library.
<br />
<br />
We’ve tried to offer a mix of times to give you an opportunity to come in and have an informal chat about the plans with Library staff. <br />
<br />
There is no need to book, and we hope to see you at one of the sessions which will be held in the Rare Materials Viewing Room upstairs in the Library:
<br />
<br />
Monday 26 November 13.00-14.00 <br />
Tuesday 27 November, 13.00-14.00<br />
Wednesday 28 November, 13.00-14.00
<br />
<br />
Thursday 29 November, 18.00-19.00
<br />
<br />
Saturday 8 December, 14.00-15.00
<br />
<br />
We fully appreciate that these times may not work for you, or that you may be many miles away. We would still very much like to hear from you. If you have any questions, thoughts or concerns about the plans, please do <a href="mailto:p.harkins@wellcome.ac.uk" target="_blank">get in touch</a>.
<br />
<br />
Dr Simon Chaplin
<br />
Head of the Wellcome Library
Phoebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13857419137985859981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-75251428751555682222012-11-12T12:24:00.004+00:002012-11-12T12:24:42.846+00:00Recovering the women in science
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/ixbin/hixclient.exe?MIROPAC=L0024503" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" rea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEGNT83d2YHPraZWycH-e0_uGlfXY-6sWwEiXzIA8bLhPLXPyGjSlq4Wl7ER4hbxP8pCeuzRI8sexjyADhokx02GMvXxuibF61bK9AA0CpqKIw5CTicoic56JiRCWbbFZlGTXE3Qf6mb0/s320/fell+at+bench.jpg" width="227" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dame Honor Fell at the Strangeways Laboratory</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There has recently been increasing interest in recovering the history of women in science, perhaps as the result of the desire to recruit more women into studying STEM subjects. The Royal Society recently held a group <a href="http://royalsociety.org/events/2012/wikipedia-workshop/">'Edit-a-thon'</a>, to improve Wikipedia articles about women in science, in connection with <a href="http://findingada.com/">Ada Lovelace Day</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On Saturday 10th November the Midlands Region of the <a href="http://www.womenshistorynetwork.org/index.html">Women's History Network</a> held a very well-attended day conference on 'Women in Science' at the University of Worcester, to which I was invited as a keynote speaker. I reprised some of the material presented in my <a href="http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/21716753">George Hay Lecture</a>, 'Invisible Women: the scientists people don't see' to provide a general overview of the long history of women's involvement in scientific endeavours and the reasons why their contributions have tended to be overlooked.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The theme of the invisibility of women's work was continued in Sally Horrocks' paper on 'Gender, Science and the State: British Government Research Laboratories from World War II to the 1960s’, in which she combined analysis of statistics from government reports with material from the <a href="http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/oralhist/oralhist.html">Oral History of British Science</a> to present a nuanced picture of women working in the highly bureaucratic structures of government departments. She found that while some individual women were perceived as high-powered and sometimes scary colleagues, male interviewees also alluded to the 'girls' who worked on a range of necessary support activities and were almost perceived as part of the lab equipment, though she also noted a change over time towards encouraging them to take up educational opportunities and advance their careers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lively informal discussions took place over lunch before we returned to the lecture theatre for the afternoon keynote by Dr Ruth Watts, 'A “few competent women”: women, education and medical opportunities in Birmingham, England, in the late nineteenth century’, which underlined the importance of looking at particular local situations and doing individual case-studies. The local medical culture in Birmingham, and a provincial elite strongly embedded in the relatively egalitarian beliefs of Unitarianism and the Society of Friends, meant an unusual sympathy for at least exceptional women's right to study and practice medicine, and the very early appointment of women doctors to posts in local hospitals. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whitney Wood, of the University of Waterloo, Canada, gave an illuminating paper on the ideas of medical science about women's bodies as revealed in advice literature relating to childbirth circulating in Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Julie Hipperson, of Imperial College, concluded the conference with ‘Vets First, Women
Second? The Society of Women Veterinary Surgeons in Britain, 1941-1990’. Women veterinary surgeons were anxious to be considered primarily as qualified professionals, even though there were significant gender-related elements to their position: for example, their employment was mainly in the less prestigious field of small animals (pets) rather than farm animals or horses. The increasing proportion of women in the profession tends to reflect the declining importance of agricultural practice compared to that involving domestic companions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This was an excellent day's conference. While improving the visibility of women working in several scientific fields and in unexpected place in the past, it also suggested that there is much fascinating future work to be done in this area.</span><br />
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Lesley Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05646951940849882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-90884446099085408682012-11-09T13:52:00.000+00:002012-11-09T13:53:20.597+00:00History of Pre-Modern Medicine Seminar Series, 2012-13<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/image/L0000124.html"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCJZnYCMY8Mbd4420sW76V97x-Yuvr1AIgu1nyWrkUCmw04-HYblbOntZ9cCEQoM25nVT7nRac7btpPNMThVLbWI1W6x4lC-1_MEtyYssw9SII-MVUQYKiLrl9xBv0iY0L2ihBMcyu4j29/s320/Anatomicalimageforseminarseries.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
A new academic seminar series organised by a group of historians of medicine based at London universities and hosted by the Wellcome Library will start to meet in 2012-13.<br />
<br />
The series will be focused on pre-modern medicine, which we take to cover European and non-European history before the 20th century (antiquity, medieval and early modern history, some elements of 19th-century medicine). The seminars are open to all.<br />
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<b><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></b>
<b><span lang="EN-US">Programme for 2012-13</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<b>2012</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">20 November - <a href="https://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/history/staff/barry/">Jonathan Barry</a> & <a href="http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/history/staff/elmer/">Peter Elmer</a> (both <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Exeter</st1:placename></st1:place>)</span><br />
<i><span lang="EN-US">Understanding Medical Practice in Early Modern <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region>:
biography and </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">prosopography</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
4 December - <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/samuelcohn/">Sam Cohn</a> (<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype>
of <st1:placename w:st="on">Glasgow</st1:placename></st1:place>)<br />
<i><span lang="EN-US">Plague and ‘Syphilis’ in Early Modern <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>: the Rise of Cultural Toxins</span></i></div>
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<br />
<b>2013</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">22 January - <a href="http://artsandscience.usask.ca/profile/LSmith">Lisa Smith</a> (<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype>
of <st1:placename w:st="on">Saskatchewan</st1:placename></st1:place>)</span><br />
<i><span lang="EN-US">Fertility Troubles and Domestic
Medical Knowledge in Eighteenth-Century <st1:country-region w:st="on">France</st1:country-region>
and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
5 February - <a href="http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/history/staff/withey/">Alun Withey</a> (<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype>
of <st1:placename w:st="on">Exeter</st1:placename></st1:place>)<br />
<i><span lang="EN-US">Politeness and Pogonotomy: Shaving and Masculinity in
Georgian <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region></span></i></div>
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19 February - <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/classical-studies/king.shtml">Helen King</a> (Open University)<br />
<i><span lang="EN-US">Agnodice’s First Patient: Gendering Childbirth in
Antiquity and Early Modern Europe</span></i></div>
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5 March - <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/history/de-renzi.shtml">Silvia de Renzi</a> (Open University)<br />
<i><span lang="EN-US">Hippocrates on the Tiber: Airs and Diseases in the
Making of Baroque <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Rome</st1:place></st1:city></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
All seminars <span style="background-color: white;">will
take place in the Wellcome Library, 2nd floor, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">183</st1:city> Euston Road, <st1:postalcode w:st="on">NW1 2BE</st1:postalcode></st1:place>.
Please deposit bags and coats in the ground floor cloakroom and meet in the 2nd
floor foyer. Doors at 6pm prompt, seminars will start at 6.15.</span><br />
<br />
Organising Committee: Elma Brenner
(Wellcome Library), Sandra Cavallo (RHUL), John Henderson (BirkbeckUL) Colin
Jones (QMUL, convenor), William MacLehose (UCL), Anna Maerker (KCL). Christelle
Rabier (LSE), Patrick Wallis (LSE), Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim (Goldsmiths).<br />
<br />
Enquiries to Ross MacFarlane (Wellcome
Library: <a href="mailto:R.MacFarlane@wellcome.ac.uk">R.MacFarlane@wellcome.ac.uk</a>
) or Prof. Colin Jones (Queen Mary University of London: <a href="mailto:c.d.h.jones@qmul.ac.uk">c.d.h.jones@qmul.ac.uk</a>).<br />
<br />
<i>Image: Anatomical Theatre in Leiden from <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1114076~S8">Les delices de Leide, une des célèbres villes de l'Europe</a>, Leiden: P. van der Aa, 1712.</i></div>
Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07038309294124081517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-23726439110654290642012-11-09T09:45:00.000+00:002012-11-09T15:21:58.944+00:00Guest Post: Case notes, coal gas and cocaine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx8F19uHs0PPLRYZRlru9ALHOnvmlCryyjlAIY-NgaDIRH59RyBOFT_u7gCTY3SO2kBCu0_OR-DGN48SnfvJe3wwhMkWtrswPoy8slxwvNqltOmUGE6vj49kPegmXIF6waBxqUq_PtUNIw/s1600/DopeGirls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx8F19uHs0PPLRYZRlru9ALHOnvmlCryyjlAIY-NgaDIRH59RyBOFT_u7gCTY3SO2kBCu0_OR-DGN48SnfvJe3wwhMkWtrswPoy8slxwvNqltOmUGE6vj49kPegmXIF6waBxqUq_PtUNIw/s200/DopeGirls.jpg" width="128" /></a></div>
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/marek.kohn/">Marek Kohn</a> is the author of such titles as Turned out Nice: How the British Isles will Change as the World Heats Up (2010), <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1643900~S8">A Reason for Everything: Natural Selection and the English Imagination</a> (2004) and</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1823532~S8">A Guide for the Incurably Curious</a></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">, a guide to Wellcome Collection (2012). Here, Marek reflects on the 20th anniversary of the publication of his book <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1284813~S8">Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground</a> (1992), through the papers of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, now held in the Wellcome Library.</span></i><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
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Coal gas, carbolic acid and lysol were the familiar poisons of the day, the household substances that extinguished unhappy lives in the haunted years after the First World War. A less familiar but increasingly notorious poison appears a couple of times in the index cards on which the pathologist Bernard Spilsbury recorded his case-notes in 1922: cocaine.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Three years previously, a judge had remarked how strange it was that until quite lately, drugs like cocaine “could be bought by all and sundry like so much grocery”. Possession of cocaine had been banned under emergency wartime legislation in 1916, in the wake of a panic about its use by West End prostitutes, and fears that they might spread the habit to soldiers. The ban was made permanent after the war, but cocaine seemed even more at home in the West End of the early 1920s, jittery with febrile nightclubs. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizkzH4Y7LZrmxsT3BHJNwCPnqP8Ww_Lf_1KDvXx7XOBfn5FDEmZ5Az22d12bYE1ZPncaMWzizIYWFFGJQ9kGu4W7RH4Y_T4M4of3zKuyK-MVXypb9-O_9Q_tFt8yZk_Q0GQq_WFHtmKqbw/s1600/Spilsburyportrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizkzH4Y7LZrmxsT3BHJNwCPnqP8Ww_Lf_1KDvXx7XOBfn5FDEmZ5Az22d12bYE1ZPncaMWzizIYWFFGJQ9kGu4W7RH4Y_T4M4of3zKuyK-MVXypb9-O_9Q_tFt8yZk_Q0GQq_WFHtmKqbw/s320/Spilsburyportrait.jpg" width="224" /></a></div>
One of the cards in Spilsbury's file, now held in the Wellcome Library, summarises his examination of the body of Lilian May Davis. Her room-mate told the inquest that Davis, who was 24 and had been in poor health since her father's death, would inject cocaine in the daytime and morphine to sleep at night. Her address in the St Giles area north of Covent Garden and her room-mate's stated occupation of dressmaker place her in the milieu of socially and economical marginal women in the West End – garment-workers, servants, prostitutes, stage performers – through which the cocaine subculture had first taken shape during the war. </div>
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Two other cards record details of another young woman's death, that helped define the distinctive interplay of fears that found expression in alarm about drug use in those years. Freda Kempton was 21 when she died in March 1922, and had been working as a nightclub 'dance instructress', or 'dancing mistress' - that is, she was paid as a dancing partner, largely in tips. As well as medical details, the cards summarise the case history from evidence that Kempton's friend Rose Heinberg gave in court. </div>
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Tragedy turned to scandal as Heinberg described how they had met a Chinese man, Brilliant Chang, who ran a Chinese restaurant in Regent Street. Freda disappeared with him and came back a few minutes later, her mouth twitching: she told Rose she had been drugged. Heinberg added that another time Kempton showed her 13 packets of cocaine - and that the day before her death, she had asked 'Billy' Chang if sniffing cocaine could be fatal. On the way home she threatened to commit suicide by drinking cocaine dissolved in water. The following evening, at her lodgings near Notting Hill, she did.</div>
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Chang's appearance in court set off a barrage of lurid newspaper articles about clubs, 'Cocaine Girls in the West End', and Chinese men who held a mysterious allure for “frail white women”. The drug drama now had a sinister “Oriental” villain; the drug panic now attained the most intense expression of its fears, that 'men of colour' would use drugs to lure and ruin young white women. With young women dancing to jazz and demanding the vote, conservative sentiment saw the 'dope girl' as an awful warning of women's inherent frailty.</div>
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I was familiar with the details of Freda Kempton's death from the contemporary press reports I read when researching my book <i><a href="http://grantabooks.com/3032/Dope-Girls/1276">Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground</a></i>, which first appeared twenty years ago. The cards didn't change my understanding of the tragedy, but they shortened my distance from it a fraction, having been compiled by the hand that conducted the post-mortem. It was surprisingly shaky and attentive – having read Andrew Rose's biography <i><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1665577~S8">Lethal Witness</a></i>, which depicts a professional arrogance that may have resulted in deadly miscarriages of justice, I was expecting supercilious medical illegibility.</div>
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Freda Kempton had herself appeared in a coroner's court a few weeks before she became the subject of an inquest, testifying that her friend Audrey Knowles Harrison had recently started drinking after her young child died. Mrs Harrison had returned home from an evening out and, still in her coat, gassed herself by putting her head in an oven. Domestic gas, which was manufactured from coal and contained lethal fractions of carbon monoxide, was becoming an increasingly prevalent means of suicide. In 1947 Sir Bernard Spilsbury took his own life with it, by opening the gas tap in his laboratory at University College London.<br />
<br />
<i>Author: Marek Kohn</i><br />
<br />
<i>For more on Dope Girls see Marek's <a href="http://dopegirls.wordpress.com/">blog</a> on the themes raised by the book. The papers of Bernard Spilsbury (<a href="http://bit.ly/RKFn6f">PP/SPI</a>) are available for consultation by Wellcome Library users after the completion of a Restricted Access form.</i></div>
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Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07038309294124081517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-18957336397952450232012-11-07T13:55:00.002+00:002012-11-07T13:55:47.728+00:00Tales from the Archive: How do food researchers from different disciplines use archives?<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Monday 19 November 2012, The British Library
Conference Centre, 10.00 – 16.00</span></div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrdnehYxn84D-npS3mI5Hc689JZ53oS3bxDSnhGyayIJU9RBO0ALaX3fD-9SMgrHCORqYyyCOEDAtUaSYaHQUCHNQfn3AnO4A031szdyw9l6iEAt1Wf2x7T9_2NitUpt_lJ6-zZzgKIoY/s1600/Novella+image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrdnehYxn84D-npS3mI5Hc689JZ53oS3bxDSnhGyayIJU9RBO0ALaX3fD-9SMgrHCORqYyyCOEDAtUaSYaHQUCHNQfn3AnO4A031szdyw9l6iEAt1Wf2x7T9_2NitUpt_lJ6-zZzgKIoY/s200/Novella+image.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="168" /></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hosted by the ESRC-funded NOVELLA (Narratives of
Varied Everyday Lives and Linked Approaches) project in collaboration with the
British Library, this workshop will examine the issues raised by the use of
archives in social science food research.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The programme will
address questions such as: What historical food data-sets are available and how
have they been used for different studies? How do social scientists
contextualise historical data in relation to contemporary sources? What can
social scientists learn from historians about working with historical data in
relation to food?</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Speakers:</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* Libby Bishop, UK Data Archive/Timescapes and University of
Essex<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* Abigail Knight, Novella Food and Families<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* Peter Jackson, University of Sheffield<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* Stephen Mennell, University College Dublin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* Anne Murcott, SOAS/University of Nottingham<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* Polly Russell, Curator, The British Library<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* David Smith, Hon Senior Lecturer, University of Aberdeen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* Helen Wakely, Archivist, Wellcome Library<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Registration
fee (incl. lunch and refreshments):</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* UK registered students - £30 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* Staff from UK academic institutions, ESRC-funded
researchers, UK registered charitable organisations and government employees -
£60 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* All other attendees - £120 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Book one of the few remaining places here: </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://store.ioe.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&prodid=122&deptid=112&catid=42">http://store.ioe.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&prodid=122&deptid=112&catid=42</a></span><div class="MsoNormal">
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Helenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02468977359295280427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-28113894639571581772012-11-06T10:55:00.001+00:002012-11-06T10:57:07.300+00:00Wellcome Library Insight: Native Americans<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/image/V0038484.html"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ6svSW52Qga4H-zI2r_muvrn-hs9_FtMWrxd0tMfwmw4vcHITvq6XwH3Q7h3zYIjuLzcahWh9rA0dXlDFMwvIXfEko0jlJOUCUhJI2mDMkhqmEDJqMBeSVEjUct-inJ1MTIp9epfS-02Q/s320/NativeAmerican.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
Join us for this Thursday's free <a href="http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/events/native-americans-3.aspx">Insight talk</a>, exploring the documentation of Native American peoples in the 19th and early 20th centuries.</div>
The talk will explore this subject using material collected by Henry Wellcome and produced by such figures as the writer and artist George Catlin, the photographer Edward Curtis, and the painter Wilfred Langdon Kihn.<br />
<br />
Free tickets for the talk are issued on a first-come, first served basis and are available from 1.30pm on the day. Please leave coats and bags in the cloakroom on arrival. The talk takes place between 3-4pm and spaces are limited.<br />
<br />
Our popular <a href="http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/events/library-insights.aspx">Insight sessions</a> offer visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. These free sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections.<br />
<br />
For more details on attending see the Wellcome Collection <a href="http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/events/native-americans-3.aspx">website</a>.<br />
<br />
<i>Image: A Piegan Indian encampment, North America: tipis, including a decorated medicine tipi (centre). Photograph by Edward S. Curtis, 1900 (Wellcome Library no. <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1564525">564525i</a>).</i>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07038309294124081517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-56597275018725963222012-10-31T10:00:00.000+00:002012-10-31T10:14:06.741+00:00Guest Post: Spiritualism, Mesmerism and the Occult, 1800-1920<i style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/people/mccorristine/">Dr Shane McCorristine</a> is a Marie Curie Fellow (COFUND,
Irish Research Council) at NUI Maynooth and University of Cambridge.
