Lockdown Reads: Non-Fiction

 

I’m back with more of what I’ve been reading, this time with some non-fiction titles. The first two are the sort of books that make me feel oddly conflicted, because although I get really excited about reading them, merely knowing they exist makes me feel bad about myself. This happens when I see a book on a topic that I’m very interested in or know a lot about, because I feel inadequate for not writing books like this myself when I’ve really no one but myself and my sheer laziness to blame. The Wonders especially made me feel like that because the topic of my Master’s thesis was “constructions of dwarfism in 18th century England,” and one of the people I focused on was Jozef Boruwlaski, to whom Woolf devotes an entire chapter. Honestly, for parts of it I felt like he must have somehow read my thesis, since he was making the same points I was, but of course it’s only natural that someone using the same source material would come to the same conclusions I did, which is obviously what happened here (also, Woolf’s book is better written than my thesis was. I did not try that hard). I’m also super jealous that he got a Ph.D in Victorian freak shows, since I would LOVE to study something like that. But I’m not going to let my enviousness of this guy’s life turn my review into sour grapes, because I genuinely loved this book. It was so fun to read, and was the perfect combination of cultural and medical history.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for Poe-Land. I’ve also read Ocker’s book on visiting Salem, Massachusetts in October, and though he also writes about the sorts of things I love, I can’t get behind his books. I just don’t think they’re very well-written – honestly, he makes Poe boring, which is pretty hard to do – and something about his tone grates on me. I would have loved the opportunity to visit all these Poe sites and write about them, and it pisses me off that someone who did have these opportunities didn’t actually seem all that enthusiastic about it (though I guess the same criticism could be levelled at me when I blog about places I don’t particularly enjoy), but such is life.

 

As I mentioned in my BLM post, I am trying harder to educate myself on issues surrounding race, including reading these two books (for starters!). Since I have close family members that are Trump supporters, I was really interested to read Dying of Whiteness to see if he could provide an explanation for the phenomenon summed up in the book’s subtitle, whereby white working class Americans tend to vote for parties and policies that actually make their quality of life worse. Metzl divides his book into three sections, on education, health care, and guns, focusing on a different Southern/Midwestern community for each, and he shows how these issues affect white voters, and then interviews the voters themselves to try to determine why they vote against their own best interests, and it does often come down to a deeply ingrained culture of racism, whether the voters realise it or not (basically, they would rather go without things themselves, like health care than have their taxes go to programmes that would benefit people of colour, who they consider lazy and not deserving of benefits). I still don’t understand it on a personal level, because I don’t really care who else gets to use the NHS as a result of my paying National Insurance, since I get to use it too, but it does provide an insight into a large segment of the American population, and it probably just makes me even angrier than I was already at American politics. I’m still glad I read it, though it is quite dry and almost academic in parts, with a whole chapter in each section dedicated to various graphs and charts that I couldn’t be bothered to sit there and decipher.

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race, although it also cites a number of statistics and studies, was a much more engaging book than Dying of Whiteness, probably because Eddo-Lodge is a woman of colour who intimately understands the topic she’s writing about, whereas Metzl comes across as something of an outsider to the people he’s interviewing, despite his upbringing in Missouri. I think Eddo-Lodge’s book might be the more uncomfortable of the two books for white people to read, as the kind of people who are likely to read Metzl’s book probably look down their noses a bit on Trump voters anyway, but even “woke” people are likely to find it difficult to confront their own biases, as implied by the title of Eddo-Lodge’s book. But I honestly enjoyed WINLTtWPaR more of the two books, because it was more challenging and passionate. Definitely worth a read!

 

I generally enjoy Bill Bryson – both his travel writing and his more factual titles (though I still say his audio guide to the Roman Baths in Bath is awful) – and it’s no secret that I’m interested in medical history and medicine in general, so this definitely seemed like a winner. And it was! It was sort of reminiscent of a slightly less fun Mary Roach (not intended as an insult, since I really love Mary Roach, and even slightly less fun is still pretty fun) whereby Bryson provides a comprehensive guide to everything in the human body for non-medical professionals, and even though some of it relied on references to other medical books I’ve already read, I think Bryson does a great job of compiling everything in one place and making it easy to read.

I had my eye on A Curious History of Sex for a while, and finally grabbed it when the price dropped. This one was definitely entertaining in parts, and contained A LOT of Victorian pornographic images, which I genuinely found fascinating (in a non-erotic way), but it was very piecemeal and felt more like something to dip in and out of than to read straight through. Because I did just read it all at once (not in one sitting, but I wasn’t reading anything else in between), I probably enjoyed it less than I would have if I’d just read a chapter here and there, but it’s still worth a look if you’re interested in sexual practices through the ages, though it is VERY hetero-centric, with only a small section on gay sex that felt very incomplete. I realise that there is only so much space in a book, and obviously no text can be totally comprehensive, but considering Lister spent a tonne of time talking about obscure things like the erotic aspects of bicycling, it seemed odd to leave out an entire major dimension of sexuality.

 

The next two titles were equally fascinating in different ways. Whilst I adore a nice grisly true crime book, The Five was very much not this; if you go in looking for gory details on the Jack the Ripper murders, you will be disappointed. However, there are already plenty of books devoted to the murders themselves – what Rubenhold is trying to do is give the victims a voice, as so many Jack the Ripper books focus so much on the Ripper that they almost end up glorifying him, which is pretty messed up when you think about it. So this is all about the lives of these women before they were murdered, and the women they might have been. Primary sources are fairly sketchy for working class Victorian women, so some of this is speculation, but Rubenhold generally makes that clear, and the information she has been able to uncover is fascinating, albeit deeply depressing, These women had such hard lives, and she really managed to bring that sense of deprivation alive. In many ways, it felt similar to Victorians Undone, which is one of my favourite non-fiction books of recent years, and I really liked this as well. Rubenhold’s next book will be about the women associated with Dr. Crippen, and I am very much looking forward to it!

Entanglement is all about the global hair trade, and as someone who has never worn a wig or extensions, I had no idea what a big business it is! This book covers everything from the women who sell or donate their hair to the women who buy the finished wigs, and everyone involved in between in the process of transforming loose hair into wigs or extensions. I honestly never thought hair could be so interesting, but Tarlo makes it so. A surprisingly great read!

 

There are a lot of similarities between David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs, and I got into both of their work at about the same time, but perhaps due to his difficult upbringing, sometimes Burroughs is just a bit much for even me. Case in point, Toil and Trouble, which is all about why he believes he is a witch. Now, I should say up front that I totally dabble in witch stuff on occasion (in case the witch hat in my Instagram picture wasn’t a clue), in a strictly non-theistic, non-“spiritual” way (I’m definitely not a “spiritual” person, whatever that even means), and part of me wants to think that I do I have some powers (because who wouldn’t want to be able to control stuff with their mind?!), so I can relate to Burroughs in some ways. But deep down, I don’t really take any of it very seriously, whereas Burroughs does, and some of the examples he gives as to why he believes he is a witch are a bit far-fetched. Having an owl living near your property is not evidence that you’re a witch. Having your mother, who has well-documented mental health problems, tell you that you are a witch is not proof that you are a witch. So this definitely fell more flat for me than his other humorous essay collections, though in fairness to him, there were still some laugh out loud moments, just not as many as in some of his other books, probably because he was too earnestly trying to convince the reader of his witch credentials.

And lastly, there was Swallow. God, I hated this book. The subject matter initially sounded so interesting, as it was meant to be about Dr. Chevalier Jackson, a doctor who removed thousands of swallowed objects from his patients over much of the 20th century, and kept them all in a cabinet, which now lives at the Mutter Museum. And the Mutter Museum is one of my favourite places on Earth, so I was with Cappello as she began talking about her visits to the museum, and how she was drawn to writing about Jackson and his collection. And then she completely lost me. Cappello is a literature professor rather than a historian, and it shows. This book seems to be all about emphasizing Cappello’s bizarre literary style rather than Jackson himself, and is written in an annoying flow-of-consciousness way where she keeps interrupting the Jackson narrative to talk about seemingly whatever random thoughts pop into her head, like an artist who reminds her of Jackson, or how strange she thinks it is that someone named Mary Hat (as her surname translates to in English) is writing a book about swallowed objects, or honestly who the hell even knows what, since I was just completely lost for half the damn book when she went off on these tangents. I forced myself to read to the end, because I was interested in Jackson’s story, but honestly, just read the guy’s autobiography if that’s what you’re interested in, because this book is awful. I don’t know what Cappello was thinking when she wrote it, but judging by the reviews on Goodreads, my opinion is definitely not in the minority.

