Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh Online Archive Launch

With a little less than a month to go before the conference, we sadly have to admit that blog posts have slipped, and for that we are sorry! Just a reminder that we are open to guest posts or suggestions so long as it related to the theme of the conference; you can reach us by e-mail, Twitter, or Facebook, and we'd love to hear from you.

Today, however, we'd like to share with you the exciting launch of a fantastic new resource from our very own Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh: The Sibbald Library's Online Archive. The result of a 2-year Wellcome Trust grant, the archive is in the process of cataloguing the RCPE's deposited collections to provide greater access to the public. Already, 8,000 items have been catalogued in the archive, and the project is set to continue until February 2013. The archive boasts 189 collections online, each with its own detailed collection level description and hierarchical description of all records.

Collections include sources from:

• Joseph Black
• William Cullen
• Andrew Duncan
• Edinburgh General Lying-In Hospital
• Edinburgh Obstetrical Society
• Francis Home
• James Gregory
• John Gregory
• James Hamilton
• John Hope
• William Hunter
• Alexander Monro
• Alexander Morison
• John Playfair
• John Pringle
• John Rutherford
• Andrew St Clair
• Scottish Medical Service Emergency Committee
• Alexander Russell Simpson
• James Young Simpson
• Robert Whytt
• Thomas Young

It should be pointed out that the collections are arranged according to creator rather than subject matter, although you can search according to date, person, place, subject, format, category, title, or even reference number (should you know it). Only a year in to the project and already the result looks to be a significant online resource for those interested in the history of medicine and the medical humanities; I'm sure that you, like us, look forward to seeing the archive in its completion in 2013!

Bio-Politics Video Journal

If you haven't already heard, earlier this month the new online video journal BioPolitics launched their first issue, Past and Present of Eugenics. The issue features a video dialogue between Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (Emory University), one of our fantastic keynote speakers, and Ruth S. Cowan (University of Pennsylvania), as well as annotations by Rachel Adams, Paul Lombardo, Marisa Miranda, and Gustav Vallejo. The issue also features an interview with Nikolas Rose.

The dialogue "contextualize[s] and complicate[s] the current discussion of eugenic practices" by considering the history of eugenics in relation to contemporary narratives of reproduction and reproductive rights, engaging with issues of disability discrimination, before reflecting on the significance of eugenics and Nazism to modern medical practice.

The next issue of the volume will address the topic of Mental Illness and Leadership, featuring a video dialogue between S. Nassir Ghaemi (Tufts University) and Howard I. Kushner (Emory University), and the journal is currently accepting proposals for future video dialogues pertaining to political, cultural, and ethical perspectives on medicine and politics.

Freakery and "Aesthetic Traces"

If you happen to be interested in "freaks," freakery, and its relationship to nineteenth-century medical "monsters", we'd like to draw your attention to a fascinating article published in 2005 in the Disability Studies Quarterly, Sheila Moeschen's "Aesthetic Traces in Unlikely Places: Re-visioning the Freak in 19th-Century American Photography". The article, which is open access, offers an intriguing reading of the role that photography played in the creation and presentation of extraordinary bodies in the nineteenth century; Moeschen denies that fictive division which might separate the objective medical photograph from its public side-show counterpart, typically deemed to be more deliberately titillating. Instead, she suggests,

"The two traditions form a reciprocal relationship that illuminates their representational and political imbrications. The historical persistence to delineate between a medical and artistic "aesthetic" reveals a disconcerting bias towards privileging the power and credibility of the empirical realm over the artistic."

Moeschen points to the role that "sensation" played in separating the clinical photograph of medical monstrosity from the "freak portrait", evoking perhaps a distinction between the sensational props and posing of the visual construction of freakery with the potentially sensualised medical photographs which are marked by their nudity in order to reveal the anomalous body more fully to the viewer.

The article focuses on what Moeschen calls the "performative trace," which she sees as characterising the construction of both medical and sensational photographs of individuals with extraordinary bodies, creating "an alternate frame around these subjects that explicitly signals the perceptual and cognitive apparatuses ascribed to performance." She notes that

"The performative trace becomes another presentational "mode" employed, ironically in the case of the medical profession, to disarm these unusual bodies, endowing them with a quality of the ephemeral that ultimately promotes uncritical fascination; it promotes a kind of fetishistic voyeurism and illicit titillation."

The instability which this theatrical element introduces into these photographs is, for Moeschen, a deliberate strategy on the part of both medical and sideshow photographers to manipulate the "cultural and ideological value" of their subjects.

A Hallowe'en Treat: Surgeon's Hall Museum, Edinburgh

If you happen to be in the Edinburgh area this weekend, we recommend that you stop in to the Surgeon's Hall Museum to explore their fantastic collections and exhibits. It is their last open weekend this year, which is appropriate, since today and tomorrow are potentially the best possible days for exploring an exhibit about pathological anatomy, or the history of surgery, or Sherlock Holmes and his real-life counterpart, Charles Bell. They will still be open during the week, which means you are also welcome to visit on Hallowe'en itself. The museum is open from 12-4 Monday to Friday, and the weekend openings should start again in April.

The Surgeon's Hall Museum, Edinburgh

The Surgeon's Hall Museum also runs many special events and lectures in the stunning William Playfair building, so if you are local or planning a trip to the area, you might consider exploring their website to see whether they have anything exciting coming up (recent examples include the Pathology: A Day in Medical Detection event in October, while November and December feature tours on the history of medicine pre-anaesthesia and a talk on Scottish anatomists). You can also follow them on Twitter for updates and some fantastic links about the history of medicine.

If you aren't in Edinburgh, that doesn't mean you can't partake of the fun: come to the conference in June where we will be organising an opportunity to explore this amazing museum.

Have a deliciously monstrous Hallowe'en!