McCorristine is an interdisciplinary historian who is currently writing up a
project on embodiment and disembodiment in British Arctic exploration. Here he
discusses some cases from his new edited collection of primary sources, <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1825532~S8">Spiritualism, Mesmerism and the Occult,1800-1920</a>, which includes material from the Wellcome Library's collections.</span></i><br />
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<a href="http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/image/V0011094ET.html"><img border="0" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAAwp92rxSVykvJic38X6C4UhsaJcNGkGigjtekWZv6CtUsZR44QbQYyQi-fan2B3mNfgW6sK9-LH7liM6YG4WKiwTqJMbhTwvhx3TlvIc_iLtejusSSWcWh6IBiEobjdrrTGD3W5T77F4/s320/Mesmersm2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-IE"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In 1848 the English writer Catherine Crowe (1790-1872) published a book
entitled <i><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1535985~S8">The Night Side of Nature; Or,Ghosts and Ghost-seers</a> </i>which proved remarkably successful, going through 16
editions in the space of six years. In it Crowe sought to examine and bring
together a whole range of experiences and phenomena which contemporary German romantic
<i>Naturphilosophen </i>identified as part
of the <i>Nachtseite</i>, or ‘Night Side of
Nature’. ‘We are in this condition’, Crowe wrote,</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">for a certain number of hours out of every
twenty-four; and as, during this interval, external objects loom upon us but
strangely and imperfectly, the Germans draw a parallel betwixt these vague and
misty perceptions, and the similar obscure and uncertain glimpses we get of that
veiled department of nature, of which, while comprising as it does, the
solution of questions concerning us more nearly than any other, we are yet in a
state of entire and wilful ignorance. For science, at least in this country,
has put it aside as beneath her notice, because new facts that do not fit into
old theories are troublesome, and are not to be countenanced.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: inherit;">The new facts which Crowe believed were so troublesome to
nineteenth-century science and philosophy included apparitions, second-sight,
presentiments, mesmerism, somnambulist visions, and the marvels of the
unconscious, all of which, taken together, seemed to point to a critical mass
of evidence which could fundamentally change the way the human psyche was
understood. Another way in which these heterodox phenomena – today generally
placed within the remit of “parapsychology” – were connected was in the
attitudes of many influential members of the scientific, cultural,
psychological, and medical establishments towards such psychic phenomena. These
attitudes ranged from out and out scepticism, to open-minded curiosity, to
satirical derision, to extensive investigation and experimentation. In some
cases, as in the ambivalence of the Victorian novelists Elizabeth Gaskell
(1810-65) and Charles Dickens (1812-70), these attitudes could even co-exist in
the same individual.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This idea of the night side of nature was something I came back to again
and again when writing my monograph <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1980142~S8"><i>Spectres of the Self: Thinking about Ghosts and Ghost-seeing in England, 1750-1920</i> (2010)</a>. As I visited archives and libraries in Ireland and Britain I began to
amass primary source examples of Crowe’s ‘veiled department of nature’ and when
<a href="http://www.pickeringchatto.com/">Pickering and Chatto</a> asked me to edit a collection of documents on the theme of
the supernatural I jumped at the chance to create a Pandora’s Box of weird and
wonderful texts. My point of departure for this project was Crowe’s criticism
of the ‘pharisaical scepticism which denies without investigation’. Sensing the
‘signs of the times’, Crowe believed investigation and debate were key to the
success of a new modern approach to supernatural otherworlds: observation and
data accumulation were deemed essential to challenging the entrenched opinions
of scientists, psychologists, physicians, and other sceptics. Tracking this
urge to investigation (and counter-urges to debunk and disenchant) in the
nineteenth-century public sphere introduced me to a rich documentary corpus of
reports, debates, and personal narratives on the subjects of spiritualism,
witchcraft, telepathy, mesmerism, dreams, and the marvels of the unconscious.
The collection comprises of five volumes of documents with critical
introductions, notes, and index. The volumes are arranged thematically and
cover Apparitions, Spectral Illusions and Hallucinations; Mesmerism and
Hypnotism; Spiritualism and Mediumship; Telepathy and the Society for Psychical
Research; Dreaming and Dissociation.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: inherit;">In the collection I wanted to </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">integrate recent critical studies
on psychical research and allied fields with materials from archives like
Wellcome to offer the researcher a wide selection of voices on a variety of
subjects connected to the supernatural and psychical. I have had the pleasure
to introduce the account of an Italian psychical researcher who attempted to
telepathically induce dreams in a Paduan family in the 1890s; a dream journal
of Sophia Elizabeth de Morgan containing allegorical and spiritual visions; and
selections from the minute books of the Ghost Club, a gentleman’s club of
amateur investigators which included William Crookes, William Butler Yeats, and
Arthur Conan Doyle.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoS6uV_d-uJdapPe7QopO9028y-0DH1PYGh2lOgZ7xyY_k2zvoK7DE0c5Aa2Epo9B1JWFVV2gNLyKznA9CI0DTMSG5ZVjruVhQ_0bG1jmM9lJXRKG7xohJBi90N7LwnKzkDNNkWywhnymy/s1600/Barrett.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoS6uV_d-uJdapPe7QopO9028y-0DH1PYGh2lOgZ7xyY_k2zvoK7DE0c5Aa2Epo9B1JWFVV2gNLyKznA9CI0DTMSG5ZVjruVhQ_0bG1jmM9lJXRKG7xohJBi90N7LwnKzkDNNkWywhnymy/s320/Barrett.jpg" width="232" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">I am
particularly grateful to the Wellcome Library for granting me permission to use
some documents in the collection. These include a handwritten manuscript (<a href="http://bit.ly/PE6VNE">MS.1073</a>) by the
astrologer and balloonist Francis Barrett (d. 1814) which offers advice to the
student of occultism on how to invoke, question and dismiss spirits. Barrett
writes as a Christian and is particularly concerned that the initiate converse
only with good spirits and seek knowledge rather than wealth. Another
manuscript I accessed was <a href="http://bit.ly/PCc3St">MS.5100</a>, 'Thoughts on Communication between the Living and the Dead' by the English physician and Syro-Egyptian-enthusiast William Holt Yates
(b. 1802). Yates was also interested in examining the pitfalls of intercourse
with spirits, but in contrast to Barrett held that ‘Astrology, Necromancy,
Witchcraft, and Magic’ were innately sinful and blasphemous practices.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The strangest
manuscript I encountered in Wellcome, however, was something quite different
indeed. It was the diary (<a href="http://bit.ly/Vyzx7B">MS.1405</a>) of a retired major in the Bengal Cavalry named William
Buckley (d. 1852) who recorded in great detail his daily experiments in
mesmerism with his (mostly female) patients. Buckley was known in the late
1840s for the claim that over the years he had produced clairvoyance in 148
subjects who read (with extra-sensory perception) 36,000 words enclosed in
boxes and the mottoes contained in 4,860 nutshells – a staggering level of
amateur investigation. Buckley’s unique method of investigating clairvoyance
captured the attention of many of his contemporaries and he gained the dubious
honour of a </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Punch</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> satire, which
asked:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Do
you think MAJOR BUCKLEY could magnetise the Custom house officials, so as to
give them the ability to see inside of trunks? You have yourself known some
persons in a state of “lucidity”, you say, describe the interior of the human
trunk. If it is in the power of the gallant MAJOR to develop this faculty in
the persons in question, it is desirable that he should be employed by
Government to enable them to ascertain the contents of ladies’ boxes, without
rummaging the boxes and spoiling the things. But I am afraid that, in order to
obtain </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">clairvoyance</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, the MAJOR would
require subjects with a much more delicate system than that of Custom House
officers.</span></div>
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<a href="http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/image/L0028102.html"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhim6VAvgoxIV5EifXOJe93HXm6SNOfpgSJZtGV-AiyAOA4RZJyg4RiHMwZyBnYrypJ7bGIj8X3q_cbrXNAU12D2ykIyGfMjFchH634EjHJ4ictmiHm3ByaY-iZg-SQG3TWIyzICvLOzhkw/s320/Mesmerism1.jpg" width="227" /></a><span id="goog_1587682924"></span><span id="goog_1587682925"></span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">While cases like
this could easily be taken as ridiculous, for scholars like Steven Connor the
“supernatural” </span><span lang="EN-IE">‘was no alternative or other world, but rather an image, annex or
extension of the imposing, ceaselessly volatile real world of the nineteenth
century’. Therefore, when speaking of supernatural otherworlds – whether of
apparently immaterial phenomena such as dreams, visions, marvels, apparitions,
or thought-transference – we intervene in social and cultural debates intrinsic
to the emergence of “western modernity”, or more accurately, modernities. This
would be to work against the legacy of evolutionary and survivalist theories of
belief which dominated intellectual debates in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Similarly, in contrast to earlier scholars who, like Keith
Thomas in his <i><a href="http://bit.ly/Q3zVhN">Religion and the Decline ofMagic</a> </i>(1971), felt the need to show how ‘intelligent persons’ now ‘rightly’
disdain the supernatural, research since the cultural turn in the 1980s has
demonstrated the extent to which strategies of re-enchantment, magical
thinking, and secular magic survive, adapt, and evolve, spectre-like, within
and through modernity, not simply as occult or atavistic doubles. </span><span lang="EN-US">By
the nineteenth century, my work has suggested, it was evident to many that
things like dreams, ghosts, and other occult forces could no longer be seen as
purely external, objective, or transcendental entities, but rather as complex signs
of dynamic psychology and inner disturbance. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<i>Images: </i></div>
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<i>- A mesmerist using animal magnetism on a seated female patient. Wood engraving, ca. 1845. (<a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1159955">Wellcome Library no. 11823i</a>)</i></div>
<i>- Coloured diagram pasted inside the cover entitled, 'Talismans and magical images made from the twenty-eight Mansions of the Moon, etc. etc.', from Francis Barrett, 'The Magus or Celestial Intelligencer: being a compleat system of Occult Philosophy...' (<a href="http://bit.ly/UcJJlj">MS.1072</a>)</i><br />
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<i>- Punch's pencillings, no. VI. Animal magentism, Sir Rhubarb Pill mesmerising the British Lion. (<a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1312142">Punch</a>, Vol 1, p67, 1841)</i></div>
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<i><a href="http://www.pickeringchatto.com/major_works/spiritualism_mesmerism_and_the_occult_1800_1920">Spiritualism, Mesmerism and the Occult, 1800–1920</a></i> (Pickering & Chatto, 2012) is available now</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span lang="EN-US">Author: Dr Shane </span>McCorristine</i></span></div>
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Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07038309294124081517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-10208018990671283422012-10-29T16:05:00.000+00:002012-10-29T16:08:44.461+00:00China on the Shannon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvuYKl1OhpBB3vBlaqWowQB-XrA6tUni7Aiul1sha8xfTL3N3gMkbdPIwYBrnY2HZL_aY2dm2t85tpKuzZtlBh3kWajxxry0SfHgqxjGxX418IaDPD9gJ-2UEQ_Z7H_ZbVdHHQ0Ps8LNAZ/s1600/thomson+hunt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvuYKl1OhpBB3vBlaqWowQB-XrA6tUni7Aiul1sha8xfTL3N3gMkbdPIwYBrnY2HZL_aY2dm2t85tpKuzZtlBh3kWajxxry0SfHgqxjGxX418IaDPD9gJ-2UEQ_Z7H_ZbVdHHQ0Ps8LNAZ/s400/thomson+hunt.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
The Wellcome Library's exhibition of photographs of China taken by John Thomson between 1869 and 1872 is currently on show at <a href="http://www.huntmuseum.com/">The Hunt Museum</a> in Limerick, Ireland.<br />
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The Hunt Museum is named after John and Gertrude Hunt who presented their collection of mainly European works of art to be displayed to the public in Ireland. Their collection is housed in the 18th-century Customs House overlooking the river Shannon. The Customs House in Limerick, like its equivalents in London, Dublin, and Venice, was designed to impress by its authority and by its superb situation: facing the city one way and the river the other. On the river side, the building has Chinoiserie reliefs between its neoclassical pilasters.<br />
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The exhibition, <a href="http://www.huntmuseum.com/whats-on/exhibitions/china-through-the-lens-of-john-thomson-1868-1872.aspx" target="_blank">China through the lens of John Thomson</a>, is on show until 2 December 2012, open every day, admission free. In addition to the exhibition, the permanent collection of The Hunt Museum is well worth seeing, and there are other historic sites in Limerick to visit, including the mediaeval Castle and Cathedral.<br />
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Below, the opening of the exhibition by Mme Wang Ya Nan (left), shown with Dr Hugh Maguire, Director of The Hunt Museum, and Betty Yao M.B.E., the curator of the exhibition.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9a874RHMw2zo8qtpR9JLflIVn_5lknTJHQ073jJMpeg33r6N_TU91VJZ66FKorkKgPgbxHf1rgmfKb6tCraBTj6xbtPyKUv5yMDqvYRAOLDhb8WULVDuwpNZbj2IES6qMbxnxgXzhFdOm/s1600/thomson+hunt+opening.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="323" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9a874RHMw2zo8qtpR9JLflIVn_5lknTJHQ073jJMpeg33r6N_TU91VJZ66FKorkKgPgbxHf1rgmfKb6tCraBTj6xbtPyKUv5yMDqvYRAOLDhb8WULVDuwpNZbj2IES6qMbxnxgXzhFdOm/s400/thomson+hunt+opening.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Wm Schupbachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05795739445897517943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-23596324103926346172012-10-24T12:39:00.000+01:002012-10-24T13:46:17.294+01:00Wellcome Collection is growing! <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><img alt="The spiral staircase, part of the Wellcome Collection's redevelopment plans. Copyright: Wilkinson Eyre Architects" src="http://www.museumsassociation.org/asset_arena/0/04/77/877400/v0_full.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>The new spiral staircase, part of our development plans announced today. Copyright Wilkinson Eyre.</i></span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">When Wellcome Collection
opened in 2007, we anticipated attracting around 100,000 visits each year. This
figure has increased year-on-year to almost half a million this year. In order
to cope with unprecedented visitor demand, Wellcome Collection will be
transformed over the coming two years. Our spaces will be redefined, bringing new
areas into public use, while building on the unique qualities that have made
Wellcome Collection and the Wellcome Library such a success. <br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Opening
up the Reading Room</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Central to the project,
the Wellcome Library’s Reading Room will become an innovative public space,
bridging the gap between the Library’s research community and Wellcome Collection’s
exhibitions and events programmes and opening our extraordinarily rich
collections to new audiences. The
Reading Room will be an inviting
salon where visitors are free to relax, linger and indulge their curiosity – a
blend of the very best curatorial and library practice, in a setting that
encourages sociability and the sharing of ideas. This new space will sit at the heart of the building, curated
with events and displays of books and objects from the collections, alongside
state-of-the-art technology to fully exploit our ambitious digitisation