Well, that’s it for now, but my birthday is this week, so I’ve taken the week off work and we’re renting a car, which means I’ll hopefully have something new to write about next week!

London: The Wellcome Galleries @ the Science Museum

The Science Museum finally opened their new medicine galleries last November, and I only just visited them recently. I know it’s probably surprising that I’ve waited so long, given my love of medical history, but I have my reasons. I am salty about many things, and these medical galleries are one of them, mainly because I would have killed to work on them (even though the salaries at the Science Museum for the jobs I was going for are significantly lower than what I make now, because big museums can get away with it) and of course I didn’t even get an interview for anything I applied for. I also had a weird attachment to their old medical galleries, mainly because they were really hard to find and barely anybody knew about them, so you usually had them all to yourself. But all things must change, and I guess the Science Museum having a whopping £24 million to throw at them didn’t hurt either. So I finally decided to pay them a visit to see if they lived up to the hype.

“Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries,” are free to visit, just like the rest of the Science Museum (barring special exhibitions) and now seemingly take up much of the first floor, though I’ve frankly always found the layout of the Science Museum a bit strange and confusing, as there are certain galleries that can only be accessed from one particular set of stairs, and I swear there’s galleries that I managed to find once and then never again. Did the agriculture galleries really exist, or were they just a figment of my imagination? Anyway, although I’m quite sure Henry Wellcome engaged in some unsavoury practices, as did all late 19th century/early 20th century pharmaceutical companies (and modern pharmaceutical companies, for that matter. Just look at all those bloody Sackler galleries that still exist)/collectors of objects from colonies in the British Empire, I don’t know where we’d be without him, as his possessions seem to make up the bulk of medical history collections in London; in fact, if it wasn’t for him and William Hunter (who may have been a murderer, jury’s still out), we might not have any medical history museums here at all, and these galleries are no exception, as the name indicates.

 

On first glance, the new space was certainly very visually appealing. The medical history collections used to be kept on the fourth and fifth floors, and though I loved all the weird life-sized dioramas, they were a bit stuffy. This space is completely open and huge (apparently it takes up an area equivalent to 1500 hospital beds), and you’re greeted by a giant bronze tattooed man who seems to watch over the place like a guardian. Each wall of the first gallery is lined with cases, but because the room is so spacious, you kind of have to work your way up one side and then back down the other, which does ruin the chronology a bit. The first gallery, which I believe is called “Medicine and Bodies,” is a look at the human body throughout history, the development of the study of human anatomy, etc. From there, the gallery flows into “Exploring Medicine,” which is where most of Henry Wellcome’s collections have ended up, and then the last room holds “Medicine and Treatment,” “Medicine and Communities,” (didn’t see much distinction between those two), and “Faith, Hope, and Fear,” which is mainly a collection of wooden icons from various religions, and a really creepy modern sculpture (as seen above left. It’s meant to be a healing Madonna figure (as in the mother of Jesus, not the pop star), but something about the patient being encapsulated in her dress makes it read more like an iron maiden to me).

First, the good. I thought the space looked fantastic, and there were a lot of wonderful displays of old public health posters, which I just loved (how cute is that baby elephant?). The calibre of the artefacts on display was also excellent – mixed in with the more mundane, you’d find things like the medical kit Scott took to the South Pole (the expedition where he died), the lancets Edward Jenner used for some of the first vaccinations, and Louis Pasteur’s microscope. You could easily spend hours in here just discovering everything. It was also a lot more interactive than the old galleries – although I didn’t get to try all of the games because the most fun ones were in use, I tried enough to get a sense of what was on offer (the Disease Controller game looks especially fun, as you not only get to infect people, you make the ceiling light up whilst doing so!).

 

I also thought the nature of the displays did a good job at drawing attention to the sheer beauty of some of the objects, which you wouldn’t necessarily expect from medical implements. I am definitely the sort of person that prefers the grotesque to the sublime, but I could see the aesthetics of the galleries drawing in people who mightn’t ordinarily be interested in medical history. But conversely, because I am an old (youngish) fuddy-duddy at heart, that also kind of annoys me. I prefer having the galleries to myself – I know this isn’t the best thing for the museum, but I feel that if you weren’t willing to go out of your way to look at the old musty galleries, you don’t deserve to hog space (or the interactives) in the shiny new ones.

 

Unfortunately, by making the space really interactive and eye-catching, I think they lost a lot of the traditional medical history feeling that I so love. Because Wellcome’s objects were all shoved into one big case that stretched up well above eye level, you lost the ability to appreciate the value of each individual object for the sake of aesthetics. Instead of having a description of each individual item, as they used to, there would only be one brief description of a whole group of items, or nothing at all. Since I get the impression Henry Wellcome basically stole a lot of those artefacts from other cultures, I think the least we can do is take the time to appreciate the cultural significance of each one, and it’s hard to do that when you’re looking at a hundred memento mori all placed together with no individual labels. I also thought the life-sized photographs of present day doctors spread throughout the gallery were fairly unnecessary, and didn’t really add anything to my experience. They just took up floor space.

 

With that said, I do think this is still a wonderful place to visit for anyone interested in medical history; it’s just sacrificed some of its charm in the move. It is absolutely worth checking out if you find yourself in the museum, and I will definitely be back to examine it in more depth, especially because this and the actual Wellcome Collection are all I have left (other than the smaller museums at various hospitals and medical societies that only really merit one visit) whilst the Hunterian is still undergoing redevelopment (please, please don’t ruin it!). 3.5/5. And, from the perspective of someone who loved studying infectious disease, how interesting is coronavirus?! Obviously I don’t want it, and it’s scary to think that among the albeit much smaller sample size we have thus far, it has the same mortality rate as Spanish flu did, but from an historical and sociological perspective, I am absolutely fascinated. And since my office is right next to the museum’s public toilet where I can hear people hacking up a lung on a daily basis, let’s be honest, I probably will get it at some point if it spreads much more.

 

 

London: Play Well and Misbehaving Bodies @ the Wellcome Collection

I felt like I had just been at the Wellcome Collection, but unless I was and didn’t blog about it (unlikely), it seems my most recent visit was in May or June last year, which is apparently enough time for everything to have changed. Well, not everything, but a lot of things! I came specifically this time to see “Play Well: Why Play Matters” which runs until 8th March. Despite the seemingly child-friendly name, this exhibition is very much aimed at adults, which is probably why they had to put a disclaimer on their website about the limited interactivity of the exhibition. There were still more children inside than in a normal Wellcome exhibition (which usually, blissfully, has almost none), but nowhere near as many as you’d get in a normal museum.

As you might expect, this exhibition was about the psychological and physical benefits play can bring; however, it wasn’t a particularly playful exhibition, for all that the layout was allegedly designed by children. It began with the history of the kindergarten movement and the work of Friedrich Frobel, who designed a series of 20 “gifts” meant to aid a child’s development from infancy on up. All these gifts were collected together in the cases that dominated the first section, but there was no explanation of how the toys were used, how children were given these gifts (did parents have to buy them? Were they provided by schools?), or really anything, other than the name of each gift. I did, however, find it interesting that the kindergarten concept started as literal “kinder” gardens, where each child would tend to their own little plot of land in order to teach them life skills, as you can see in the photo above.

