ABSTRACT
Almost every medical faculty possesses anatomical and/or pathological collections: human and animal preparations, wax- and other models, as well as drawings, photographs, documents and archives relating to them. In many institutions these collections are well-preserved, but in others they are poorly maintained and rendered inaccessible to medical and other audiences. This volume explores the changing status of anatomical collections from the early modern period to date. It is argued that anatomical and pathological collections are medically relevant not only for future generations of medical faculty and future research, but they are also important in the history of medicine, the history of the institutions to which they belong, and to the wider understanding of the cultural history of the body. Moreover, anatomical collections are crucial to new scholarly inter-disciplinary studies that investigate the interaction between arts and sciences, especially medicine, and offer a venue for the study of interactions between anatomists, scientists, anatomical artists and other groups, as well as the display and presentation of natural history and medical cabinets. In considering the fate of anatomical collections - and the importance of the keeper’s decisions with respect to collections - this volume will make an important methodological contribution to the study of collections and to discussions on how to preserve universities’ academic heritage.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|20 pages
Introduction
part II|89 pages
Fated Collections
chapter 4|20 pages
Gender, Fate and McGill University's Medical Collections
part III|66 pages
Preparations, Models and Users
chapter 7|16 pages
Adieu Albinus
chapter 8|14 pages
User-Developers, Model Students and Ambassador Users
chapter 10|16 pages
Fall and Rise of the Roca Museum
part IV|52 pages
Provenance and Fate
chapter 12|16 pages
‘Not Everything that Says Java is from Java'
chapter 13|18 pages
Cataloguing Collections
part V|64 pages
Museum and Collection Practices Today