programme. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">Enhancing the Research Library</span></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Our Research Library
will also be renovated, offering our members an outstanding environment in
which to study and work. With an expanded Rare Materials Room, a new Viewing
Room, and with improved space configuration – including new desk spaces and
areas for group work, private study, and conversation – the Library will be an
inviting and stimulating place that will cater for the needs of all our
audiences. We will continue to provide a significant proportion of our
collections on open access together with greater access to digital resources,
and offer better facilities and easier circulation via a new internal lift and
staircase. We will continue to offer users a quiet and relaxing working environment
in which to enjoy and use our outstanding collections, fostering understanding
of the place of human and animal health in all periods and cultures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Elsewhere
in Wellcome Collection</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The development will
open up 30 per cent more gallery space and double our capacity for public
events. A major new thematic gallery will hold in-depth exhibitions over a
year-long period, with a mixture of semi-permanent displays and exhibits. There
will also be a dedicated youth events studio for 14-to-19-year-olds to engage
with and produce work that contributes to the Wellcome Collection programme. An
interdisciplinary research Hub will catalyse research and public engagement
collaborations between the brightest minds across specialisms, with grants
being made available for group residencies. A Spotlight events series will
offer a forum for experts from different disciplines to come together and
debate key topics and policy issues affecting medicine, science and society. And
a new restaurant, in addition to the current café, will significantly increase
the catering offer within Wellcome Collection. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Keeping
in touch</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Major works on the
development will begin in summer 2013, with completion scheduled for summer
2014. We will keep Library users informed throughout the project, alerting you
to key dates throughout the build. If you are planning on visiting the Library
during summer 2013, please contact us and we can keep you updated on projected
dates for building works, and access to the various collections.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Later in November, we will be hosting a
series of drop-in sessions where you can come and see the building plans and hear
more about the development project. Details of these dates will be published on
the Library website and blog and be displayed in the Library on the
noticeboard. If you have any questions at all before then please feel very free to <a href="mailto:p.harkins@wellcome.ac.uk" target="_blank">get in touch</a>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />Dr Simon Chaplin</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Head of the Wellcome Library <br /><br /> </span></div>
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<br />Phoebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13857419137985859981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-63791842913480553732012-10-23T19:08:00.000+01:002012-10-24T10:18:53.725+01:00To London from Kuwait<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7qkmZW7q77fofxtTAdg8pUN2JXhatb17eTkf4X5zsnEYNT7UxknCma98AIcfBrKinxsy9cVm-01dTvU5F3y5D3WbYBVNdZPVte1XJ22I2vLRre0jfuDhBppScDL-xjRpjXIoiKx3qK8y3/s1600/kuwait+visitors.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7qkmZW7q77fofxtTAdg8pUN2JXhatb17eTkf4X5zsnEYNT7UxknCma98AIcfBrKinxsy9cVm-01dTvU5F3y5D3WbYBVNdZPVte1XJ22I2vLRre0jfuDhBppScDL-xjRpjXIoiKx3qK8y3/s320/kuwait+visitors.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Wellcome Library was honoured to receive a visit yesterday from staff of the Kuwait Digital Repository at the <a href="http://www.kisr.edu.kw/Default.aspx?pageId=135&mid=1" target="_blank">Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research</a>: Ms. Shatha D. Al-Own (Project Leader), Ms. Amani
Al-Othman (Principal Investigator), Mr Muhammad Mozafar (Task Leader), and Ms.
Eiman Al-Awadhi (Task Leader / Information Services Manager).</span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHdEzQnONuG7zTLxB0KPXV-coV_UZJDkO-vUtgabDn11JyGSBD8OL__XKIp8qloKhBK1WePq4cs5Zg0l9fNCa4YsZIkAZecE73K9GSFumXBZcYudS8vYVQfapuvhGgvOINfx2251FUS21x/s1600/kuwait+street+photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHdEzQnONuG7zTLxB0KPXV-coV_UZJDkO-vUtgabDn11JyGSBD8OL__XKIp8qloKhBK1WePq4cs5Zg0l9fNCa4YsZIkAZecE73K9GSFumXBZcYudS8vYVQfapuvhGgvOINfx2251FUS21x/s320/kuwait+street+photo.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wellcome Library WF/M/I/PR/S18 </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In addition to seeing the Wellcome Library's own digitisation
program and Arabic manuscripts projects, our visitors took time to see some
historic documents from Kuwait itself in the Wellcome Library's holdings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The records of the Wellcome Foundation (pharmaceutical
company) include <a href="http://archives.wellcome.ac.uk/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqPos=13&dsqSearch=%28%28text%29%3D%27kuwait%27%29" target="_blank">photographs of their representative in Kuwait</a> in the 1970s showing
to pharmacists the new drug Zyloric (allopurinol), the Wellcome medicine
which transformed the lives of gout-sufferers. The photographs include evocative street scenes (right) and views of office equipment of the time.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/o?SEARCH=979888i&searchscope=8&submit.x=38&submit.y=9" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 979888i</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">From about the same period (starting in 1979) come a series
of posters produced as part of a campaign of eradication of rats from Kuwait. The posters
were at first produced as relatively simple screen prints but soon went over to
offset lithography with striking colour effects. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The posters in the Wellcome Library come from the collection of David Drummond, a consultant on vermin eradication with the World Health Organization, whose remarkable collection of rat- (and mouse-) related prints was dispersed earlier this year.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search~S5/o?SEARCH=677116i&searchscope=8" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">677116i</span></span></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The most recent works deal with eradication and prevention
of another plague: AIDS. These posters, issued by the Kuwait Ministry of Health, date mostly from the early 1990s; on one of them (right) </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">we read at the foot the legend "Don't forget our POWs", a reminder of the horrors of the
invasion in 1990.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We wish our Kuwaiti colleagues every success in their ambitious projects in the field of scientific information.</span></div>
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Wm Schupbachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05795739445897517943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-46581792678461617212012-10-23T10:00:00.000+01:002012-10-23T10:00:00.249+01:00Rapid Growth in Population ArchivesTwo closely-related archives on population control have recently been catalogued and are now available to researchers at the Wellcome Library. Population Concern (<a href="http://bit.ly/RX2n3Q">SA/POP</a>) and The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health (<a href="http://bit.ly/XKrXd2">SA/PGP</a>) form part of a nexus of closely linked organisations active in the field from the 1970s onwards. Together their records present rich new resources for the study of the debates surrounding this controversial area and add to a significant body of other related <a href="http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTL039893.html">archive material</a>.<br />
<br />
Population Concern was first formed as a joint project by the <a href="http://bit.ly/ShcFsX">Family Planning Association (FPA)</a> and the Simon Population Trust in 1971. At the time there was no specific charity in the UK focused on worldwide population fears (which were highlighted in the short film <i><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1726786~S8">Full Circle</a></i>, made for the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1974). The collection contains a variety of material, including administrative documents; minutes and correspondence (see <a href="http://bit.ly/RR9N5h">SA/POP/A/1</a> and <a href="http://bit.ly/ShdhPb">SA/POP/A/2</a> respectively), publications (<a href="http://bit.ly/Tb3uge">SA/POP/B/2</a>) and a large amount of reports and correspondence on their many overseas projects (<a href="http://bit.ly/RgKj2u">SA/POP/C/1</a>).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1726786~S3" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqV7smwzYCgiUb5JTMwdqLyqRzubrFt993-trjeq_K2HNlfOiVKkK3eZf_97tl_VYuEnYU6uqqJ6uDXE6xtUXS9lI3PQD3GjC8OQJ6a6t_0U2etKcn0JyVGs4WWv_1x4e6z5J2aQdFjr41/s320/Full+Circle.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1726786~S3">Full Circle</a></i> (1974)</td></tr>
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The group changed names regularly over the years but initially started life as the Family Planning International Campaigns Steering Committee and then was briefly renamed as Population Countdown Committee in 1973. In 1976 the group (now just called the Population Countdown Campaign) became a completely separate organisation but was still sponsored by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and the FPA. The name was changed yet again (for the final time) to Population Concern in 1977. <br />
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During the 1970s and 1980s the charity was responsible for several overseas projects, particularly in countries in Asia, Africa and South America. These would cover areas on family planning, sexual health, “over population problems” and women’s health. (see SA/POP/C/1/1-17) There were also several projects in the UK, working on producing education programmes and databases (<a href="http://bit.ly/VjRVkE">SA/POP/B/4/1</a>) to be used in schools as well as doing a variety of fundraising activities (<a href="http://archives.wellcome.ac.uk/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqPos=223&dsqSearch=%28AltRefNo%3D%27SA%2FPOP%27%29">SA/POP/C/2</a>).<br />
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In 1991 Population Concern achieved independent charitable status and in April 2003 changed to <a href="http://www.interactworldwide.org/">Interact Worldwide</a> as it now reflected an increasingly rights based approach to sexual and reproductive health issues.<br />
<br />
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health (<a href="http://bit.ly/XKrXd2">SA/PGP</a>) was set up in 1978 as the British Parliamentary Group on Population and Development. Its main aim was to increase awareness amongst Westminster parliamentarians of the long-term implications of world population growth. Initially the Group concentrated principally on the place of population projects in the UK government's overseas development programme and on securing adequate funding for these from the aid budget. Like Population Concern, the Group had close links to the Family Planning Association. The fund-raising arm of the Association, The Birth Control Trust, provided the services of a Research and Information Officer for the Group. An initial grant was also acquired from Population Concern, illustrating the inter-connectedness of all these organisations. The material in the collection dates predominantly from c.1978-1991 and includes agendas and circulated papers of Group and Committee meetings and files relating to the organisation of meetings and other events. In addition, there are papers relating to the attendance of Group members at international meetings and correspondence with other organisations, notably the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. <br />
<br />
The collections of Population Concern and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health are part of the Wellcome Library’s Archives and Manuscripts collection. The catalogues may be searched <a href="http://archives.wellcome.ac.uk/">online</a> using the references SA/POP and SA/PGP respectively. <br />
<div>
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<div>
<i>Author: Morwenna Roche</i></div>
Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07038309294124081517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-42963022904054247722012-10-19T15:40:00.001+01:002012-10-19T17:12:26.084+01:00Item of the month, October 2012: Imaginary historyThe preservation of hard documentary evidence about the past
is what we archivists strive towards constantly. But just for once, allow this particular archivist
to indulge in a flight of fancy and imagine how molecular biologist Francis
Crick might have been feeling 50 years ago today.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Elated?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tired?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dare we say it, a bit the worse for wear?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, he had spent the previous day celebrating
his admission to the international club of Nobel prize-winners for his research
into the structure of DNA.<br />
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<a href="http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/image/L0032968.html"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXsB18GRSBSMmgIH2pj78Et7dnXVYvd6aVpdi3XvKoh7olMkdADFA6LN1VlesV9zuI4DtE7zOjCAyxsVPiO8QcbMXA9UvSmemEh8MCl06x3uKZOq4s_ApAuK8VFZXlzyWUaC4jQEzdBUIy/s320/Cricktelegram1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/image/L0032977.html"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0QeYE7KELFvXvN_2M4JCd_Fimp1KYcpRA0lzHyhJo_WFpK5TXdIkwqJEn1qZKNYbwttcWHijap-ExgO0XQsyaumWFhRkv-tsQ1f5Owu2Zkw9aM86TWZJZYACV1tQzZyuC9eNP3IVOBvPp/s320/Cricktelegram2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Notification of his new elite status arrived on 18 October
1962 in low-key style.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A telegram from <span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Sten Friberg, Rector at the Karolinska
Institutet in Stockholm, announced that Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins
had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Rather </span>endearingly<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">, the telegram carrying the weighty news
(now in the Francis Crick <a href="http://tinyurl.com/9ubdx4z">archive</a> in the Wellcome Library) is notable for its typos,
awarding the prize to<a href="http://cshlarchives.blogspot.co.uk/"> </a></span><a href="http://cshlarchives.blogspot.co.uk/"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">James</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Deway</i> (for Dewey) <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Watson</span></span></a><span class="st1"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> </span></span><span class="st1"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">and co for their </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘discoveries concerning the
molecular structure of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nuclear</i> (rather
than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nucleic</i>) acids and its
significance for information transfer in living material.’</span></div>
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<span class="st1"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Whatever, I doubt Crick felt the need to
telephone Telegrams Enquiry for ‘free repetition of doubtful words’ as
suggested on the telegram.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span>In
characteristic style he instead threw an impromptu party at his Cambridge home,
the Golden Helix.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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James Watson phoned up in the middle of the party to
congratulate him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Crick wrote back to
him the following week to apologise: “I’m sorry if I was incoherent, but there
was so much noise I could hardly hear what you said”.*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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With my imaginary historian hat on, I would
suggest that a good time was had by all.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">*Matt Ridley, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Francis
Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> (2006), p.131</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Helenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02468977359295280427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-58903636773518011802012-10-12T11:25:00.000+01:002012-10-12T11:48:57.022+01:00Rare videos of Roy Porter now online<br />
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<a href="http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/103635-1"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHN3B8_B0NZt-ftqlTQqvysyRAPh5gi0FdXc1IBw_R2vuN8RiG49NAkKrJbgbZc4BJDRrNtbyF66Gahy2bAkwikJdG_j7DkDSITs8lXS11pUTYejFEnOyuxzDumUeB3Fv2t4EmvjRkD-BJ/s320/royportercspan.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/75th-anniversary/WTVM051182.htm#">Roy Porter</a> (1946-2002) is
justifiably recognised as the most influential historian of medicine of his
generation. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">However,
despite being a prodigious author, a frequent broadcaster on BBC Radio and a
popular lecturer to a range of audiences, not many recordings of him
remain. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">The British Library’s <a href="http://cadensa.bl.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/x/0/49/">Sound and Moving Image catalogue</a> lists a number of items (mostly made for BBC Radio)</span><span style="line-height: 115%;">,
as does the Wellcome Library’s <a href="http://bit.ly/VYD83m">catalogue</a></span><span style="line-height: 115%;">. Very few of these recordings are freely
available across the web (a notable exception being an appearance on BBC Radio 4's <i><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005479m">In Our Time</a></i>).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Given these facts, it’s with a great deal of
excitement that we've discovered a lecture given by Porter at the New
York Academy of Medicine in 1999. It was
recorded by <a href="http://www.c-span.org/">C-Span</a>, a US cable network which specialises in broadcasting
federal government deliberations, and is freely available through the C-Span
</span><a href="http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/103635-1" style="line-height: 115%;">website</a><span style="line-height: 115%;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">The lecture was in support of Porter's then </span><span style="line-height: 115%;">newly published <i><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1130983~S8">The </a></i></span><i style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1130983~S8">Greatest Benefit to Mankind</a></i><span style="line-height: 115%;">, his one-volume account of medicine's history, and broadly consists of a
discussion of the book’s themes.</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="line-height: 115%;">It also
includes a detailed discussion of William Buchan’s </span><i style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/7228591">Domestic Medicine</a></i><span style="line-height: 115%;">, one of the most popular medical books ever published, which Porter situates in the political upheavals of the late 18th century.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">We chanced
upon this video while putting together a presentation for new students on the
Society of Apothecaries Diploma Course in the History of Medicine. In a nice coincidence, a recording of
Porter’s lecture to this course from 1990 is <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1587248~S3">held in our collections</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Such a
discovery would be pleasing enough, but a search of C-Span’s archive has found <i>another</i> talk by Porter, also recorded in
New York, this time in support of his title, <i>The Creation of the Modern World</i> (2000, published in the UK as <i><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1526111~S8">Enlightenment</a></i>): again, this is freely available from the C-Span <a href="http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/TheCrea">website</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">These videos
– whilst also hinting at the prodigious rate of knots Porter published books –
are a reminder that digitisation will continue to produce more and more
wonderful discoveries such as these. The
challenge for those interested in the history of medicine will be to keep track
of them.</span></div>
Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07038309294124081517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-1344160650629426232012-10-11T14:00:00.000+01:002012-10-17T14:29:56.426+01:00Lice, lost dentures and varicose veins ...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: center;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Carlos Paton Blacker or ‘Pip’ as he was more commonly known by his closer contacts, was a psychiatrist and eugenicist who played a crucial role in family planning in Britain during the 20th century. His archive, which is in the process of being digitised, also provides an insight into the role of a medical officer of health during the second world war.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAjoTRawcAXEbPi0qvu9qtLkv3dSc0i2NJpOegqbTV3sH8R6Y_NScWxqy09J_S0ryXDnqxjFYVuz-j0qXJCkKTtxxxXcLQTfGB8CG2Fuk9Y5m9jcow0sOGaKzsP8phPPsoWfEsmebGXtRO/s1600/Blacker+cartoon+crop+pp_cpb_a_9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAjoTRawcAXEbPi0qvu9qtLkv3dSc0i2NJpOegqbTV3sH8R6Y_NScWxqy09J_S0ryXDnqxjFYVuz-j0qXJCkKTtxxxXcLQTfGB8CG2Fuk9Y5m9jcow0sOGaKzsP8phPPsoWfEsmebGXtRO/s400/Blacker+cartoon+crop+pp_cpb_a_9.jpg" width="166" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">A decorated war hero, Blacker worked for the Coldstream Guards. <a href="http://bit.ly/vdU0sc">His pap</a></span><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://bit.ly/vdU0sc">ers</a> from this period throw light not only on common complaints suffered by servicemen, but also on his personal experience of the war.</span></div>
</div>
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As well as the mental and physical wellbeing of his men, it appears Blacker played a part in their social welfare. A prize-winning middle-weight boxer at Oxford in the 1920’s, Blacker ran boxing, milling and water cart competitions for his troops. The latter involved racing the vessels in which drinking water for the men’s bottles was contained - proper maintenance of these containers was crucial to prevent water-borne infections. Injuries from such competitions were inevitable causing, on one occasion ‘ten casualties (mostly sprained thumbs)’ (Blacker to Fowler, 17th April 1941, <a href="http://bit.ly/PSOAqn">PP/CPB/E/1</a>).</div>
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The role of a medical officer was clearly hectic. Regular medical inspections of his battalion, who were spread far and wide, were performed daily. In addition, Blacker was also required to attend lectures on topical medical issues - he was hard pressed to attend them sometimes, as this memo implies from 4th May 1941 (<a href="http://bit.ly/PSOAqn">PP/CPB/E/1</a>):</div>
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'It is most exceedingly inconvenient for me to absent myself from the Bn. in the mornings, because I see sick in five villages, including some attached troops' </div>
</blockquote>
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Overcrowding and poor ventilation of billet units which increased the risk of droplet-borne infections was one of many issues that Blacker drew attention to in his correspondence: a memo from a Camp Commandant in Kilmarnock, 29th October 1941, refers to ‘2 reported cases of cerebro spinal meningitis in the quarters’ as a result of such conditions (<a href="http://bit.ly/PSOAqn">PP/CPB/E/1</a>). In response, Blacker recommended that ‘full use be made of all available floor’ and the ‘removal of partitions which obstructed ventilation’. </div>
<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYmMgudd7rhyphenhyphen81ZsXH-tY4idh5WjCCMQSEAuZ_A5t_-S3WrreouNLy96GpjTrqc_VYSWUAOOGhorNyWVXUY-dOnTGTZTyAql-ILyrqqrRIqjaYh4BRREvLHUfNKO0C3GZ7wZ0ZeVenTQ-K/s1600/monkey+and+lice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: right; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYmMgudd7rhyphenhyphen81ZsXH-tY4idh5WjCCMQSEAuZ_A5t_-S3WrreouNLy96GpjTrqc_VYSWUAOOGhorNyWVXUY-dOnTGTZTyAql-ILyrqqrRIqjaYh4BRREvLHUfNKO0C3GZ7wZ0ZeVenTQ-K/s320/monkey+and+lice.jpg" width="227" /></a> <o:p>Skin conditions were also a problem, a consequence of lice-infested clothing and bedding. On </o:p>14th Aug 1940, Blacker wrote (<a href="http://bit.ly/SLMRJD">PP/CPB/E/2/1</a>):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
'every man in the unit should be ordered to spend ten minutes a week carefully examining his shirt, his pants and the seams of his tunic and trousers for pediculi and their eggs'</div>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
To solve this problem, he ordered a ‘Serbian barrel disinfestor’ – this involved placing clothes in a galvanised garbage can or similar with wire mesh in the bottom and sterilising them with steam from boiling water underneath for forty five minutes, a method apparently applied by US troops at <a href="http://www.mazal.org/Pressac/Pressac0066.htm">Auschwitz</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> and first used in the <a href="http://goo.gl/NtZUQ">1915 Serbian typhus epidemic</a>. </span><br />
<br />
If it wasn’t lice, it was teeth that were quite literally a pain according to the amount of correspondence between the battalion dentist (French) and Blacker. Many troops would beg particularly for a dental check-up before going on campaign where they would most likely receive no treatment for months on end (letter dated 3rd February 1941, <a href="http://bit.ly/PSOAqn">PP/CPB/E/1</a>):</div>
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<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
'There are several men in the Bn. Who have been without dentures since before the invasion of the low countries. Some of these had impressions taken in France; but all these were lost'<br />
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<br /></div>
</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisf_tAryTtp2vpPOcGBFK3qGoaJaIpD8jz-ehZShDVeNJuTAsxYWEatRAJK38IzSqTkMK3ldxQD0F2AS3pYKF-mTuLYBoq7i8phb7Pp6bCLj_Ujl_m9gJMOVhFIBDG2wkm4neHUng3kulO/s1600/aspirin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisf_tAryTtp2vpPOcGBFK3qGoaJaIpD8jz-ehZShDVeNJuTAsxYWEatRAJK38IzSqTkMK3ldxQD0F2AS3pYKF-mTuLYBoq7i8phb7Pp6bCLj_Ujl_m9gJMOVhFIBDG2wkm4neHUng3kulO/s320/aspirin.jpg" width="163" /></a>To alleviate the pain of such conditions, aspirin was often the only answer: </div>
</div>
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'We need as many as 500 aspirins … I am very fully aware of the need for economy, but one has to treat sick men with something and aspirin, which is made synthetically from by-products of the coal industry, is about the cheapest thing one can use.' (letter to C.Q.M.S. 27th January 1941, <a href="http://bit.ly/SLMRJD">PP/CPB/E/1</a>). </div>
<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh254fpTjarnAdLHMAFK-zXdINBlzJuaQhCs83CDIz1U4jPZnXHvP78T6LK6yXB6H2NHTI9DqKKYdiA4ty2M0-N-RlredvLytE-RqOsWc6JSklAt4_cmLsbFfBtyWjYBemkWCDVrYnJ5pfP/s1600/keep+your+feet+clean+games+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh254fpTjarnAdLHMAFK-zXdINBlzJuaQhCs83CDIz1U4jPZnXHvP78T6LK6yXB6H2NHTI9DqKKYdiA4ty2M0-N-RlredvLytE-RqOsWc6JSklAt4_cmLsbFfBtyWjYBemkWCDVrYnJ5pfP/s320/keep+your+feet+clean+games+poster.jpg" width="210" /></a>Footcare regimes were also recommended - a man could be extremely uncomfortable, if not immobile if simple foot checks were not adhered to. Varicose veins posed a more painful problem. In extreme cases, Blacker concluded that a soldier was ‘unfit to proceed overseas’, particularly after an operation where rest was required. (Blacker to Hertford, 2nd June 1941, <a href="http://bit.ly/SLMRJD">PP/CPB/E/2/1</a>).<br />
<br />
Deafness among troops was also inevitable. Men exposed to ear-splitting blasts often resulted in a worrying loss of hearing which could jeopardise the safety of comrades - another reason for Blacker to catagorise them ‘unfit’ (letter dated 13th August 1940, <a href="http://bit.ly/SLMRJD">PP/CPB/E/1</a>).</div>
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
The long-term effects of the Second World War became evident in Blacker’s survey of psychiatric treatment which he began in 1942. Not suprisingly, he discovered an increase in cases of war neuroses and suicides in the subsequent post-war period. Blacker’s much-needed, though Herculean task, was published in 1946 under the title: <a href="http://goo.gl/NNO18">‘Neuroses and the Mental Health Services’</a>. His mentor, Aubrey Lewis pointed out: ‘No one could have been better qualified to organise such a survey’ – the problem of neuroses was ‘one of the most important in social medicine which touches every aspect of life’ (letter dated 24th Aug 1946: <a href="http://bit.ly/T1eUzq">PP/CPB/D/5/4</a>).<br />
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The survey highlighted the need for psychiatry to be ‘closely integrated with general medicine - previously, the subject had been a low priority, if not ignored. He proved that training of doctors and nursing staff was crucial, and that the ‘chronic shortage of beds for early psychiatric patients’ should be addressed (review of his survey by Humphrey Milford, <a href="http://bit.ly/OQzHKB">PP/CPB/D/5/6</a>). In short, Blacker identified that ‘preventive psychiatry was 'a largely sociological question’ (review by the Newcastle Medical Journal, May 1946, <a href="http://bit.ly/OQzHKB">PP/CPB/D/5/6</a>).<br />
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As if this project was not enough, simultaneously Blacker performed selfless deeds as a medical officer – when he was evacuated at Dunkirk in 1940, he was awarded the George Medal for his gallantry in rescuing a wounded officer from a minefield in which two men had already been killed (<a href="http://bit.ly/Qay3A8">PP/CPB/A/4/6</a>). This was not the only heroic deed it seems: Dr Greta Graff, a fellow medical officer, commended him on a similarly noble act in a note dated 25th February 1944:</div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
‘how splendid I thought your behaviour was last night remaining with the trapped casualties under that debris until the Incident Officer had decided to call a Mobile Aid Post, and I appeared on the scene’</div>
</blockquote>
Blacker’s archive will be available to view in full next year when the <a href="http://goo.gl/fToLO">Wellcome Digital Library</a> is launched.<br />
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<i>Images:</i><br />
<i>Cartoon sketch of Blacker dated 7 July 1934, p.285 of Guy's Hospital Gazette, <a href="http://bit.ly/PlmF7y">PP/CPB/A/9</a></i><br />
<i>Don't let lice make a monkey out of you!, poster issued by U.S. Government Printing Office, 1944, Wellcome Library no. <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1677832~S8">677832i</a></i><br />
<em>Burroughs Wellcome and Company product: Tabloid Acetylsalicylic Aid tablets, Aspirin, Wellcome Images L 41224</em><br />
<em>Keep your feet clean, poster by Abraham Games, 1941, <a href="http://goo.gl/unrYB">20272i</a> </em></div>
<em></em>Julia Nursehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14930007163513422959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-2260596509591367022012-10-09T17:35:00.000+01:002012-10-10T13:38:46.993+01:00There may be troubles ahead...<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO3TNn1T8nGz1v2ExfLbBkWcCX9dXMuvVfow_dAXU6rVlnK-iiaueMX5cc7GtWziKm7-UxNFSdyHV8Cvz03OQTFRBfpejjJa6SOmsVV6hqXxHi0DnKG8nGm0W131-WRrxEexxy7HXZA8U/s1600/hawkes+letter.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO3TNn1T8nGz1v2ExfLbBkWcCX9dXMuvVfow_dAXU6rVlnK-iiaueMX5cc7GtWziKm7-UxNFSdyHV8Cvz03OQTFRBfpejjJa6SOmsVV6hqXxHi0DnKG8nGm0W131-WRrxEexxy7HXZA8U/s320/hawkes+letter.JPG" width="247" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">MS.8826</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A recent manuscript acquisition highlights the importance of dance to health provision for women in the 1930s. Not as health-promoting exercise along the lines of the <a href="http://www.thefitnessleague.com/about-us/the-fitness-league-history">Women's League of Health and Beauty</a>, but as a means of supporting voluntary organisations in the health field (though it doubtless also provided beneficial exercise).<br />
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When we think of dance in the 1930s, we probably think of <a href="http://youtu.be/YtZrXzoaJvc">Fred and Ginger facing the music and dancing</a> or on a grimmer note, <a href="http://youtu.be/5yaY-Qk9nIs">dance marathons</a>, but a number of worthy causes in the UK held dances as a means of raising funds and gaining support.<br />