 

There was also a lot of information on the development of nursery schools in Italy, and on playgrounds in the UK (there was a photo series of children in the Gorbals of Glasgow, a notorious 19th and early 20th century slum, playing in the cemetery as it was the only bit of green space available to them), and the importance of allowing children to take risks in their play. There were a handful of interactive things, but they were primarily computer games that looked to be circa 1980 (we had a computer from the late ’80s onward, and the games I played on it as a kid were more advanced than these ones) and were so text heavy that they weren’t even fun. The only interactive bit that looked vaguely entertaining was a sort of soft play area built into a wall (confusingly, it had a sign saying it was not a soft play area), but I wasn’t clear on whether it was aimed at adults or children, and it had a set of rules that included taking off your shoes, which left old no-socks-Jessica out in the cold again due to not wishing to startle people with my foot odour.

 

The most charming objects here by far were the actual toys (on display, not to be played with), that had been owned and loved by children, especially sweet little Pumpie the elephant, who was wearing a handmade suit, part of an apparently extensive wardrobe. His owner even posed him in formal portraits that I thought were the best thing ever (even though the picture of Pumpie staring out to sea makes me quite sad). I also liked the story of a teddy that had been operated on by its owner (gently, in order to find out why its growler had stopped working, and carefully stitched back up afterwards) who grew up to be a vet. If the exhibition had more personal stories like this, I would have loved it, but this was only one small section. I heard people outside the exhibition talking about how great it was, and I do not agree. Except for Pumpie and co, it was a bit boring and not particularly appealing to children or adults. 2.5/5.

 

We headed upstairs afterwards because I wanted to see what they had done with the Medicine Now gallery, which was notable mainly for its life size sculpture of a man made up totally out of fat lumps, as I knew they had replaced it with a new gallery called Being Human, but I also unexpectedly encountered another temporary exhibition I didn’t even know about, this one called “Misbehaving Bodies,” which ended shortly after my visit. It featured the work of two artists, Jo Spence, and Oreet Ashery. Spence’s pieces were about her diagnosis and subsequent treatment for breast cancer (unsuccessful, she died in the 1992 at the age of 58), and Ashery’s were about confronting mortality. In spite of the subject matter being obviously more depressing than “Play Well,” I actually found this exhibition much more engaging.

 

Ashery’s pieces were in the form of videos, which were set up at comfy viewing stations throughout the room (they had giant teddy bears in them you could lean on. So cosy!) showing interviews with real people living with life limiting conditions, as well as a fictional narrative about a dying woman named Genesis (I have to admit I didn’t watch all the videos, so I kind of missed the whole Genesis thing and just saw the real people).

Spence’s pieces reflected the less high-tech world she lived and died in, and were mainly photographs and collages about her life and experience of cancer treatment in the NHS, and though I’ve fortunately never had to deal with any kind of serious illness, I have had to seek treatment for a number of minor but chronic conditions, and I could relate to her frustration with the system. I do think the NHS is a wonderful thing in theory, but in practice it is completely overstretched (not at all helped by the Tories being in power for so long), and has a number of overworked, unempathetic, and sometimes downright incompetent doctors working for it (though based on my experience, I think you find doctors like that in every country), with systems that are outdated at best. Spence was told she had breast cancer by a young doctor who simply drew an “X” on one of her breasts and told her the whole thing would have to come off. Awful! My own, much less serious but still irritating saga, involves seeking treatment in a specialist, but still NHS clinic (because my GP wouldn’t take my problems seriously and misdiagnosed me just to get rid of me); and finally being prescribed a medication that did help, but told to get refills from my GP, who refused to give it to me because the clinic doctor never sent a letter, and apparently the different branches of the NHS are not joined up in any way. I had to make three trips to the clinic to get them to write the letter, and am now on my third appointment with the GP just to try to get a repeat prescription so I don’t have to keep making appointments every month, because the last time I went I had to see this awful locum who didn’t listen to me at all, and not only gave me a refill of a medication I didn’t want or need, he gave me the wrong dosage(!) of the one I did need. I don’t know how people who have serious illnesses have jobs, because if I didn’t have Mondays off, I would have had to take off of work at least four times just to be able to get the medication that I was prescribed in the correct dosage.

 

Anyway (I seem to be going on a lot of rants lately, don’t I?), even though many of Spence’s pieces were text heavy, I thought her life was really interesting, so I read them all. I’m glad I got to see this exhibition before it finished, since it totally escaped my radar until near the end. I also did check out the Being Human gallery, which is perfectly fine, but not the sort of thing to which I will feel the need to make frequent return trips (unlike their Medicine Man exhibition on Henry Wellcome, which is endlessly fascinating). There was a lot of modern art and not nearly enough interactive elements.

The other thing I was surprised by was that the toilets at the Wellcome have completely changed, and though surely it must have taken months to do, I seemed to have missed the entire transition period. They have changed the male and female toilets into self-contained unisex stalls, which is fine, except I didn’t realise they had changed when I first went in and was a bit taken aback to see a guy standing there. I never eat at the Wellcome’s cafe (I had cake there once and it was not good), but I’m glad they have moved the pastries away from the centre of the cafe, where everyone could sneeze and cough all over them, and put them under a sneeze guard by the tills. You’d think a medical museum would understand the importance of keeping germs away from food! A somewhat disappointing visit, except for “Misbehaving Bodies.”

Glasgow: The Hunterian Museum

Having finished with the excellent “William Hunter and the Anatomy of the Modern Museum,” we headed over to the original Hunterian Museum (well, not its first incarnation in London, or the first one at the University of Glasgow, which opened in 1807, but original in the sense of being the first of the Hunterian museums to exist, before the Art Gallery et al were a thing. It’s been in its current location since 1870), located on the other side of the University of Glasgow campus. It is on the fourth floor of a big old magnificent building (the Gilbert Scott Building, named after its designer), and the architecture of the museum itself is pretty great too. It reminded me of a Tudor banqueting hall.

  

If you come in from the side entrance, as we did, there is no front desk (all the Hunterian museums have free entry), but there is an introductory gallery with some information about Hunter’s life and the original museum before it jumps right on in to a mishmash of everything, so at least we knew we were in the right place. The first gallery of the museum proper was dominated by an exhibition about old Roman road markers that I paid approximately 0.5% of my attention to, because right next to it was a case full of medical specimens in jars, and next to that was a case of interesting zoological specimens. There were a lot of people gathered around this area, presumably because it was awesome, but it was worth the wait (for people to move out of the way for Marcus could take photos) or, more accurately where I was concerned, worth elbowing my way in (because screw waiting).

  

There was also Hunter’s chest of drawers from his first museum on Great Windmill Street that originally housed his insect collection, and whilst I sure as shit don’t want an insect collection, it would be a lovely home for something not gross, like maybe a collection of old Georgian cartoons, if I was lucky enough to own such a thing (I mean, Hunter totally could have, since he was alive then, but obviously we don’t have the same priorities. Well, some of the same priorities). And hidden in one corner was the chair that students used to have to sit on during their oral exams at the university (it was very Mr. Burns “I have a chair at Springfield University”-esque), which apparently they still use for a couple of degree qualifications (I can’t remember exactly which ones, but I don’t think they sounded very interesting, otherwise I probably would have tried to enrol on the spot).

  

The lower level main gallery feels pretty much like the Horniman, with a mix of taxidermy, fossils (not a fan of that giant millipede thing, as you can probably tell), musical instruments, and delightfully Scottish-accented pottery (see below). This was all great, but for me, the upper level outshone it by far. This is where the collections of Lord Kelvin and Joseph Lister, both of whom taught at the university, were kept.

  

Kelvin’s stuff was interesting enough, but for a medical history nerd like me, Lister’s side was where it was at. They had a flask of his actual urine for god’s sake! (It was disturbingly dark in colour, but he did boil it before sealing it, so one hopes that was the result of the boiling process (or the 150+ years it has spent in that flask) and not something horribly wrong with Lister’s kidneys. He lived to the age of 84, so he must have been in fairly good shape!) And of course there was his pioneering carbolic acid steam apparatus that he used in some of the first antiseptic operations. And there were a number of other medical instruments and specimens thrown in, in case you didn’t get enough downstairs (I certainly didn’t).

