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For the LOVE of Medical History

For our final #MuseumWeek post we're talking about why we LOVE medical history and why we hope that love is contagious! #loveMW It's not uncommon for the Dittrick Medical History Center to be referred to a bit like a cabinet of curiosities,  a niche museum, or perhaps more kindly, a "hidden treasure." Although we've always worked to make collections accessible and major public engagement efforts are underway, we still often have to make the case for the (sometimes not so) implicit question "Why should I care about medical history?" The answer tends to go a little like this: Medical history is the history...

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The People Behind (and in) the Museum

It’s #MuseumWeek, where museums around the world take to Twitter in a behind-the-scenes look at collections! Today’s theme is people. Follow us here on the blog, on Twitter and on Instagram all week to keep up with each event! #peopleMW Although the Dittrick Museum's collections primarily focus on medical tools and  artifacts, a close look around the galleries reveals a few human specimens ever ready to greet visitors with perpetual (and sometimes toothless) smiles. Like the surgical sets and pharmaceuticals they're featured next to, these specimens were also tools -- tools used to teach students about the human body. Our collections include many...

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The People Behind (and in) the Museum

It’s #MuseumWeek, where museums around the world take to Twitter in a behind-the-scenes look at collections! Today’s theme is people. Follow us here on the blog, on Twitter and on Instagram all week to keep up with each event! #peopleMW Although the Dittrick Museum's collections primarily focus on medical tools and  artifacts, a close look around the galleries reveals a few human specimens ever ready to greet visitors with perpetual (and sometimes toothless) smiles. Like the surgical sets and pharmaceuticals they're featured next to, these specimens were also tools -- tools used to teach students about the human body. Our collections include many...

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The Eye as Art: Anatomy and Vision in the 18th Century

There is not one Part of the whole Body, that discovers more Art and Disign (sic), than this small Organ: All its Parts are so excellently well contrived, so elegantly formed and nicely adjusted that none can deny it to be an Organ as magnificent and curious, as the Sense is useful and entertaining. -- William Porterfield in A Treatise on the Eye, The Manner and Phaenomena of Vision, 1759 The Dittrick Museum is thrilled to have Dr. Jonathan Lass present "Eye of the Artist" for the upcoming Zverina Lecture on Oct. 14th. Dr. Lass, the Charles I. Thomas Professor, and formerly chair, in...

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