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In the recently acquired letter (<a href="http://tinyurl.com/9hsw98e">MS.8826</a>) from the archaeologist <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-jacquetta-hawkes-1343032.html">Jacquetta Hawkes</a> to a friend, she solicits his attendance at a 'modest kind of dance' at the New Burlington Galleries being got up in aid of the birth control clinic at which she volunteered.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtQdR4CAJS8uph8WHBlGF0yVkh_k3eDseIDEtq8BB4HgvKCxsPyDKpb-KxgU6UjnaCiub5T4VTnJK9V61MpUMoxoEuPtoHqr5WZ8BfwnC0IlOl94_RHoXt3yK8rhLPyWJ-aSTzCmY7RWA/s1600/malthusian+ball+1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtQdR4CAJS8uph8WHBlGF0yVkh_k3eDseIDEtq8BB4HgvKCxsPyDKpb-KxgU6UjnaCiub5T4VTnJK9V61MpUMoxoEuPtoHqr5WZ8BfwnC0IlOl94_RHoXt3yK8rhLPyWJ-aSTzCmY7RWA/s320/malthusian+ball+1.JPG" width="250" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">SA/FPA/A13/44</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This was not the only dance in aid of family planning, something that would not even be fully incorporated into National Health Service provision until 1974, during the 1930s when the struggle for support was still uphill. In 1933 the International Birth Control Group held a Malthusian Ball at the Dorchester Hall, for which they managed to gain the patronage of HRH Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone.<br />
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX5UCpYn6JRcIQELsfY4h_ifrlLP-w7JZE2HaKNU7JZJEpV5vlmM2G03pssTwyj5pGqnjLeMAcOgn7FPwoX-xAywYqSo35DzVGyCD1Dp87W2C2-fEdSodno-sbsMQViXIygTJiZA26fa0/s1600/malthusian+ball+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX5UCpYn6JRcIQELsfY4h_ifrlLP-w7JZE2HaKNU7JZJEpV5vlmM2G03pssTwyj5pGqnjLeMAcOgn7FPwoX-xAywYqSo35DzVGyCD1Dp87W2C2-fEdSodno-sbsMQViXIygTJiZA26fa0/s320/malthusian+ball+2.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">SA/FPA/A13/44</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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(We may note the use of the 'happy, healthy children' motif to advance their cause.)<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8pdFop4ywqjJCcd3EUystmYlf3-NVRqBk5jSowu_m_b9VBjAr5RffbL28XcKRSedz1U0HWU0IQPrIH3Gsk_6hCOl6x8OCYhgsSUIXHCjHQ-fd_Scmo7wXQaNOAVkzr33_J-cGbvajjOU/s1600/Strauss+ball.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8pdFop4ywqjJCcd3EUystmYlf3-NVRqBk5jSowu_m_b9VBjAr5RffbL28XcKRSedz1U0HWU0IQPrIH3Gsk_6hCOl6x8OCYhgsSUIXHCjHQ-fd_Scmo7wXQaNOAVkzr33_J-cGbvajjOU/s320/Strauss+ball.JPG" width="247" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">SA/NBT/G.15</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisKP-4AhCYIkM54h36zeUh2WdzdhdzlQWXcteuVVOSHp1k8-xj95IOHeNH2fvH7x_NPbHwjXkTJTJhnAt1Ie3vYL31fjrB1-nthf3RgLM7hQv5xbv2P0FefgzFF-k45XnKWG3-Rkfsi4Q/s1600/lace+ball.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisKP-4AhCYIkM54h36zeUh2WdzdhdzlQWXcteuVVOSHp1k8-xj95IOHeNH2fvH7x_NPbHwjXkTJTJhnAt1Ie3vYL31fjrB1-nthf3RgLM7hQv5xbv2P0FefgzFF-k45XnKWG3-Rkfsi4Q/s320/lace+ball.JPG" width="237" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">SA/NBT/G.16</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
With a much more elevated social profile (it had been founded by Lucy Baldwin, wife of the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin) and a rather different angle on tackling contemporary problems of maternal health, the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1035938/?tool=pmcentrez&pageindex=1">National Birthday Trust Fund</a> held a number of glittering society balls to raise funds for their research into obstetric analgesia and the improvement of midwifery.<br />
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While they faced the music and danced, and presumably enjoyed themselves as they did so, these organisations were less about moonlight, and love, and romance, than about making provisions for the potentially less welcome reproductive outcomes of those things.Lesley Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05646951940849882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-62551350301666458732012-10-08T15:23:00.000+01:002012-10-10T13:45:41.467+01:00An austere realm of great beauty<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim1xHjD3XYFHNe0RpddNTpcdFr4IovcMwsnIqroWZV_tRJ69HF8KDlAl84XGSsDRxHhknim1Oa3InFAeIKDc5s5ciyyT2pKyBCloWaxH5U8lP_tTHYlHaKVDkUZX1zdMdrhWbwPAxSUlw/s1600/DSCN1345.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim1xHjD3XYFHNe0RpddNTpcdFr4IovcMwsnIqroWZV_tRJ69HF8KDlAl84XGSsDRxHhknim1Oa3InFAeIKDc5s5ciyyT2pKyBCloWaxH5U8lP_tTHYlHaKVDkUZX1zdMdrhWbwPAxSUlw/s200/DSCN1345.JPG" width="150" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">Being an archivist is sometimes a strange profession, spanning a range of worlds. Your training can include instruction in Tudor handwriting or medieval Latin, but will also cover nuts and bolts information about reading room layouts, order slips and avoiding damp in your strongroom; whilst the working day can take you to discuss one of our medieval treasures with a scholar planning a critical edition, or into a dark garage or basement to survey papers covered with decades’ worth of cobwebs. It is surprising how often the ability to drive a Transit van through a narrow gap comes in handy, too: and an archivist in their first job soon learns that perhaps the most crucial people in their entire building are the people who run the loading-bay. We cover a range, then, from the elevated and academic to the sternly down-to-earth. By and large, though, archive work is practical: it centres on the basic task of acquiring material and carrying out the range of jobs required to get a description of it onto the catalogue and the thing itself into the reading room (or, increasingly, onto a screen as a digital facsimile).</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course we theorise: we discuss what to acquire and (just as significantly) what to leave behind, and we agonise over whether our acquisition policy and catalogue descriptions can ever be neutral and free of bias. Just to prove that archive work is not theory-free, we can point to the fact that Derrida has written on the subject (<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Archive-Fever-Freudian-Impression-Postmodernism/dp/0226143678/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349359859&sr=1-1">Archive Fever</a>): writings don’t get much more theoretical than that. But our basic principles are rooted in pragmatism. The most fundamental principle we have, that in cataloguing material one seeks to reflect the arrangement of the material given to it by its creator (and thus to reflect how <i>they </i>thought about the world, how <i>they </i>categorised things, not how we do those things) grew out of practical experience: the discovery that if you did anything else, if you arranged the papers in a way that reflected some abstract categorisation, this layout grew more and more out of date as the years passed and it became simply impossible to find anything.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It probably isn’t surprising, then, that for some years archivists were suspicious of cataloguing standards: of cataloguing material in accordance with some abstract principle, people feared, rather than having the description grow organically out of the individual item one had on one’s desk. The computer changed that: a database requires one to think about the things that one says about archives and to think about common elements, and the advantages of being able to exchange and pool data with other repositories are sufficiently great for people to start thinking about how one might map one office’s descriptive fields to another’s. It’s not a coincidence that the first widely-accepted international archive catalogue standard came out in the late 1990s, as the internet began to change the world of information: the snappily-named <a href="http://www.icacds.org.uk/eng/ISAD(G).pdf">ISAD(G)</a>, or General International Standard on Archival Description. (Not long after this we in the Wellcome Library began loading our old archive and manuscript catalogues to a database built around this standard, a process described <a href="http://wellcomelibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/colouring-in-last-bits-end-of-era.html">here</a>.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">ISAD(G) grew out of applied common-sense; a fusion of best practice as it was seen in archive catalogues around the world. Perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not, these various catalogues all converged on some basic concepts. Particularly relevant to those of us designing databases, the profession decided that there were basically twenty-six things one could say about an archive item, twenty-six concepts that would map to fields in a database. Some of these were specific, some very general (and notably number twenty-six is a general “Notes” field that translates to “Anything relevant that you couldn’t fit into the previous twenty-five”): and of them all, only five are crucial. To conform to the standard, a record must have these crucial five fields; the others can be left blank.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Earlier this summer I was talking at a conference of postgraduates specialising in the early modern period, explaining to them why they, as users of archive material, saw the things that they did when they consulted an archive catalogue, and what our reasoning was. This involved touching briefly on ISAD(G) and in particular on the five obligatory concepts that have to be there in any description of archive material. These are:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Reference: that is, some unique identifier that establishes which bundle of papers, out of all the millions in the world, you mean; for example, a manuscript number such as MS.49. Behind the scenes in our database these references have two little prefixes, identifying archive material as belonging to this library and no other, in this country and no other: this full reference, GB 0120 MS.49, distinguishes our MS.49 from any others in the world that may carry the same number. (GB is self-explanatory; 0120 takes you to our entry in the National Archives’ <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archon/default.htm">Archon</a> directory of archive repositories in the UK.)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Title; or, if the item doesn’t have a formal title, just a brief description of what the item is (“Correspondence file, A-D” for instance).</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Date: when was it created? (Even if it may not have an obvious exact date, one can usually at least guess to the nearest century: “1840s-1860s”, “early 20th century” or “16th century - 17th century” would all be acceptable.)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Extent: how much of it is there? Essentially, what is the reader up against – are we describing a single sheet of paper, 300 boxes, or some point between them?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Level: this is the closest we get to archive technicality: essentially, this asks one to say whether what’s being described is an entire collection, the whole archive of a given person or organisation, or simply part of a larger whole.</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjire0golffw29HIX5XUKNLd9gnQtb-TcOd4nzAoKNV-W3GpqB0i2Fw7Z71phfo9k05KiRcSdgihlimuFU4PZkEPKvIi-gG6f6CFVk0R4Oqp-lJwnlJHIrKeUBxUL23DLF6rX9wmAuB_10/s1600/Aristotle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjire0golffw29HIX5XUKNLd9gnQtb-TcOd4nzAoKNV-W3GpqB0i2Fw7Z71phfo9k05KiRcSdgihlimuFU4PZkEPKvIi-gG6f6CFVk0R4Oqp-lJwnlJHIrKeUBxUL23DLF6rX9wmAuB_10/s200/Aristotle.jpg" width="155" /></span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">At the end, a philosophy specialist approached me, excited by what he’d just heard: the way that the immense variety of all possible archive material was boiled down to these basic concepts reminded him, he thought, of what Bertrand Russell said about mathematics (in <i><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1118339~S8">Mysticism and Logic</a></i>), as having “not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.” Furthermore, the five ISAD(G) compulsory fields were, he thought, essentially basic logical categories set out by Aristotle in the 4th century BC. I had to take his word for this but on return to the office, a quick look at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categories_(Aristotle)">Wikipedia</a> showed that he was, indeed, onto something. Aristotle sets out ten basic categories, more than our compulsory five, which gives us the opportunity to browse them in search of matches, and sure enough we can set up a tentative mapping as follows:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Reference = Aristotle’s “Substance”: that is, the fact of this thing being uniquely one thing rather than another: the equivalent of the way you are yourself and not any of the billions of other people who are living or have lived;</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Title = Aristotle’s “Qualification” (what is it like?), describing it in terms not of its uniqueness but of qualities shared with other similar things (this is probably the most tentative of the mappings, as the sort of descriptive information found in this field could be shared across a few of Aristotle’s ten);</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Date = Aristotle’s “When”: its position relative to other events in a sequence;</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Extent = Aristotle’s “Quantity”: how much space does something occupy; and</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Level = Aristotle’s “Relation”: is it part of something else, or does it encompass that other thing?</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTOi_-sG400hO0J-tIX77MKZXKiwhzhjTXMN2mHcXobr5CCCBLHDJGmiUYgqXzkcj_RRxPJnc5CpCuh_-gPatWgYM04rq9A4CGAncnKyE50rnRRzEyKMFdrMJM9imlNtTjgBSpV6mQnmM/s1600/DSCN1322x.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTOi_-sG400hO0J-tIX77MKZXKiwhzhjTXMN2mHcXobr5CCCBLHDJGmiUYgqXzkcj_RRxPJnc5CpCuh_-gPatWgYM04rq9A4CGAncnKyE50rnRRzEyKMFdrMJM9imlNtTjgBSpV6mQnmM/s200/DSCN1322x.JPG" width="133" /></span></a><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Aristotle’s reputation in philosophy has long been one of pragmatism (contrasted, for example, with the “idealistic” Plato). It’s fitting, then, that a cataloguing standard based on pragmatism, on distilled best practice rather than advance theorising, should end up mirroring his work. We’ll avoid getting into any discussions about “reality” at this point, and whether this indicates that this is, therefore, how the universe “really” works – this is as far into philosophy as I want to go – but archive cataloguers can get a little glow of satisfaction from this. Readers using our catalogues can pause for a moment and look around at the austere realm of great beauty in which they find themselves. And Aristotle, the practical down-to-earth philosopher, can be inducted into the profession as an honorary archivist; although I’m not sure how good he’d be at driving a Transit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Images:</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">1/ Archive material photographed on a pickup in summer 2011. As garages go, quite a nice one: light, airy, dry and relatively spider-free.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">2/ Aristotle: a bust found in the ruins of Herculaneum. Image copyright the Clarendon Press, made available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK: see <a href="http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/">Wellcome Images</a>, image <span style="margin-right: 40px;">M0005620<b>.</b></span></span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; margin-right: 40px;"><i>3/ Archivist and transit van, photographed during the same pickup as image no.1. Other van hire firms are available.</i></span>Chris Hiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00026745342576904269noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-30830911264371241772012-10-02T16:20:00.003+01:002012-10-09T09:54:38.214+01:00Europ.In – Would your grandmother use it?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3D4i8s_iHo3CS9jDMQVOUHkkTt4mOKCSOkEeXAVccMJ8QdhTa_YPbYKV5dzPIYshtGz3tj-YSVTDzFaB8A9tn2sSk8V-Xe0pdN-08aVccWUFPsR0EOmUbUnOWB93OLJRXXH59whUkkv8/s1600/europIn.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3D4i8s_iHo3CS9jDMQVOUHkkTt4mOKCSOkEeXAVccMJ8QdhTa_YPbYKV5dzPIYshtGz3tj-YSVTDzFaB8A9tn2sSk8V-Xe0pdN-08aVccWUFPsR0EOmUbUnOWB93OLJRXXH59whUkkv8/s320/europIn.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://europ.in/">Europ.In</a> is a lovely web application that gives a <a href="http://europ.in/search?q=wellcome">Pinterest-like view of some of the Wellcome Library's more visually interesting material</a>.</div>
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The Wellcome Library contributes material from our <a href="http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/">Wellcome Images</a> and <a href="http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/wellcomefilm.htm">Wellcome Film</a> collections
to <a href="http://www.europeana.eu/portal/">Europeana</a> via the <span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;"><a href="http://www.europeana-libraries.eu/">EuropeanaLibraries</a></span>
project. These contributions allow our material to be discovered in Europ.In.