  

How hilarious/creepy is that obstetrical training doll?! I also loved the plaque dedicated to a former “keeper” of the collection embedded in one of the walls. I wonder if I can talk them into doing that for me at the museum where I work…(though I certainly don’t want to work there for another 35 years to earn one, like John Young did!)

  

I had noticed another set of doors in the first gallery when we passed through, and I was hoping that meant there was another gallery, but sadly, the doors just led to the fabulous main staircase that we had missed on the way in, due to initially entering at the ground floor (the stairs let you out on the second or third floor, but that’s cool too, because we got to walk through a pillared courtyard covered in lights (I assume for Christmas, but who knows, maybe they’re up all year) and also finally stumbled on some much needed public toilets, which was great, because there aren’t any in the museum itself). Whilst the Hunterian wasn’t quite as big as I was hoping, it certainly was an enjoyable museum. I really love old fashioned museums that have a little bit of everything in them, and this fit the bill (it was much more varied than the photos I’ve chosen show, since I’ve mostly focused on medical history to the detriment of everything else there), with the added benefit of the collections of Lister and William Hunter. 3.5/5.

   

Glasgow: “William Hunter and the Anatomy of the Modern Museum” @ Hunterian Art Gallery

In honour of our 10th anniversary, which was in late November, and in keeping with our tradition with heading up north for anniversaries (mainly because I’m not keen on staying in the countryside (too much walking!) and there isn’t much else south of London besides the coast, which is definitely not a good idea in the winter), Marcus and I decided to spend a long weekend in Glasgow, as neither of us had ever been. This not only gave me an opportunity to meet Anabel from the Glasgow Gallivanter in person (photos in a future post) and eat deep fried Mars bars and a stupid amount of Tunnock’s Caramel Logs, it also finally allowed me to visit the Glasgow Hunterian, something I’ve been wanting to do for years.

  

The London Hunterian, named after John Hunter, is one of my favourite museums, so I had high hopes for the Glasgow Hunterian, which was founded by John’s brother, William. Both brothers were in the medical field (John was a surgeon, William was a physician and obstetrician), both were raised and trained in Scotland, and both had anatomy schools in London. And of course, they both founded museums, though I have to say that William’s was far more ambitious in scope than John’s. Whereas John’s museum was primarily a receptacle for his collection of anatomical specimens, human and zoological (not that there’s anything wrong with that), William’s museum had a little bit of everything, more in the vein of the Ashmolean or the Smithsonian. Originally housed on Great Windmill Street in London, after his death the collection was moved to Glasgow, and is the oldest museum in Scotland.

  

Today, the Glasgow Hunterian is a collection of four separate museums, all located around the campus of the University of Glasgow: an Art Gallery, Anatomical Museum, Zoological Museum, and the general Hunterian, which is probably the closest in terms of the scope of its collections to the original museum. The Anatomical Museum is open by appointment only, and the Zoological Museum isn’t open on weekends, so we were only able to see the Art Gallery and Hunterian. Because there’s quite a lot to say about each, this post will focus exclusively on the Art Gallery, which is free to visit, even the special exhibition!

  

Given its name, it’s a safe bet that the Art Gallery normally houses art, but at the time of my visit, it was what would have been William Hunter’s 300th birthday, so the museum was featuring a special exhibition called “William Hunter and the Anatomy of the Modern Museum,” (which runs until 6 January 2019) about Hunter’s life and work, with an accompanying exhibit called “Strange Foreign Bodies” upstairs. The very nice woman at the front desk actually almost apologised to us that there wasn’t art in the main gallery, and I wanted to say, “but you don’t understand, I like medical history SOOOOO much better than art,” but I didn’t want to scare her off, so I left it.

  

But yeah, this was probably the ideal time for me to visit, as this exhibition was the best possible thing I could imagine being here. It was broken up into ten rooms roughly chronologically tracing Hunter’s life, not counting the introductory gallery, which provided a timeline of personal and historical events during Hunter’s lifespan (1718-1783).

  

The exhibition still got off to a fairly arty start with paintings of some of Hunter’s friends and contemporaries, along with some of his correspondence and book collection. Hunter attended the University of Glasgow and befriended a number of prominent Scots, including David Hume and William Cullen. In 1740, Hunter moved to London and studied obstetrics with the hilariously named William Smellie (despite his name, or perhaps because of it, he is pretty famous though. I remember hearing about him when I was doing my Master’s). The room on this portion of Hunter’s life contained a number of medical textbooks, including Smellie’s, and some great anatomical drawings, including one by my personal favourite anatomist Frederik Ruysch. But obviously the best thing here was the wax model of the flayed man shown at the start of the post, made by Hunter and based off of the body of an executed criminal. So amazing!

  

Since Hunter was into both anatomy and obstetrics, it was only natural that he would want to make some anatomical models of pregnant women, and fortunately for him (not so much for the women), 13 of the women under his care died in various stages of pregnancy (not all at once, since that presumably wouldn’t really be something he would want to commemorate and brag about, though I have read an article that did some statistics on maternal death rates and determined that it would have been unlikely he could have gotten so many perfect specimens of each stage of pregnancy, so there might have been some shady stuff going on. I’m not sure if I agree with that, since he did his studies over a twenty year period and maternal death rates weren’t exactly low back then, but he was undoubtedly involved with grave robbers in some capacity, as pretty much all anatomists back then had to be), allowing him to make gorgeous wax models of their wombs. As you have probably noticed, this was the rare medical exhibition that allowed photography, so I can show you all of these wonderful things (albeit with not so wonderful lighting).

  

He also loved making wet preparations, a technique only pioneered the century before by the previously mentioned Frederik Ruysch (there’s a reason he’s my favourite), so there were plenty of those in here too, and some of them were downright beautiful, especially the inflated portions of intestine that had been injected with wax to show off the veins. Actually, due to his brother John’s prowess in making anatomical specimens, this was one of the few projects they collaborated on, before opening separate (and competing) medical schools. I do wish there had been a bit more in here on William’s relationship with John, but if they didn’t work that much together, I guess there was only a limited amount they could say.

  

Hunter was also close with George Stubbs, famous for painting a kangaroo based on the skins and descriptions given to him by dishy Joseph Banks after Cook’s first voyage (all of the artists on the expedition having died en route, though Sydney Parkinson did produce a sketch of a kangaroo before he died), and they worked together to produce Stubbs’s Anatomy of a Horse, amongst other anatomical paintings.

  

On the subject of Cook, there were a number of objects here from Cook’s voyages that were given to Hunter’s museum, as well as a whole room full of gross insects (I didn’t spend a lot of time in there). The last few galleries covered the establishment of the museum in London, which, William Hunter having never married nor produced heirs, he wished to leave to the University of Glasgow after he died (he didn’t come up to Scotland much after moving to London, but apparently he retained some emotional ties, even if he didn’t actually want to live there. Kind of like me and Cleveland). The last couple of rooms were mostly art, but there were a few neat things, including the certificate given to those who had completed a course of training at Hunter’s medical school (god, I would love one of those certificates), Hunter’s death mask, and a pretty cool chart showing all the branches of “science” by 18th century standards (apparently you can be a scientist of black magic. I guess I’m a scientist then? (Just kidding, sort of)).

  

Having finished with this rather fabulous exhibition, we headed upstairs to see “Strange Foreign Bodies.”  I was immediately weirded out upon opening the exhibition guide and seeing a number of quotes from my MA dissertation advisor on one of the artworks (she scared me, and I haven’t really thought of her in years, so wasn’t expecting it), but was also weirded out by the art, which mostly seemed only vaguely connected to medicine and also not necessarily connected to the descriptions of it in the guide. I did however like the collection of painted skulls entitled “Family Conversation Piece,” and there was a video of a breathing robot one of the artists had created of herself, which was cool, but pretty creepy (below right).

