Sharp and telling: Surgical collections as instruments of medicine, history and culture

TY - JOUR

T1 - Sharp and telling

T2 - Surgical collections as instruments of medicine, history and culture

AU - Tybjerg, Karin

PY - 2019/11/20

Y1 - 2019/11/20

N2 - Surgical instrument collections have been used in a multitude of ways – as tools, taxonomies, teaching aids, representation, historical highlights and public displays – and they provide a key to understanding the shifting relations between surgery, medical museums and medical history. Tracing the uses of the surgical instrument collections from the Royal Danish Academy of Surgery and the Medical Historical Museum at the University of Copenhagen reveals a network of disciplinary and institutional changes from the late nineteenth to early twenty-first century. The history of the collections maps relations between scientific and cultural historical collections and between medicine and history. In the same way as surgical instruments have connected the surgeon’s hand to the patients’ body, the surgical instrument collections connect together the public, medical practice and history.

AB - Surgical instrument collections have been used in a multitude of ways – as tools, taxonomies, teaching aids, representation, historical highlights and public displays – and they provide a key to understanding the shifting relations between surgery, medical museums and medical history. Tracing the uses of the surgical instrument collections from the Royal Danish Academy of Surgery and the Medical Historical Museum at the University of Copenhagen reveals a network of disciplinary and institutional changes from the late nineteenth to early twenty-first century. The history of the collections maps relations between scientific and cultural historical collections and between medicine and history. In the same way as surgical instruments have connected the surgeon’s hand to the patients’ body, the surgical instrument collections connect together the public, medical practice and history.

U2 - 10.1093/jhc/fhy036

DO - 10.1093/jhc/fhy036

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0954-6650

JO - Journal of the History of Collections

JF - Journal of the History of Collections

M1 - fhy036

ER -