As important is Europeana’s decision to make its <span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">metadata freely available
and re-usable</span> available under <span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;"><a href="http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0_FAQ">CC0</a></span>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333;">The <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://pro.europeana.eu/web/guest/pro-blog/-/blogs/europ-in-would-your-grandmother-use-it">Europeana Professional blog</a></span> reports of the winners: “One
of our team asked, 'How could we make something that my grandmother would use?'
The result is an application in which people can view hundreds of images at
once, then access a close-up view of an item's details, links to related items
and sharing options.</span>”</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-23749525346214079532012-10-02T13:48:00.000+01:002012-10-02T13:48:10.670+01:00Library Insights: New for October<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizhv8f91JCm7rq_YJWfmjasaWGJL9JFsIwJwzywiwJS2zGJzsFlK2hSikYQ_vpbNHegoZEGzYyJiLiDXooZzQVUhBZ5DUujFw75EatG_VDHTIlFqgf2gAH6Xk8UTwd26qGg4gYiQD2bN42/s1600/ancientgreek.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" kea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizhv8f91JCm7rq_YJWfmjasaWGJL9JFsIwJwzywiwJS2zGJzsFlK2hSikYQ_vpbNHegoZEGzYyJiLiDXooZzQVUhBZ5DUujFw75EatG_VDHTIlFqgf2gAH6Xk8UTwd26qGg4gYiQD2bN42/s1600/ancientgreek.jpg" /></a></div>
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Two new <a href="http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/events/library-insights.aspx">Insight</a> talks, designed to highlight the breadth of the Library's collections, are coming up in October: <a href="http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/events/ancient-medicine.aspx">'Ancient Medicine: Secrets of the Greeks'</a> on the 4th at 3pm and <a href="http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/events/lovesick.aspx">'Lovesick'</a> on the 18th at 6pm. Learn about unusual ancient cures for a 'wandering womb' or how the broken-hearted were regarded in seventeenth century England.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0o4VmSnVF0qhMz-7ncU2wv5w9XEHHUfiba7EDMAw-lNAlrX9u0jA8TqSvIRLAJ2eZF_vIbGnssIaZh35AJtN8bXvtDHx7f4KYqGpmcR1vRLGd8FN6wxuWHkNpzxVib-70VEKg5hGvnH4p/s1600/cure.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" kea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0o4VmSnVF0qhMz-7ncU2wv5w9XEHHUfiba7EDMAw-lNAlrX9u0jA8TqSvIRLAJ2eZF_vIbGnssIaZh35AJtN8bXvtDHx7f4KYqGpmcR1vRLGd8FN6wxuWHkNpzxVib-70VEKg5hGvnH4p/s320/cure.bmp" width="201" /></a></div>
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Our popular Insight sessions give visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. These free sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections. <br />
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For further details, please follow the links above to the appropriate pages on the Wellcome Collection website.<br />
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Images: Greek women washing. Gouache painting. Library no. <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1192406">20407</a> A love sick man taking some of Doctor Hymen's pills to try and cure himself. Watercolour painting. Library no. <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1159996">11395</a>Danny Reeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02367469139278888864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-36618794484165973112012-09-27T17:37:00.000+01:002012-09-27T17:42:47.859+01:00R.I.P. Chief Inspector Dreyfus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19745910" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq_7qsQ-0C_nTXpnorjXqvWsb5jHyR8IlEhfZT63666B4jFeuPtwyCsbE8Bl6usdP9YTu8pmEi42e4-E4JyWUUCP-iVNN0WIsOE3eOBAXJkRu4oSP89gXdhIQDKvwNT6dylH-BRBu5kQU6/s200/lombbc.png" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">The BBC reports the death earlier
today of the actor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Lom"><b>Herbert Lom</b></a>, who played the police chief in the Pink Panther
films. His many other roles included parts in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ladykillers">The Ladykillers</a> (1955) and
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_of_the_Opera_%281962_film%29">The Phantom of the Opera</a> (1962). </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqItD8Jw1SQ1WGdpoRqtEhFXJo_F7kPNp8AU9pq0RpstcS47vmpRWxfR0pBTLPvgJxM5m3QcndM5EPgvVmc3hYfIEmVYTSbqPi1zxG-7vmuPT0foGDIsCNwM33TViqbxIZ_QzPpDUr0psP/s1600/lomguillotin.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqItD8Jw1SQ1WGdpoRqtEhFXJo_F7kPNp8AU9pq0RpstcS47vmpRWxfR0pBTLPvgJxM5m3QcndM5EPgvVmc3hYfIEmVYTSbqPi1zxG-7vmuPT0foGDIsCNwM33TViqbxIZ_QzPpDUr0psP/s320/lomguillotin.jpg" width="204" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/o?SEARCH=3854i&searchscope=8">Wellcome Library no. 3854i</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Herbert Lom was
born in Prague in 1917 but came to England</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"> at the start of World War II. In the
1970s and 1980s he used to visit the Wellcome Library to inform himself about Joseph-Ignace
Guillotin (1738-1814), the designer of the guillotine (right). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">In <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_the_Pink_Panther">The return of the Pink Panther</a> (1975), Lom, playing the role of Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus, had on
his desk a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEcsgbwBFRs" target="_blank">miniature guillotine used for cutting the rounded ends off his cigars</a>,
but which accidentally causes the enraged police commissioner to cut off the
tip of his thumb. </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"> At that time, the full-sized guillotine was still in use as the instrument of capital punishment in France. (And smoking in offices was normal.) </span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxUWAh9_Ybhg7V6f4I3wEQpA67lCtXfNwu4FXrqVrElOpR0hTN4KO8v5Wf2__oeQshWt8NYHr6E4iaOh6WmOTM9n_912XvOdgtSikl9TC_VU6yLrJoqfuRCR1cIsnJgFvJP14357eZ4YsH/s1600/lomgillray.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxUWAh9_Ybhg7V6f4I3wEQpA67lCtXfNwu4FXrqVrElOpR0hTN4KO8v5Wf2__oeQshWt8NYHr6E4iaOh6WmOTM9n_912XvOdgtSikl9TC_VU6yLrJoqfuRCR1cIsnJgFvJP14357eZ4YsH/s320/lomgillray.jpg" width="224" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/o?SEARCH=31599i&searchscope=8">Wellcome Library no. 31599i</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Whether it was the role which started his interest in Guillotin or <i>vice versa</i> Lom did not reveal, but he would settle in the Wellcome Library's
Biography Room and gather around him the Library's extensive resources on the subject, which include <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/a?searchtype=Y&searcharg=guillotin*&SORT=D&searchscope=5">portraits and historical prints</a>, <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/a?searchtype=Y&searcharg=guillotin*&SORT=D&searchscope=4&submit.x=35&submit.y=9">books, articles</a> and <a href="http://archives.wellcome.ac.uk/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqPos=0&dsqSearch=%28AltRefNo%3D%27MS%208379%27%29">autograph letters</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">His work on Guillotin
resulted in a novel <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/dr-guillotine-the-eccentric-exploits-of-an-early-scientist/oclc/28927397&referer=brief_results" target="_blank"><i><b>Dr Guillotine: the eccentric exploits of an early scientist</b></i></a>
(1992), <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>which was translated into Spanish and Czech.
He had earlier published the fictional <i><b>Enter a spy: the double life of Christopher
Marlowe</b></i> (1978).</span></div>
Wm Schupbachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05795739445897517943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-33472518703451789422012-09-24T18:33:00.004+01:002012-10-09T19:21:00.214+01:00X-rays by Sir Gervas Powell Glyn, Bt. Wellcome Library Item of the Month.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidJ40Yr-QV8yTNex9hpcpwPbwlItBjR7wxK-LSm9bcIZbYmpdXuLzoB6qQXk58Tc1kECuB5SyG_G4E4fAnEHZ-B0vERe1AEdpF08ym1gE82BG8mUnzVtEmUthFvz8zySJuQ90YE5OUu05S/s1600/glynroentgen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidJ40Yr-QV8yTNex9hpcpwPbwlItBjR7wxK-LSm9bcIZbYmpdXuLzoB6qQXk58Tc1kECuB5SyG_G4E4fAnEHZ-B0vERe1AEdpF08ym1gE82BG8mUnzVtEmUthFvz8zySJuQ90YE5OUu05S/s320/glynroentgen.jpg" width="209" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/o?SEARCH=70i&searchscope=8" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 70i</a></td></tr>
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Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (left) discovered X-rays through a combination of accident and experiment in December 1895, in his <a href="http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/ueber/university/roentgenring_science_mile/nobel_laureates/wilhelm_conrad_roentgen_1901/" target="_blank">laboratory at the University of Würzburg</a>. When he realized that he was looking through opaque objects, and was able to see for instance the metal panel on the other side of a solid wooden door, he first told a few professional colleagues, and then published his discovery to an astonished world in an article entitled “Űber eine neue Art von Strahlen” (“About a new kind of rays”). [1]<br />
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The news spread very quickly. In many countries, chemists and physicists, both professionals and amateurs, tried to replicate Röntgen’s methods and results, and succeeded. One of these enthusiasts was an English country gentleman, Sir Gervas Powell Glyn, 6th baronet, of Ewell in Surrey. The Glyns had been landowners in Ewell since the mid-eighteenth century. Their wealth derived from the bank known at different times as Glyn, Mills and Co. and Williams and Glyn's Bank.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvxbbEeGPo3_mpRiI6TB6-ZXO0H8MigsJqibfzFQnklK3p3ym9y_y8hxBPGgVvjYhAPGo9C2gLcwLmO0Cm2rAKw9vmn_BQB9VB2Q5-cFBJvbwU4oC3p3hZbhklH1mODNVfylSxhY4nInNw/s1600/gpglynportrait.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvxbbEeGPo3_mpRiI6TB6-ZXO0H8MigsJqibfzFQnklK3p3ym9y_y8hxBPGgVvjYhAPGo9C2gLcwLmO0Cm2rAKw9vmn_BQB9VB2Q5-cFBJvbwU4oC3p3hZbhklH1mODNVfylSxhY4nInNw/s320/gpglynportrait.jpg" width="264" /></a>Gervas Powell Glyn (1862-1921) was educated at Winchester and New College Oxford, and devoted his life to travel (in Ceylon, India, the Straits Settlements, China, Japan, British Columbia, Alaska, United States, New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Egypt, Syria, Tunis, Algiers, and Europe), playing the cello, art, translating Lieder, collecting antique musical instruments, and eccentric behaviour. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvxbbEeGPo3_mpRiI6TB6-ZXO0H8MigsJqibfzFQnklK3p3ym9y_y8hxBPGgVvjYhAPGo9C2gLcwLmO0Cm2rAKw9vmn_BQB9VB2Q5-cFBJvbwU4oC3p3hZbhklH1mODNVfylSxhY4nInNw/s1600/gpglynportrait.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>A <a href="http://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/GetRecord/SHCOL_6916">commemorative album now in Surrey History Centre</a> was compiled by his sister Margaret after his death. It contains photographs of him; watercolour paintings, writings and music by him; and photographs of his collection of antique musical instruments.<br />
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Helping us to visualize the Glyns themselves, the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/" target="_blank">Your Paintings</a> database includes portraits of both the 6th baronet and Margaret, preserved in <a href="http://www.epsom-ewell.gov.uk/EEBC/Leisure+and+Culture/Bourne+Hall/Museums+and+galleries" target="_blank">Bourne Hall Museum</a> at Ewell. The artists are unidentified.<br />
<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/gervas-powell-glyn-13037" target="_blank">Above right</a> is Sir Gervas in the 1890s.<br />
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This (below) is <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/margaret-glyn-12543" target="_blank">Margaret Glyn</a> in later life:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv3NTpEwZpAjnWA4V5epMESVR0zDzD5uxcspfPn2SvIV1m2iNvcSjPcGrv3yNhoDMJNf9X-4-AB-POmp1EJR4hgqiiKPc3j9ABloJilnCBwRrH_4Jdt0Cysdif8kK-26Ehbbrt4hSbqJ6_/s1600/gpglynmargaretportrait.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv3NTpEwZpAjnWA4V5epMESVR0zDzD5uxcspfPn2SvIV1m2iNvcSjPcGrv3yNhoDMJNf9X-4-AB-POmp1EJR4hgqiiKPc3j9ABloJilnCBwRrH_4Jdt0Cysdif8kK-26Ehbbrt4hSbqJ6_/s320/gpglynmargaretportrait.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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The British Library holds two slim volumes by Sir Gervas from 1911 with complementary and rhyming titles: one is <b><i>Sun Dry Tales of Rocks and Dales</i></b> and the other is <i><b>Fresh Wet Tales of Seas and Pails</b></i>.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgnN9QDtlnGU2KAoRnnw3idr9ezNjiZtDp947DVe2cZ8FkapoG_91K_0JNYv3cWlAVn2TY0VMZZbxSfiQ59q7O6mdGHnv8xlMp6r7JXlv2PpFSEtv-bgKHTuJOOZzh63ogcVXhgVoF57SF/s1600/gpglynhand.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a> <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgnN9QDtlnGU2KAoRnnw3idr9ezNjiZtDp947DVe2cZ8FkapoG_91K_0JNYv3cWlAVn2TY0VMZZbxSfiQ59q7O6mdGHnv8xlMp6r7JXlv2PpFSEtv-bgKHTuJOOZzh63ogcVXhgVoF57SF/s1600/gpglynhand.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgnN9QDtlnGU2KAoRnnw3idr9ezNjiZtDp947DVe2cZ8FkapoG_91K_0JNYv3cWlAVn2TY0VMZZbxSfiQ59q7O6mdGHnv8xlMp6r7JXlv2PpFSEtv-bgKHTuJOOZzh63ogcVXhgVoF57SF/s320/gpglynhand.jpg" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/o?SEARCH=44626i&searchscope=8" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 44626i</a></td></tr>
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At an inquiry at Ewell before Master Ambrose, Master in Lunacy, on 30 January 1906, the physician George Henry Savage declared his opinion that Sir Gervas Powell Glyn was of unsound mind. [2] One of Glyn's eccentric pursuits was radiography. In 1896 Sir Gervas had set up an “<a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/o?SEARCH=44651i&searchscope=8&submit.x=48&submit.y=12" target="_blank">X-ray installation</a>” at the Rectory House (now Glyn House) in Ewell, and made radiographs of the same kinds of things as Röntgen: his hand, the hands of other people, metal objects inside a wooden box, and (more unusually) <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/o?SEARCH=44668i&searchscope=8&submit.x=28&submit.y=8" target="_blank">a mouse</a> – not then the ubiquitous laboratory animal that it is today, but one all too easily obtainable in an old English country house.<br />