  

“William Hunter and the Anatomy of the Modern Museum” had a great punny title, a fantastic collection of specimens in jars and anatomical models, a very detailed exhibition guide, and enough other stuff to appeal to those who aren’t huge fans of medical bits like I am. I definitely recommend seeing this if you can, and I’m pretty sure I enjoyed this about 1000x more than I would have the art normally here (not knocking art, but I obviously really prefer medical history). 4.5/5.

“Strange Foreign Bodes” was OK, but it wasn’t very big, and it’s definitely not a must see like the main exhibition. 1.5/5.

This cartoon made me laugh for about ten minutes. I have a weird sense of humour (which is not news to anyone who makes it through one of my posts).

London: “Living with Buildings” @ the Wellcome Collection

This is from the Global Clinic, not Living with Buildings, but I think you’ll agree it is a more striking image than the entrance of Living with Buildings, which is why it is serving as the introductory photo.

“Living with Buildings” is the Wellcome Collection’s latest offering, which runs until 3 March 2019, and I popped along to see it a few weeks ago since I was in the neighbourhood anyway for “Anglo Saxon Kingdoms.” I’m not sure if the Wellcome could have picked a more boring name for this exhibition if they’d tried (at least for those of us who aren’t really into architecture), but I was hoping the content would prove better than the lacklustre name. Even the exhibition description was fairly vague, being simply that it was about how buildings affect our mental and physical health.

The exhibition is located in the Wellcome’s main gallery on the ground floor and is free, as their exhibitions always are, and doesn’t allow photographs, as their exhibitions mostly don’t. We were there a little bit later in the day than usual, which I think was a good time to visit as the crowds were much less than what they would have been at lunchtime (or people were just staying away because of the dull name). The exhibition opened with Charles Booth’s famous poverty maps of London (made in 1886-1903) showing the relative wealth of each street of London based on Booth’s interviews with its inhabitants (he’s pretty judgy too, as the poorest people were listed as “vicious, semi-criminal”), which are always interesting, even though I’ve seen them many times before.

Charles Booth’s Map of London, LSE.

This was one of the Wellcome’s more open layouts, and though there were a few little nooks and recesses, everything was basically in one large gallery. The exhibition appeared to be arranged more by topic than chronologically, and covered subject matter from the Victorian era, when people began to suspect that living in smoky, polluted cities might not be great for one’s health, to the Grenfell Tower fire just last year.

Letchworth Garden City Poster, First Garden City Museum.

One of the nooks was about the rise of the “garden city” in the late Victorian era, which began when some of the more, shall we say, benevolent employers founded model villages for their employees to live in. I get that the intention behind it was mostly good – giving the employees a clean environment to live in away from the pollution of the cities, which also reduced their commute and gave them access to opportunities for recreation and self-improvement, but personally I find something a little creepy about it. I like the people I work with, but I don’t particularly want to live next door to them (you would never be able to weasel out of work functions, since they would know exactly where you were), and I sure as hell don’t want my boss overseeing what I do in my spare time. The Cadbury brothers, the founders of Bournville, even had a pamphlet published with rules for their employees to live by, going so far as to tell them how to sleep (single beds only) and how to breathe, which is dreadful (but I’m fine with the emphasis on cleanliness, given that these people were making chocolate)! Some of the posters in this section (reminiscent of old Tube posters – they may have been designed by the same people) did make the garden cities look awful tempting though (if you could ignore all the paternalistic garbage)! Even Henry Wellcome, founder of the Wellcome Collection, tried to get in on the action by designing Wellcomeville, a city that would have been built around a pharmaceutical factory and research laboratory, but it fell through in the end, and the research facility was just a stand-alone building in Bloomsbury.

Model of a hospital promoting the King Edward’s Hospital Fund, Wellcome Collection.

There were quite a few films in here featuring what appeared to be interviews with inhabitants of various tower blocks, but the only one I actually sat down and watched was Catherine Yass’s film “Royal London,” showing the demolition of the old hospital. I could only watch a small part of it though, as the camera kept spiralling up and down staircases, and I started feeling a bit motion sick. I was glad to step outside of the film room and examine the huge scale model of a hospital from the 1930s, which was used to raise money for King Edward’s Hospital Fund (it was named after Edward VII, and carried on long after his reign (it actually still exists today under the name King’s Fund), rather than being a short-lived scheme of Edward VIII. I think Edward 8 was probably too busy canoodling with Wallis Simpson to have time for causes, though I suppose the same could be said of Eddy 7 and his many, many mistresses). Queen Mary donated some lace handkerchiefs which were used to make bedspreads for two of the miniature beds, but I can’t help but think that a donation of actual money would have been much more useful (I seem to recall that Mary was notoriously cheap). The hospital scale model sure was neat though; it had little doll versions of patients, doctors, and nurses occupying the miniature hospital rooms, and even a tiny x-ray machine and humorous murals decorating the hospital walls. I’d take that over a dollhouse any day!

Finsbury Health Centre, Wellcome Collection.

Some other things I found interesting were the information about the rise of tower blocks, which were meant to be the wondrous self-contained living of the future, only for the shops within to either never open or fail and the buildings to become dilapidated due to shoddy construction and attract criminal activity; the posters for the Finsbury Health Centre contrasting clean modern living with dirty unhealthy old Britain (released during the war, these were actually banned by Churchill because he thought it was both an insult to pre-war Britain, and it would damage morale if people realised they were living under shitty conditions); and particularly the cartoons showing the differences between old dust-trap buildings, and new, presumably tidier ones (I totally look like the guy in the before version, who sat at work all day with his hand on his head because he had a headache from breathing in the noxious, unventilated fumes. Considering I work in a building that was built in 1904, has bars on the windows, and is rife with asbestos, it’s really not so surprising I get headaches almost every time I’m there).

Paris Montparnasse 1993, Andreas Gurnsky.

And, in a depressing denouement, the exhibition showed how all these “brilliant” ideas from the 20th century about building for the future have mostly been a failure, and resulted in downright tragedy in the case of Grenfell Tower. There was a particularly chilling letter written by a tenants’ activist group a year or two before the fire expressing concerns about the new cladding and the fire safety procedures that instructed tenants to remain in their flats in case of fire, which they warned could lead to disaster, as indeed they did. Even the examples of the new developments in creating light and airy environments for hospital patients, which were plopped right before the exit and I think were meant to cheer us up a bit after the Grenfell stuff, were still a bit grim architecturally, though I suspect I am just really not a fan of modern architecture.

Charles Williams, 1813. A Nonchalant Doctor dancing a jig, Wellcome.

I thought the exhibition was certainly more interesting than its name had led me to believe, but was mostly just rather depressing (except for the above cartoon, which genuinely made me laugh out loud), as it appears that we still haven’t found a good solution to the problems of city living. I’m pretty sure almost no one wants to live in a tower block, but houses are completely unaffordable in London for all but the very wealthy, so until someone comes up with a better solution, that is the sad reality of the situation. I’ll give “Living with Buildings” 3/5, since it wasn’t quite as large as I was expecting, and was really rather dispiriting, though I guess I can’t entirely blame the Wellcome for the latter issue.

The temporary exhibition on the first floor of the Wellcome Collection has also changed over, and is no longer the delightfully creepy “Teeth,” but is instead a companion exhibit to “Living with Buildings” called “Global Clinic.” And that’s literally what it was – a new, mobile clinic design set up inside the gallery space, which will be deployed somewhere in need of an emergency clinic once the exhibition has ended. It is meant to be an improvement on tents and shipping containers, which are currently mostly what are used in disaster situations, and it certainly looked respectively more stable and lighter than those options. However, without the accoutrements of a clinic set up inside, it was literally just looking at a building structure, which was not terribly exciting. There were a few toy designs by students that were intended for use in developing countries in one corner of the gallery, and these were slightly more engaging, though not as much as they could have been if you were actually allowed to play with them. I think the Global Clinic is a good idea, but it’s not necessarily something that needed to physically be here, since although it is an eye-catching structure, seeing it in person wasn’t significantly more interesting than just reading about it. If you’re short on time, I think it’s certainly safe to just breeze right through it or give it a miss entirely! 1.5/5.

