[back to Contents Page]
HMM Newsletter - No. 12, 1997 ISSN 1036-3041


READING MATTER

Periodicals

Munro, Patricia, '"Baffling beauty": a pilot project about beauty, health, and our bodies', Visitor behaviour, Vol.XI, No.1, Spring 1996, pp.4-5. 'Baffling beauty' is a travelling health education project, consisting of an exhibition with supporting public programs. The author of this paper describes the various stages in the front-end evaluation of this project leading up to its opening in July
Smith, Cate, 'North Head Quarantine Station', Public History Review, Vol. 4, 1995, pp. 134 - 139. A review of the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service's presentation of the North Head Quarantine Station at Manly, and an examination of the ways in which representations of 'the past' in museum exhibitions and heritage sites impact on t
Archivaria (Journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists), Spring, No.41, 1996, ISSN 0318-6954. This issue of Archivaria is a special issue on medical archives. Articles include:

Barbara L. Craig, ' "Archives and Medicine" revisited: looking out, looking in, and looking ahead', p.41.
Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland, 'Health sciences documentation and networked hypermedia: an integrative approach', p.45.
Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Alistair Tough, 'Cutting the Gordian knot: or how to preserve non-current clinical records without being buried in paper', p.61.
Elizabeth Denham, 'Dealing with the records of closing hospitals: the Calgary Area Health Authority plan', p.78.
Carolyn Heald, 'Documenting disease: Ontario's bureaucracy battles tuberculosis', p.88.
Kathryn McPherson, 'Nurses, archives, and the history of Canadian health care', p.108.
Geoffrey Reaume and Barbara L. Craig, 'Medical archives: an update of the Spadoni bibliography, 1986-1995', p.121.
Nancy McCall and Lisa A. Mix, 'Scholarly returns: patterns of research in a medical archives'.
Barbara L. Craig, 'Batson's Trust for the Royal London Hospital: records management 1820s style', p.188.

'Museum practice'

Published in Great Britain, each issue of this new journal has a main theme. For Vol.1, No.1 it is 'Storage' and for No.2 it is 'Display'.

The main theme for No.3 is 'Outreach'. Within this theme of 'Outreach' there is a section on 'Museums and reminiscence work' (pp. 58-60). Another section deals with 'Museums on the road', and here there are two articles of particular interest to HMM members. The first is a case study of Riksutställningar, Sweden's government funded producer of travelling exhibitions (pp.73 - 75). This short article on how Riksutställningar produces its exhibitions refers to some recent examples, including an exhibition on Alzheimer's disease housed in a skull-shaped enclosure, and a garbage museum mounted in an articulated trailer. The second article of interest is about 'Reminiscence kits' which have items in them that people are allowed to handle (p.76). These kits are particularly valuable as a stimulus to elderly people's long-term memory and reminiscence. This useful short article on making and utilising reminiscence kits includes a list of memory boxes based on social history themes that have been assembled at the Manor Museum in England. One of these boxes is called 'Under the weather' and contains medicines, a bed warmer and other items that stimulate memories of past illnesses.

Proceedings

Deacon, P., Electronic documents and archiving, History, heritage and health: Proceedings of the Fourth Biennial Conference of the Australian Society of the History of Medicine 1996, p.218.

In 50 years' time, historians may be using computers to search, retrieve and view the documents which we are creating now. P. Deacon, from the library at the Commonwealth Department of Human Services and Health, discusses some of the issues which must be faced before we can commit our records to electronic rather than paper archiving.

Books and monographs

Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee, Cinderella collections: university museums and collections in Australia: the report of the University Museums Review Committee, 1996.

This is a 225-page bound report. It was commissioned by the Commonwealth Department of Employment, Education and Training, which recognised the scale and national significance of the more than 250 museums and collections in Australian universities, many of which contain rare and valuable items that are now virtually irreplaceable. Requests for copies of the report should be directed to the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee, GPO Box 1142, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
Bynum W.F. and Porter, Roy (eds), Companion encyclopaedia of the history of medicine, 2 volumes, Routledge, London and New York, 1993. Around $A263.00.

This massive work will interest anyone involved with the history of medicine, but for people interested in the artefacts of health and medicine, there are at least two chapters of particular relevance. Both are in volume 2 of the Companion encyclopaedia:

Reiser, Stanley Joel, The science of diagnosis: diagnostic technology, pp. 824-851.

Marks, Harry M., Medical technologies: social contexts and consequences, pp. 1592-1618 (this chapter also has an excellent bibliographic list for further reading on microscopes, stethoscopes, the electrocardiogram, X-rays and radiology, and anaesthesia and artificial respiration, as well as the social history of medical technology and women's history in relation to medical technology).

Gamwell, Lynn and Tomes, Nancy, Madness in America: cultural and medical perceptions of mental illness before 1914, Cornell Studies in the History of Psychiatry, 182 pp., Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1995, $US39.95.

This book, by a museum director and curator, and a historian, receives an excellent review in Isis, Vol.87, No.3, September 1996, p.577. We do not usually include works on the history of medicine in our Reading Matter list for HMM members unless they are of particular interest to custodians of collections. In this case we are listing the book by Gamwell and Tomes because, according to the Isis reviewer, "it is lavishly illustrated with drawings and photographs designed to highlight its cogent text". Amongst these illustrations are "pictures of artifacts employed to treat, imprison, and subdue the mad".
Jackson, W.A., The Victorian chemist and druggist, Shire Album 80, Shire Publications Ltd, UK, 1981. This title in the Shire Album series is still available.
Townley, Patricia, & Parris, Roger, Caring for heritage objects: guidelines on establishing significance, object care and management, Powerhouse Museum Research Series: No.3, Powerhouse Publishing, Sydney (PO Box K346, Haymarket, NSW 2000, Australia), 1994.
Warren, David J., Old medical and dental instruments, Shire Album 308, Shire Publications, UK, 1994. This is a delightful little book in the Shire Album series. It has 30 pages of medical and dental collectibles with B&W photographs, suggested further reading, and a list of places to visit in UK.
A manual for cataloging historical medical artifacts using OCLC and the MARC format. Prepared as part of the Ohio Medical Artifact Cataloging (OHMAC) Project, a project of the Ohio Network of Medical History Collections, 81 pp.

For further information contact:

Patsy Gerstner or Jennifer Compton
Cleveland Medical Library Association,
11000 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106-1714.

This useful manual contains much helpful information for people cataloguing medical artefacts, including a list of suject headings for artefacts owned by the Dittrick Museum of Medical History.

HMM HAS BEEN GIVEN PERMISSION TO PHOTOCOPY THIS HANDBOOK

Many thanks to Ms Patsy Gerstner

TO OBTAIN A COPY SEND $5.00 FOR POSTAGE AND HANDLING TO THE EDITOR OF THIS NEWSLETTER

Previous Page Next Page


Back to HMM Home Page] Published by the Australian Science Archives Project on ASAPWeb, 8 August 1997
Prepared by: Lisa Cianci and Lisa O'Sullivan
Updated by: Lisa Cianci
Date modified: 10 August 1998
[ Top of page | HMM Home Page | HMM Newsletter Contents | ASAPWeb ]