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The radiograph on the right shows his own hand, inscribed "G.P.G. 1896". One may be amazed at the superb quality achieved by an amateur.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLhOs1qz4rDJLgCiMlxxPejduAWDFi2weoTpZO0yX9RM5pEK_3CvreUwX4V9tKR1pNBgX_xBvJUxEgUoQ7lY1uPPD5kQcuwTfftTOCxn1LxOrPPzmmQ8cm6ZPwqmZZ3lySp_gsALDP-DC8/s1600/gpglynmargarethand.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLhOs1qz4rDJLgCiMlxxPejduAWDFi2weoTpZO0yX9RM5pEK_3CvreUwX4V9tKR1pNBgX_xBvJUxEgUoQ7lY1uPPD5kQcuwTfftTOCxn1LxOrPPzmmQ8cm6ZPwqmZZ3lySp_gsALDP-DC8/s320/gpglynmargarethand.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/o?SEARCH=44756i&searchscope=8" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 44756i</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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To the left is the hand of his sister, Margaret Glyn, inscribed "M.H.G. c. 1896", and equally fine in distinguishing the bones from the flesh by colour, by contrast, and by gradation.<br />
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Also like
Röntgen, Glyn radiographed the contents of closed boxes. Below is his box of drawing instruments, photographed from the outside.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlQ9Tv7Ar30zBO1L24QxdtxYx1ng9_xClPszYq_KD33aTiwErrpLluIdEWZAZgx6f_wv88C2xsDLV8J6ZSX1IouT0eiwTt-YvECECLwUyQIFU6fRO4QS07-nf2s1YBSZNIBVZbTdZY3uZM/s1600/gpglynbox2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlQ9Tv7Ar30zBO1L24QxdtxYx1ng9_xClPszYq_KD33aTiwErrpLluIdEWZAZgx6f_wv88C2xsDLV8J6ZSX1IouT0eiwTt-YvECECLwUyQIFU6fRO4QS07-nf2s1YBSZNIBVZbTdZY3uZM/s400/gpglynbox2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/o?SEARCH=44758i&searchscope=8" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 44758i</a></td></tr>
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Other <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search~S8?/mradiographs/mradiographs/1%2C1%2C74%2CB/exact&FF=mradiographs&1%2C74%2C/limit?" target="_blank">X-rays from before the First World War</a> are also held in the Wellcome Library, as are the <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search~S5/a?R%7Bu00F6%7Dntgen%2C+Wilhelm+Conrad%2C+1845-1923">nine very earliest ones which Röntgen made in 1895</a> to show to his professional colleagues. The rapid diffusion of radiography, aided by amateurs such as Glyn, enabled the technique to be turned to surgical uses by the time of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_American_War" target="_blank">Spanish-American War</a> (1898) and the second <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_War_(Boer_War)" target="_blank">South African ("Boer") War</a> (1899-1902), and from those battlefields to civilian uses in the following century. [3]<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">[1] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Herbert S. Klickstein, <b style="font-style: italic;">Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen
on a new kind of rays : a bibliographical study</b>,<b style="font-style: italic;"> </b>[Philadelphia?] : Mallinckrodt,
1966. Find in the Wellcome Library <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1545613~S8" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">[2] <i><b>The Times</b></i>, 31 January 1906, p. 6</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">[3] <span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Edward
H. Benton, 'British surgery in the South African War: the work of Major
Frederick Porter', <i><b>Medical history</b></i>, 1977, 21: 275-290 (online at <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1082006/pdf/medhist00106-0046.pdf">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1082006/pdf/medhist00106-0046.pdf</a>
)</span></span> Wm Schupbachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05795739445897517943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-69730019736785045332012-09-21T17:13:00.000+01:002012-09-21T17:15:27.941+01:00Woman's Hour<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJXu81e38LK_Bmu9a6WONZE4Ls8RN3wgy0nQaXjcykb16dZC_V3Ul58MtBBuzfWyHoA-EAFjcjtRtMwOwtiGasNMwvR7a88a3Qzl0SR0xVkE6AUtN_UdDnZcRhUlDpe_1Sor7n7L5CtHzu/s1600/womanshour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJXu81e38LK_Bmu9a6WONZE4Ls8RN3wgy0nQaXjcykb16dZC_V3Ul58MtBBuzfWyHoA-EAFjcjtRtMwOwtiGasNMwvR7a88a3Qzl0SR0xVkE6AUtN_UdDnZcRhUlDpe_1Sor7n7L5CtHzu/s200/womanshour.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
This week, <em><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007qlvb">Woman's Hour</a></em> on BBC Radio 4 featured a discussion between Dr Lesley Hall, Senior Archivist, Wellcome Library and author <a href="http://www.lisaappignanesi.com/">Lisa Appignanesi</a>. <br />
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Inspired by the new film <em><a href="http://www.sonyclassics.com/hysteria/">Hysteria</a></em> their discussion traced the historical roots of the term and also examined the historical evidence supporting claims that electromechanical vibrators were invented to treat 'hysterical' women at the end of the nineteenth century.<br />
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Listeners in the UK can listen again to the interview through the <em>Woman's Hour</em> <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00ynyjw">website</a>. Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07038309294124081517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-33098068074897669712012-09-21T16:26:00.000+01:002012-09-26T16:17:19.094+01:00Dr Elma Brenner on Sick City Talks<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiahcaJk5eMGkedErl6XV86DsoythRH8XZaaIP1rwWMbLypcCtyV568WeMdLuB7mcWmrpJKQ_dA4VIUHbWgfImq50iRWDp3leleq2Y1-94-4dW82cA2Zv4jRwBvrJRu_vocKeagP9h074Ee/s1600/medivalmarginalia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiahcaJk5eMGkedErl6XV86DsoythRH8XZaaIP1rwWMbLypcCtyV568WeMdLuB7mcWmrpJKQ_dA4VIUHbWgfImq50iRWDp3leleq2Y1-94-4dW82cA2Zv4jRwBvrJRu_vocKeagP9h074Ee/s320/medivalmarginalia.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<a href="http://sickcityproject.wordpress.com/sick-city-talks/">Sick City Talks</a> are a new series of <a href="http://sickcityproject.wordpress.com/sick-city-talks/">podcasts</a> on the history, literature, art and science of medicine in London, devised by Wellcome Trust Public Engagement Fellow, <a href="http://sickcityproject.wordpress.com/richard-barnett/">Dr Richard Barnett</a>.<br />
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The latest in the series, features Richard in conversation with Dr Elma Brenner, Medieval and Early Modern Specialist in the Wellcome Library.<br />
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The podcast features Elma discussing the delights of medieval marginalia, the challenges of digitising early modern printed books, and the surprising conjunction of pigs and lepers in the history of London's St James’ Park.<br />
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See the Sick City <a href="http://sickcityproject.wordpress.com/">website</a> for more information on Richard's other current projects.<br />
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<em>Image: Small pen drawing in margin of manuscript showing the head of a man with an arrow in the head and blood pouring from the wound, 14th century (<a href="http://http//catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1605264~S8">MS.544</a>)</em>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07038309294124081517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-967362323321480325.post-81080529193312606182012-09-13T19:48:00.000+01:002012-09-14T20:18:07.212+01:00Graphic intimations of mortalityThe <a class="snap_shots" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori">memento mori</a> pictures in the Wellcome Library range from complex and learned allegories to popular works which encourage their owners to laugh in the face of fate.<br />
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A comparable collection, focused on the <i><b>Dance of death</b></i>, was acquired by the late Professor Hans Schadewaldt (1923-2009) for the <a class="snap_shots" href="http://www.uniklinik-duesseldorf.de/unternehmen/institute/institut-fuer-geschichte-der-medizin">Institut für Geschichte der Medizin at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf</a>, and has supplied material for several exhibitions and studies. [1] As this posting will show, the Wellcome Library's pictures, like the Düsseldorf collection, also provide a continuing stimulus to new interpretations; the opportunity to preserve rare works from destruction; and a context for new accessions. They also contribute to the study of a subject -- attitudes to death -- which (one might surmise) is manifested in cultural objects in every country on earth.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrb_5NkGIKZF0cEIQuqFyhXondtIlxUhbup_JX7c8ha9QH_9Y_qsVaYLetqf5IZ7c6J0Lkaz2SujmAGMlhas9Zs61TuRmj0VDggJ5d4BFtfKd-zzFCdA0CHcePT4M1nP00zOBiM_XA9ewS/s1600/deathfortuna+chiaroscuro.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrb_5NkGIKZF0cEIQuqFyhXondtIlxUhbup_JX7c8ha9QH_9Y_qsVaYLetqf5IZ7c6J0Lkaz2SujmAGMlhas9Zs61TuRmj0VDggJ5d4BFtfKd-zzFCdA0CHcePT4M1nP00zOBiM_XA9ewS/s640/deathfortuna+chiaroscuro.jpg" width="435" /></a></div>
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Chiaroscuro woodcut, 1588. <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/o?33798i" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 33798i</a></div>
One of the most elaborate of these documents in the Wellcome Library is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiaroscuro_woodcut#Chiaroscuro_woodcuts">chiaroscuro woodcut</a> from 1588 shown here. It depicts a complex monument to death, with, in the centre, the three Fates weaving the thread of life, and below them a wheel of death. At the bottom is a sarcophagus, and all around mortality-motifs are artfully disposed: they include skulls, obelisks, Father Time, Adam and Eve, and relevant mottos.<br />
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The woodcut is attributed to Andrea Andreani (1560-1623), an artist who worked mainly in Mantua and Siena. It bears his faint AA monogram in the lower right corner: it is faint because it is printed in the tone colour used on only one of the two blocks on which the design was made (one block for each colour used). That may be a way for Andreani to declare himself one of the few masters of the art of the chiaroscuro woodcut, as indeed he was.<br />
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Who was the author of this extraordinary composition? Not Andreani, who was a woodblock-cutter. There is a dedication in the lower left corner to one Pietro Cavallo by Giovanni Fortuna of Siena (1535-1611), and this inscription also names him as the designer. He is known to have practised as a goldsmith in Siena. If he produced this design for execution by himself in metal, as an object of virtu, he must have had a rare ability.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9-2S_iIRF1YbmYaUHeKH4LIbpjsvYxhsVPdWdUyz9M-nrT56l9v-RT4QeMkpBQFCmKupVcmo1l3ZWVN85Ypt_TY_O0NmG6qnhM1TQv_vmAsstGUcQEYeBzH4iAtC8zgLTaSsH3-RjPEuH/s1600/deathfortuna+engr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9-2S_iIRF1YbmYaUHeKH4LIbpjsvYxhsVPdWdUyz9M-nrT56l9v-RT4QeMkpBQFCmKupVcmo1l3ZWVN85Ypt_TY_O0NmG6qnhM1TQv_vmAsstGUcQEYeBzH4iAtC8zgLTaSsH3-RjPEuH/s640/deathfortuna+engr.jpg" width="441" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">Engraving by or after G. Fortuna, ca. 1588.
<a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search%7ES5/o?33803i" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 33803i</a></div>
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However he may have produced it as a design for an engraving, for another version of the composition exists in the Wellcome Library as an engraving (with etching), perhaps by Fortuna himself (image above). (The link between the engraving and the woodcut was first kindly brought to the Wellcome Library's attention by Malcolm Jones, and confirmed by Giulia Bartrum of the British Museum.) There are differences. The engraving has extensive lettering in Italian verse, lamenting the mortality of mankind: none of these is in the chiaroscuro woodcut, where only Latin and Greek are used (following the Latin and Greek wording on the engraving.)</div>
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That suggests that the engraving was produced for a more popular market, and the woodcut for the elite. The drawing in the engraving seems less competent: this could mean that it is by a less skilled artist copying Andreani's chiaroscuro woodcut, or conversely that Andreani smartened up Fortuna's draftsmanship when he cut his woodcut, if Andreani was the copyist. A detailed examination of the two prints would be necessary to elicit the sequence of events.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO9aqvZqYVPYFmf905dLTFVZtz2gGvSNr5_nn8CYnu4yEpp_7foOisvk4-ZFdiQQGAY-1WfNDVi5UaOz6wfRSWXHK6XS3fFZimWQMXy-mZGL1kDapIanvW1Uvro83tHLq19I7rcmNIJqPx/s1600/deathfortunaengrbefore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO9aqvZqYVPYFmf905dLTFVZtz2gGvSNr5_nn8CYnu4yEpp_7foOisvk4-ZFdiQQGAY-1WfNDVi5UaOz6wfRSWXHK6XS3fFZimWQMXy-mZGL1kDapIanvW1Uvro83tHLq19I7rcmNIJqPx/s200/deathfortunaengrbefore.jpg" width="140" /></a></div>
The engraving appears to be very rare, and the Wellcome Library's impression survived until recently as a somewhat crumpled sheet with frayed edges (image right). Its rarety was a factor in the decision to conserve it last year. From the contrast between its state before and after conservation, readers will appreciate the improvement achieved by the Wellcome Library's conservator, Luana Franceschet.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSL0QGYIYQZJ_Yoe7CRg7R86cy_R1-NQJvk_WRGayKurCGFKIq2FEIPs00DRkGTtip-ogTJpwjzFBkyRGYqsoDCPsZbonL0ws5p7kFCxEMg1dYHUJsN1wjjbSHBnXVFbKT4VDnT_yPjDE-/s1600/deathfates+galle+ptg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSL0QGYIYQZJ_Yoe7CRg7R86cy_R1-NQJvk_WRGayKurCGFKIq2FEIPs00DRkGTtip-ogTJpwjzFBkyRGYqsoDCPsZbonL0ws5p7kFCxEMg1dYHUJsN1wjjbSHBnXVFbKT4VDnT_yPjDE-/s400/deathfates+galle+ptg" width="315" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">Oil painting on wood.