London: “The Last Tsar” @ the Science Museum

Like many people, I think, I am fascinated by the lives and barbaric deaths of Nicholas II, Alexandra, and their children. As I think I’ve said before, I even signed up for a Russian history class as an undergrad on the assumption that we would discuss the tsars, only to be disappointed when it was nothing but communism, communism, communism (I mean, communism is interesting too, but if that’s all you want to talk about, you should maybe call the class Soviet History instead to at least give people a clue. Not that I’m still salty about that C or anything…). So I was pretty excited about the Science Museum’s new temporary exhibition “The Last Tsar: Blood and Revolution,” which also promised to contain a good dose of medical history, one of my favourite things. Admission to the exhibition is free, but you must book a ticket, which we found easy enough to do online on the day of the exhibition, shortly before we arrived. Normally I like to visit exhibitions in early-mid afternoon so I can avoid being caught in rush hour on the Tube on the way back, but on this particular afternoon, we were planning on going out to dinner after visiting the museum, so we booked the last slot of the day, at 4 (the museum closes at 6), and found the downstairs galleries of the museum virtually deserted, which was a rare treat. There were a handful of people in the exhibition, but I’m sure it was nothing like as crowded as it would have been during the day. Unfortunately, photography was not allowed, so I’ll post pictures of the objects I can find, and you’ll have to use your imagination for the rest.

Nicholas and George, from Wikimedia Commons.

The exhibition began with an introduction about who the Romanovs were, and their connection to the British Royal Family (as you can see from that picture of George V and Nicholas II side by side, they look eerily like twins, despite only being cousins, though George favoured snappier shoes (as do I!)), as well as a collection of bucolic photographs of the children from the worry-free days before WWI. Well, not exactly worry-free, because of course the Tsarevich Alexei had haemophilia, and Tsarina Alexandra had quite a few health problems of her own, but still, idyllic compared to being brutally gunned down after months of imprisonment. It was actually Alexei’s health problems that led to the royal family withdrawing from the court in the first place to try to improve Alexei’s health with frequent trips to the country, and it was this disconnection from the people combined with their desire to maintain an authoritarian government that caused the discontent that led to revolution, so if Alexei had not suffered from haemophilia, the world may well have been a very different place.

One of Alexandra’s maternity dresses. Copyright State Hermitage Museum.

The second gallery discussed Alexandra’s medical issues in more detail, as well as the kind of medical care that was available in Russia at the time. Apparently health care there was fairly progressive for the era, provided by a mix of the church, charities, and local government, and they were moving away from things like restraining people suffering from mental illness. Unless you were a political prisoner, of course, in which case you would be put in chains in a dark cell and essentially left to rot. Many political prisoners chose to commit suicide rather than continue to suffer under appalling conditions, as we learned in a small, somewhat incongruous section that included photos of the horrific-looking cells. Of course, Alexandra went through none of this pre-Revolution, though she did struggle with aftereffects from her pregnancies in her all-encompassing need to produce a male heir (their first four children were all girls) – probably a combination of sciatica and postpartum depression, with a few other unpleasant side effects thrown in. Since mainstream medicine couldn’t always help, she ended up turning to folk medicine, especially in the case of her son Alexei and their relationship with the controversial Rasputin.

Imperial Steel Faberge egg. Copyright Moscow Kremlin Museums.

The next two sections were about Alexei and the effect his haemophilia would have on the royal family (it was discovered very early on, when his umbilical cord wouldn’t stop bleeding), and the First World War and its impact on Russia. Of course, WWI was another major catalyst for the Revolution, due to the heavy losses suffered by the Russian Army and growing dissatisfaction with the war, for which the royal family largely took the blame. However, although they didn’t suffer during the war along with their people, they did help with the war effort, in particular Olga and Tatiana, the two oldest daughters, who volunteered in a Red Cross hospital. Thanks to the Romanovs’ closeness to their British royal relatives (both Alexandra and Nicholas were related to them. They were second cousins and Alexandra was Victoria’s favourite granddaughter), there was also a British hospital in Petrograd during WWI, financed by contributions from both sets of royals. Because of course they had to stick some Faberge eggs in somewhere, there were two in this room, including a very cool one made from Imperial steel and resting on bullet cases, which was filled with a miniature easel depicting Nicholas and Alexei surveying the troops. As part of one of many, many medical treatments over the years, Alexei saw a doctor who took some x-rays of him, and fascinated by this, Nicholas and Alexandra both had their hands x-rayed, which were on display here (fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) they were all killed before having to worry about the high doses of radiation present in the early x-raying process).

Alexandra’s radiograph. Copyright Harvard Medical Library.

The final two galleries covered their murder and the attempts to solve it over the years, starting with Nikolai Sokolov’s 1920 investigation, right up to modern DNA analysis of the remains found in Ekaterinburg. Their murders are probably the part of their lives I’d read about most extensively, so it was very cool getting to see some of the artefacts found as a result of the investigation, including clothing and jewellery belonging to the Romanov family, and letters from Sokolov’s investigation (Sokolov was a royalist, and the Bolsheviks weren’t well entrenched enough in 1920 to stop him from carrying his investigation out. He was assisted by the Romanov children’s former English tutor, Charles Gibbs, who was so close to the family that he agreed to follow them into exile, and upon his return to England became a Russian Orthodox priest and turned his chapel into a shrine to the family). The Soviets did admit to killing Nicholas II in 1926, but it wasn’t until after the collapse of the USSR in 1991 that they admitted to the murder of the rest of the family.

Nicholas’s radiograph. Copyright Harvard Medical Library.

The modern DNA tests were assisted by Prince Philip, who is related to the Romanovs through his maternal line (his great-grandmother was Princess Alice, Victoria’s daughter, who was Alexandra’s mother) and agreed to provide a sample for testing, which proved a match. The bodies of Alexei and one of his sisters (DNA testing can’t narrow it down any more than that) were the last to be found, in 2007. There were facial reconstructions based on their skulls here on display, which looked better than these sorts of things usually do, though it’s presumably a hell of a lot easier to do a facial reconstruction when you know roughly what you’re aiming for. The whole family have been canonised in the Russian Orthodox Church (which is not without controversy, but the exhibition didn’t mention anything about that), and all except the final two children to be found have been given an official state funeral.

Red Cross Faberge egg. Copyright Cleveland Museum of Art (!).

Although none of this was anything earth-shattering (and some things weren’t really touched on, like all the Anastasia imposters in the first half of the 20th century), it was nonetheless a good exhibition, and I learned some things I didn’t know about the health of the rest of the family and Alexei’s specific type of haemophilia, which is apparently the rarest type (type B). It is a sad story, as Nicholas may have helped bring about his own downfall, but communism would prove even worse for the Russian people than Nicholas’s reign, and even though Nicholas and Alexandra seemed like unpleasant people in many ways, that doesn’t mean they deserved to die, especially not their children (I do put some of the blame for that on George V for refusing to allow them into Britain when they begged for his help, though they kind of blew it themselves by not getting out earlier when they had the chance. All of these royals come off like jerks). I think the section about political prisoners, whilst interesting, didn’t really fit in with the theme of the rest of it other than to try to establish a reason for the royal family to have been hated, and probably would have worked better in an exhibition about the Revolution specifically rather than one that aimed to be mainly about the Romanov family, especially since it otherwise shied away from controversial subjects. Still, for a free exhibition, I can’t really complain, and I certainly don’t regret going to see it. 3.5/5.

London: Teeth @ the Wellcome Collection

I was both excited and apprehensive about seeing the Wellcome Collection’s latest exhibition: “Teeth.” Excited, because the publicity material they released before the exhibition made it look great; apprehensive, because despite my general love for all things gory and medical, historic dentistry creeps me out (even though I’m not really afraid of dentists. Orthodontists, yes (my orthodontist’s awfulness had to be experienced to be believed), but not really dentists. But if you are afraid of dentists, this may not be the post for you). But in the end excitement won out, and I strolled on over to the Wellcome after I visited Cook at the BL.

  

“Teeth” is in the same first floor gallery that “Ayurvedic Man” was in (“Somewhere in Between” is still in the main gallery), and was a big, open, inviting space, with display cases mainly along the walls to make room for historic dental equipment in the middle of the room. I seem to have a knack for finding George Washington’s dentures in various museums (really, more pairs of dentures than you would think the man would have owned), so of course I was immediately on the lookout for some here, and I wasn’t disappointed. Poor old George and his omnipresent dentures. The exhibition theorised that George may have always looked rather stern in portraits because he was straining to keep his mouth closed – upper and lower dentures used to be held together with springs, which would have required some powerful jaw muscles to close!

  

He wasn’t the only famous person whose dental apparatuses were here either. There was also Napoleon’s toothbrush, which is interesting, because there are widely conflicting reports of Napoleon’s dental hygiene out there. His biographer claimed he was fastidious about brushing his teeth and had a beautiful white smile, whereas his contemporaries said his teeth were black and rotting. The pristine state of his toothbrush leads me to believe that his contemporaries probably were correct. Even more intriguing than Napoleon’s toothbrush was the upper plate belonging to Edmund Burke, politician and philosopher. It seemed to indicate that he had a cleft palate, as there was an extra piece on top to fill in a gap in the mouth. Burke famously wrote an essay on beauty in which he claimed that imperfection could add to the beauty of something – perhaps this was something he had firsthand experience of?

  

Because the subject matter was teeth, which is something many people have anxieties about (the exhibition also discussed why this was, and a lot of it did probably have to do with the horrors of pre-20th century dentistry, but some of it is also just the nature of teeth. After all, they are the only part of the skeleton that is exposed during your lifetime (barring any horrific accidents)), obviously some of the objects here were going to be a bit, well, creepy. The creepiest by far were the phantom heads that dentistry students used for practice. I think they would have been less scary if they were actually just a skull, because something about the wooden block with real teeth in it is the stuff of nightmares (as is the even scarier face with metal jaws filled with real teeth, which you’ll see at the bottom of this post, if you’re brave enough!). The display about dentures was less overtly disturbing, but it explained how when cheaper, better looking dentures made of porcelain became available, they were so popular that some people used to get all their teeth pulled in their twenties to avoid the hassle and expense of dental care in their adult lives, which really gives me the willies (Roald Dahl was one of those, and though I dearly love his books, his dentures are always one of the first things to cross my mind when I think of him (much like with George Washington)).

  

Fortunately, my pal Binaca squirrel was there to lighten the mood (I’ve never used Binaca, but it makes me think of that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine sprays Joe Davola in the eyes with cherry Binaca to escape his apartment), as were the letters both to and from the tooth fairy. I must have had quite a good tooth fairy, because there was usually some kind of small gift to accompany the two shiny new 50 cent pieces (I seem to remember it usually being a Disney VHS when I was a kid, but I didn’t lose my last baby tooth until I was 13 and though the tooth fairy still came, it felt more half-assed, not that I blame her) and a note carefully written on heart-shaped construction paper that was folded up small enough to fit inside the little plastic treasure chest that held my tooth. Some of the other tooth fairies were slightly more droll than mine, and their letters had me cracking up (even though the thought of a tooth fairy accidentally removing all the teeth from children who slept with their heads under the pillow would have given me nightmares when I was a kid, so probably for the best my tooth fairy was of a kinder, gentler variety).

   

Other objects of note included an aluminum pair of dentures made by a WWII POW who’d had his good dentures smashed by a Japanese guard (I was relieved that he’d already had dentures, because I know they often just smashed out your actual teeth), a horrible wooden chair for strapping reluctant patients to (which, before anesthesia, was pretty much everyone (shown second photo in the post)), and a number of hilarious historic ads for dentists, toothpaste, etc.

  

And I have to say, I don’t know if the main intention of this exhibition was to promote modern dentistry, but it definitely made me want to make a preventative visit to the dentist (especially the poster describing in great detail exactly how decay takes your teeth if you don’t visit the dentist often enough), so much so that I booked an overdue appointment (only by six months or so, but still) a few days after seeing this. Some of the objects on display were pretty freaky, and if you’re already scared of dentists, this exhibition might not help (though surely at least seeing how much worse it used to be would give you some perspective), but I thought it was fascinating, even though I ended up compulsively running my tongue over my teeth the whole time I was in there (and I don’t think I was the only one doing it either). 4/5.

Budapest: The Semmelweiss Museum

I recently had to switch two of my working days around, which created a surprise five day weekend (without having to take time off!), and to make the most of it, I decided to try to book a trip. All the last minute deals appeared to be for places like Brussels and Frankfurt (nothing against either place, but I’ve already been to Brussels a few times, and Frankfurt seems like more of a business destination), so when I saw a deal for three nights in Budapest, I scooped it up. I had actually been to Budapest once before, about ten years ago, but that trip was just a series of misfortunes that meant I didn’t end up seeing very much, so I was happy to go back and explore more in depth.

  

Actually, I wanted to go to Budapest for three main reasons: 1) To eat lots of kurtoskalacs, aka chimney cake, which I dearly love, but resent being asked to pay a fiver for at Christmas markets in the UK; 2) Visit the Columbo statue, because I have been weirdly into Columbo the last few months (probably because it’s on pretty much all day Sunday, and Sunday tends to be my chilling and TV watching day, so I’ve caught a lot simply because there was nothing else on, and got hooked); and 3) Visit the Semmelweiss Museum. This post will of course be about the last of those three ambitions, though you’ll hear more about the other two in a later post.

  

I’ve always felt bad for Ignaz Semmelweiss – any way you look at it, the man got a raw deal. He accidentally stumbled onto germ theory when he noticed that a colleague who died from sepsis after cutting himself during a dissection had the same symptoms as the women who died from puerperal fever (without directly understanding why – he thought “cadaverous material” was the problem, and I mean, it was, but not for the reasons he thought), which allowed him to dramatically slash the mortality rate in his maternity ward (by 90%, though the hospital he worked at had two maternity wards: one for training doctors and one for training midwives, and the midwives’ ward had much lower mortality rates all along, because midwives didn’t dissect cadavers) when he started forcing his medical students to wash their hands in chlorinated water. He then published his findings, and instead of the medical community viewing them as revolutionary or at least intriguing, they instead accused him of fabricating results (Pasteur and Lister eventually confirmed his findings, but too late to have done Semmelweiss any good).  Semmelweiss was eventually committed to an insane asylum due to what may have been early onset dementia or depression, though the antagonism of his fellow doctors probably didn’t help his mental state, and he died only a fortnight after being committed as a result of being beaten by the guards (it actually is quite a tragic story). Therefore, I was excited to see his museum, hoping he would finally get the more exalted treatment he deserved (and of course, I was hoping to see some grisly medical stuff too).

  

Unfortunately, I would wind up somewhat disappointed on both counts. We managed to find the museum without too much trouble (it’s on the Buda side of the river, near a tram stop) located on the first floor of a building looking out on a rather lovely courtyard. Admission is 1000 HUF (just under £3), plus an extra 600 forints for a photo pass, which I always find a bit ridiculous in this day and age, but I suppose they have to make money somehow. I was a little worried that nothing would be in English, but most (probably 80%) of the signs had an English translation, although they did tend to be more concise than the Hungarian version.

  

The first room held the bulk of the grisly stuff, as it were (not much, and not that grisly). There was a re-creation of a shrunken head made from goatskin, a mummified foot or two, and a couple of skulls. There were also some small grotesques, and that rather adorable little anatomical model, but most of it was just medical instruments – a theme that would continue throughout the museum.