<a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search%7ES5/o?44560i" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 44560i </a></div>
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One of the <i><b>memento mori</b></i>-subjects depicted in the Fortuna prints is the three Fates, who sit in a kind of grotto within the arch. They are the subject of a painting on wood (above) contemporary with Fortuna's composition. It shows the three Fates of Greek and Roman mythology: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. Clotho ("spinner") in the centre distributes the fibres from a distaff. Lachesis ("Allotment") on the right measures out thread on to the spindle, the length of the thread corresponding to the lifespan of a given person. Finally, Atropos cuts the thread at the moment of death with a large pair of shears: her name means "No turning back", because once the thread has been cut, it cannot be uncut.<br />
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This painting, assuming as it does a knowledge of Graeco-Roman mythology, is an example of the type of <b><i>memento mori</i></b> picture designed to appeal to erudite taste. Features of the picture typical of "mannnerist" paintings of the later sixteenth century also imply an aspiration to the culture of Italy, Haarlem, or Prague: they include the silvery flesh-tones of two of the Fates, the contorted postures, and the "rosy-fingered dawn" (or dusk) in the left background.<br />
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Left: <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search%7ES5/o?45446i" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 45446i </a><br />
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As with Andreani's woodcut, so here, the painter was not the designer of the composition: the designer was apparently Philipp Galle of Antwerp (1537-1612), who had earlier published a much smaller black and white engraving of the composition which served as a model for our painter (image left). Such engravings were exported from Antwerp in vast quantities to serve (among other purposes) as models for painters in other parts of the world not so familiar with current fashions in art. The contorted postures in Galle's print may have seemed impressive to our painter or to his patron, but to anyone familiar with the life-drawing skills taught in Italian academies, the artistic anatomy will have seemed unconvincing both in the engraving and in the painting.<br />
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One of those less sophisticated parts of the world was England, and one can easily imagine the present painting proudly displayed in a wealthy house in Shakespeare's England. English painters of the time (and other artists such as cabinet-makers and plasterers) were heavily dependent on Flemish models, and had little or no first hand knowledge of such masters of artistic anatomy as Michelangelo and Raphael.<br />
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Yet literary Englishmen of the time were familiar with the mythology of the Fates. The painting embodies the scene that was in Shakespeare's mind when Brutus in <i>Julius Caesar</i> (III.i) says:<br />
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<b>Fates, we will know your pleasures: </b></div>
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<b>That we shall die, we know; 'tis but the time </b></div>
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<b>And drawing days out, that men stand upon.</b></div>
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or when Bottom in <i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i> (V,i) calls out:<br />
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<b>O Fates, come, come, </b></div>
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<b>Cut thread and thrum; </b></div>
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<b>Quail, crush, conclude, and quell!</b></div>
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Another part of the world where Netherlandish models of mortality were used by painters was Bohemia, as is shown by a remarkable current exhibition in the Loreto pilgrims' centre in Prague. In the church of that complex--the Capuchin church of the Holy Nativity--wall paintings on the themes of death and resurrection have been discovered in a hitherto unknown space in the crypt.<br />
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The paintings were commissioned around 1664 by the then patroness of Loreto, Countess Elisabeth Apollonia of Kolowrat, and may have been painted by a Capuchin monk, copying Dutch and Flemish engravings of the Grim Reaper and similar themes. The crypt was discovered as a result of a mistake: researchers were looking for a documented crypt which was actually in a completely different building! Though the Loreto crypt itself cannot be opened to the public, an exhibition including a walk-in <a href="http://www.loreta.cz/en/vystavy.htm" target="_blank">reconstruction of the space</a> is on show until 30 September 2012*. A book [2] has also been published about this unexpected discovery, and a short <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLj0X7GJZGE%20" target="_blank">virtual visit to the crypt</a> is available online.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVMMkxdxc7wcWiTIUUEGZi57Z7QBMk3kw2oz_zm93zuswzAKHOSofF0jGB0K6GP88DWZ5xF1xRhacORjfCxTTAtLwpwuDGVgTWHmAQgMICLCVqicFk0gK21GPYB-nMRi1WdY9jmIx0E-K8/s1600/deathwoman+altzenbach.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVMMkxdxc7wcWiTIUUEGZi57Z7QBMk3kw2oz_zm93zuswzAKHOSofF0jGB0K6GP88DWZ5xF1xRhacORjfCxTTAtLwpwuDGVgTWHmAQgMICLCVqicFk0gK21GPYB-nMRi1WdY9jmIx0E-K8/s640/deathwoman+altzenbach.jpg" width="369" /></a></div>
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Engraving by Gerhard Altzenbach, 16--. <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/o?803817i%20" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 803817i</a>.
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Among the Wellcome Library's <i><b>memento mori</b></i> prints are two by Gerhard Altzenbach who worked as an engraver and publisher in Cologne in the mid-17th century. The Wellcome Library recently had the opportunity to acquire a third print by the same artist, showing a skeleton as a fashionably dressed woman. The verses below mock her as a modern Helen of Troy, who needs to think more of her soul: in the top left corner, the Last Judgment, with the Virgin and Jesus Christ intervening before God on behalf of the saved, are intended to remind viewers of the fate of everyone, however "fashionable, rich, capricious, and proud". The print is actually one half of a pair, the other showing a foppish man addressed as Paris, the male counterpart to Helen.[3]<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx98cofOEQRg-kI-TBQuhh3mpHMetOLs_7dHHbGJuY1kidrHMcmbPbjQjnVQreGKU1tr9ucXeKyQL261Fq80wpQnGBjB6XsP0njydUbua1EMgKft6jzonhOeTBzdhsmXRewAflIBa4JcG6/s1600/death+woman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx98cofOEQRg-kI-TBQuhh3mpHMetOLs_7dHHbGJuY1kidrHMcmbPbjQjnVQreGKU1tr9ucXeKyQL261Fq80wpQnGBjB6XsP0njydUbua1EMgKft6jzonhOeTBzdhsmXRewAflIBa4JcG6/s320/death+woman.jpg" width="129" /></a></div>
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Right: <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/o?43944i" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 43944i </a></div>
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Here too there is some relationship between print and painting, for a large oil painting in the Wellcome Library, from the South of France or Spain, uses the same idea (though not exactly the same composition: image right), showing that the Puritan contrast between enjoyment of life and meditation on death was not restricted to one geographical area.<br />
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A similar print, but with an unusual and clever twist, was acquired by our colleagues in the <i><b>Folger Shakespeare Library</b></i>, Washington, D.C., at the New York Print Fair in November 2011. Readers will surely enjoy the description by Dr Erin Blake on the Folger's blog, <i><b><a href="http://collation.folger.edu/2011/11/a-trip-to-the-fair" target="_blank">Collation</a></b></i>. [4] <br />
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Many memento mori prints use ideas derived from the mediaeval theme of the <i><b>Dance of death</b></i>, often mediated through the <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/a?searchtype=Y&searcharg=%22dance+of+death%22+holbein&SORT=D&searchscope=8">woodcuts of the subject by Hans Holbein</a>. It is remarkable how adaptable this theme has proved. Some artists have taken whole <i><b>Dance of death</b></i> and have set it in their times, while others have taken a traditional episode from the <i><b>Dance of death</b></i> and have treated it in their idiosyncratic style.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">Coloured etching, 1808.
<a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/o?493366i" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 493366i</a></div>
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Examples of the former are the series <a href="http://www.moma.org/interactives/bookbrowser_templates/book_21.html" target="_blank"><i><b>Ein neuer Totentanz</b></i></a> (1947) by the Austrian Alfred Kubin, based on drawings executed in 1937-1938, and <i><b>The dance of death modernised</b></i>, a large etching (image above: sheet 56.8 x 72 cm.) by Isaac Cruikshank, 1808, after designs probably made by by G.M. Woodward about a decade earlier, ca. 1795/1797. The latter contains twenty-four Georgian figures arranged in four rows, starting at the top left with a king and Catherine the Great of Russia (1729-1796), implying that Catherine had recently died: in vain she retorts to Death "Fellow!—I am an Empress!". It continues with a parson, a lawyer, a physician ("Here's fine encouragement for the Faculty!"), a retired prostitute with syphilis, a gouty old man, etc.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq2ol4haWqEc_Ul6a0_E2AfMN_j_aJH5SqMkCVL8oHfCR5QcV9lIZnUemSb8gLWE8AlYJHtiRjyaULKfEq3orrBzLC_7_mU4h46vIOGBIYH1xdoLsp1afJw5PVbTOhR5Z_xhXHC_SR0Dlk/s1600/death+marcks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq2ol4haWqEc_Ul6a0_E2AfMN_j_aJH5SqMkCVL8oHfCR5QcV9lIZnUemSb8gLWE8AlYJHtiRjyaULKfEq3orrBzLC_7_mU4h46vIOGBIYH1xdoLsp1afJw5PVbTOhR5Z_xhXHC_SR0Dlk/s320/death+marcks.jpg" width="220" /></a></div>Left: Woodcut by G. Marcks, 1959.
<a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search%7ES8/o?803818i" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 803818i</a><br />
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An example of a single figure is this woodcut (left) produced in 1959 by Gerhard Marcks, and reproduced here as a new acquisition by the Wellcome Library. Marcks (1889-1981) was a sculptor and graphic artist whose many honours include his condemnation by the Nazis as a producer of "degenerate art". Marcks's graphic work shows an awareness of earlier German art, such as the macabre prints and drawings by the Germans Albrecht Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien, and by the Swiss Hans Holbein.<br />
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However, here Marcks has given the theme an unusual twist by making the woman pregnant (<i><b>Schwangere und Tod</b></i>), a reference to the many deaths in childbirth that existed in his time and at all times. This print has been described by Karl S. Guthke as a "variation on the <i><b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and_the_Maiden_%28disambiguation%29" target="_blank">Death and the Maiden </a></b></i>motif that goes back to the Renaissance and by 1800 had merged with the Romantic fixation on death in the bridal chamber". [5] <br />
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<div style="text-align: right;">Oil painting.
<a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/o?45066i" target="_blank">Wellcome Library no. 45066i</a></div>
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An earlier German painting of the entire<i><b> Dance of Death</b></i> in the Wellcome Library (image right) is the subject of an analysis by Aleksandra Koutny-Jones in the current issue of <i><b>Wellcome history</b></i>. [6] <br />
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Readers who have read this far share an interest in the iconography of death with Tim Knox, Director of <a href="http://www.soane.org/" target="_blank">Sir John Soane's Museum</a> in London, who has described his new hobby: perusing the <a class="snap_shots" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/" target="_blank">Your paintings</a> database for "<a href="http://www.thepcf.org.uk/what_we_do/48/reference/614" target="_blank">Morbid discoveries</a>", paintings of deathly themes.
Referrring to the Wellcome Library as a "fathomless reservoir", he draws attention to three Wellcome Library paintings on the subject of mortality (not the same pictures as any reproduced here), as well as to some grand history-paintings of death worth knowing about in other British collections, from Glasgow in the north to Dartmouth in the south-west.<br />
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Another scholar who shared the same interest was the physician <a href="http://archives.wellcome.ac.uk/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqPos=5&dsqSearch=%28%28text%29%3D%27parkes%20weber%27%29" target="_blank">Frederick Parkes Weber</a>, the author of a substantial "anthology and iconography" entitled <i><b>Aspects of death and correlated aspects of life</b></i>. [7] As Weber was born in 1863 and died in 1962, Lachesis must have drawn out a particularly long piece of thread at his birth for Atropos to snip at just short of the 100-year mark. So great is the theme that any shorter lifespan is scarcely sufficient to get to grips with it.<br />
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[1] e.g. <i><b>Zum Sterben schön: Alter, Totentanz und Sterbekunst von 1500 bis heute</b></i>, edited by A. von Hülsen-Esch and H. Westermann-Angerhausen together with S. Knöll, Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2006 (find in the Wellcome Library <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1749510%7ES8" target="_blank">here</a>). <br />
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[2] Petr Bašta, Markéta Baštová, et al. <i><b>Ars moriendi: the Loreto crypts</b></i>. Prague: Czech Capuchin Province, 2012. ISBN 978-80-905228-2-4 (English-language version). Online at <a href="http://issuu.com/loreto-prague/docs/ars_moriendi_en/3">http://issuu.com/loreto-prague/docs/ars_moriendi_en/3</a> <br />
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[3] Impressions of the pair were with Antiquariat Franz Siegle, Mühlhausen-Kraichgau, Baden-Württemberg: <i><b>Der Sonderkatalog der Antiquare Siegle & Schwing, Totentanz: Bücher und Graphik</b></i>, no. 93 (online through <a href="http://www.antiquariat-siegle.de/katalog.htm">http://www.antiquariat-siegle.de/katalog.htm</a>)<br />
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[4] <a href="http://collation.folger.edu/2011/11/a-trip-to-the-fair">http://collation.folger.edu/2011/11/a-trip-to-the-fair</a><br />
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[5] Karl S. Guthke, <i><b>The gender of death: a cultural history in art and literature</b></i>, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 244 (find in the Wellcome Library <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1072775%7ES8" target="_blank">here</a>)<br />
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[6] Aleksandra Koutny-Jones, 'A macabre mystery: the Wellcome Library's Dance of death', <i><b>Wellcome history</b></i>, 2012, 50: 14-16 Available free online at <a href="http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/stellent/groups/corporatesite/@msh_publishing_group/documents/web_document/wtvm056126.pdf">http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/stellent/groups/corporatesite/@msh_publishing_group/documents/web_document/wtvm056126.pdf</a><br />
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[7] Frederick Parkes Weber, <i><b>Aspects of death and correlated aspects of life in art, epigram, and poetry : contributions towards an anthology and an iconography of the subject</b></i>. 4 editions (1910, 1914, 1918, 1922). Find in the Wellcome Library <a href="http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/a?searchtype=Y&searcharg=weber+%22aspects+of+death%22&SORT=D&searchscope=4&submit.x=31&submit.y=15" target="_blank">here</a>. <br />
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*STOP PRESS: the Prague exhibition has been extended to <b>November 2012</b>. They'll be hard put to find a more absorbing offering than this one!
Wm Schupbachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05795739445897517943noreply@blogger.com0