  

The second room held a re-creation of Semmelweiss’s parlour, complete with his original furniture and rug, and some of his original books (and apparently some books given to the Hungarian prime minister by George Bush Sr. during his presidency, though they quite clearly weren’t Semmelweiss’s books, since Osler’s Modern Medicine wasn’t published until 1892 (and those copies appear to be an even later edition), and Semmelweiss died in 1865). If I understood the signs correctly (some of them were a little confusing), Semmelweiss lived in this building at one point in time, and I wish more of his house had been preserved. There was also a re-creation of an old pharmacy that appeared to have some staff in white coats working in it, but it was roped off whilst we were there so I’m not sure if they do some sort of living history interaction with visitors or not (though if it was in Hungarian, it wouldn’t have done us much good in the first place).

  

The third room (I was pleased to see there even was a third room, because the museum looked like it was only two rooms from the entrance) had more cool things (and some fairly inexplicable ones like this opium pillow (he has an actual butt hole, and I don’t know why)) like some incredibly detailed wax models of organs (they were beautiful, in a kind of disgusting way, but I had read before visiting that the museum was meant to have an excellent wax anatomical model collection, which had me picturing Anatomical Venuses (you know, those comely women who just happen to have all their guts exposed) rather than organs by themselves).

  

The final gallery (more of a long hallway) was my least favourite, as much of it wasn’t in English, and it was largely just medical instruments and other random bits and bobs. I was disappointed how barely any of the museum actually seemed to be about Semmelweiss – unless I missed something that was only in Hungarian, there was only his room, and one small case of his possessions (including a copy of his skull, which is admittedly cool, though as you can see, the terse label provided no reason why it was there), and that was it. There was barely even any discussion of his accomplishments, so if you didn’t know about what he had achieved before going in to the museum, you sure wouldn’t coming out either.

  

We were headed out the door when we saw a poster that mentioned a temporary exhibition on vaccines, which appeared to be in a room on the ground floor. When we tried to go in, a man came out and stopped us, so we showed him our tickets, which led to a heated discussion in Hungarian between him and another woman who worked there about whether or not we had the right to see the exhibition (honestly, we didn’t care that much, we just didn’t think it would be an issue in the first place, as it didn’t mention anywhere that it cost extra). They eventually decided we could go in, which I was grateful for because that’s where the toilets were, but I don’t know what the official policy is (I don’t think even they know what the official policy is, frankly) so if you visit the museum, you may not be able to do the same.  You wouldn’t be missing much anyway. It felt like a travelling exhibition that had been translated into Hungarian, and contained fairly basic information about Jenner, Salk, Koch, and others that anyone with an interest in the history of medicine would already know about, and no major artefacts of note other than some rad old posters urging Hungarians to be vaccinated (the maternity chair shown below is from the permanent collections). We kind of rushed through because we felt like we were creating a disturbance by even being there.

  

So sadly, the Semmelweiss Museum will not be going on my list of must-see medical museums, but I’m glad we checked it out whilst we were there so at least now I know (I realise that these photos are making it look like they had lots of amazing stuff there, but that is because I’m just showing you the highlights, and not the rows and rows of scalpels and surgical scissors and things. Endless medical instruments may be of interest if you’re actually a doctor or surgeon, but I want stuff in jars)! I think it is worth seeing if you’re already in Budapest and like medical history, but it’s certainly not a destination museum. It probably is better if you just think of it as a general medical museum, because it is the lack of information about Semmelweiss in a museum bearing his name that really disappoints. He deserves better, and I really wish they would have provided some more biographical information, at least about his medical career (actually, the whole museum needed more information – the labels were not descriptive at all, and were sometimes just downright confusing!). 3/5.

London: “Can Graphic Design Save Your Life?”@ the Wellcome Collection

It’s finally autumn (the best season, obviously), and there’s a new exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, which is normally exciting in itself, so I should be happy, right? Well, unlike the Wellcome’s usual exhibition themes, which are either inherently fascinating to me (death, forensics, poop), or topics I can at least summon up a spark of interest in (electricity…see what I did there?), this one sounded like a real dud. Graphic design? Sorry, but no. In an ideal world, I’d go on to write how the Wellcome proved me wrong with their amazing exhibition, and really changed the way I think about graphic design, but we don’t live in that world, and I am not that blogger.

Photography is never allowed in the Wellcome’s main gallery space, which is particularly galling when the whole focus of the exhibition is graphics, but you can view a few of the images here. The Wellcome gets so crowded that I always try to come mid-day on a weekday (also so I have time to grab lunch from Roti King on the other side of Euston station – I’d never tried roti canai until I started eating there, but now I crave it pretty much all the time), but even that isn’t enough to avoid my fellow Londoners, because the museum is always hopping. I was dismayed to see there was an actual queue to look at the first set of cases, so I naturally bypassed it and headed straight for a display case in the middle of the room that almost no one was looking at. This turned out to contain graphics to do with anatomy, including a couple iPad models of the human body, and a small section on birth control with a few comic strips used by Planned Parenthood back in the infancy of the Pill. To be honest, I don’t think it made any difference what order I walked around in, because each display had a self-contained theme, and there wasn’t really any narrative tying the exhibition together; it was just a series of examples of different types of graphic design.

The line at the start of the exhibit eventually cleared, so I had a chance to meander over and check it out. This was the smoking themed section, and included both campaigns to encourage smoking (the designs of Silk Cut and Lucky Strike cigarette packets), and those against it, including a very bizarre Japanese poster on smoking etiquette that said something about how being scolded to pick a cigarette butt up was like being a child scolded for dropping candy wrappers (which to me sounds a little pro-smoker, but it was in the anti-smoking section, so maybe it lost something in translation).

The exhibition also dealt briefly with the design of fonts used in train stations and workplaces, which really had nothing to do with medicine at all, but I suppose the primary focus was indeed medical, because most of the other displays tied into medicine in some way; most obviously in the section on the design of prescription drugs, which has apparently been heavily influenced by an Israeli designer who came up with the idea of putting a big colourful shape on the front of prescription drug packets so pharmacists would be able to see with ease exactly what they were handing out, and thus avoid making dangerous mistakes. There was also a Swiss pharmaceutical company called JR Geigy AG that was renowned for its “ground-breaking” designs, though I do not remember exactly what they were.

There were displays on hospitals, mental health, and children’s medicine, but my favourite display was undoubtedly the one on epidemic disease. This contained some of the few properly historical objects in the museum, including posters warning about the spread of plague in 17th century Italy, and Victorian ones about cholera. There were some Dutch (I think? Damn this no picture rule!) designers that moved to Africa in the 1950s or ’60s and designed colourful posters explaining how leprosy is spread, and their work was here as well. Probably most visually striking, however, was the work done on the AIDS campaign in the 1980s-90s including a tombstone emblazoned with the word AIDS in giant red letters. There were also posters that went up in places like hospital waiting rooms and tattoo shops explaining how AIDS was spread, and also tying in with AIDS (sort of) was the display of condom packets (I was amused by the brand called OOOPH!) which came in an impressive and rather hilarious array of designs.

I feel like this exhibition was a lot smaller than most of the Wellcome’s major exhibitions, because it was limited to one large room, rather than a whole series of galleries like normal. I suppose it worked well with the theme, because it was bold visually and there wasn’t an overarching story to tell for which being led around a progression of galleries would make sense, but it nonetheless didn’t make for a particularly impressive exhibition. I left feeling just as uninspired by graphic design as I was when I went in – I suppose it might save my life, to answer the question in the title of the exhibition, but that doesn’t make it intrinsically interesting. I’m sticking with my initial description of dud for this one. 2.5/5 – it might be OK if you have a strong interest in graphic design, but if you were expecting something with a lot of informative text about the history of medicine and how graphic design tied into medical advances, like I was, you’re going to leave disappointed.

I also have to report that the Wellcome updated its Spirit Booth, which I was really excited to have my picture taken in last winter, and it was not an update for the better. Not only do you no longer get a physical copy of your photo (it’s all online), you have to answer a series of questions (in your mind) first, which would be fine, except for the voice in the booth pauses for about a full minute between each question, and you’re left sitting there in the dark wondering whether the booth is malfunctioning (for real, it doesn’t take a minute to read five words of text). They asked for feedback on the Spirit Booth, so here it is: put it back to the way it was before, or at least speed up the voice!