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The Problem with Bodies

Bodies--they have always been something of a problem. Even when in good working order, the body can be cumbersome, messy, demanding, and unpredictable. It runs down; it gets ill; it needs constant attention. Eventually, the body dies, but these adventures are far from over. Where do you put a dead body? Burial arose in part to combat the spread of disease, but death rituals vary with climate and geography. You can't bury your dead in the frozen ground of Tibet, nor can you build a pyre where no trees grow for use as fuel. How we deal with bodies...

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Celebrating Juno, the Transparent Woman

Welcome back to the Dittrick Museum Blog! This month, the Wellcome Collection's Object of the Month is celebrating a mainstay of health museums world-wide: the transparent anatomical model. In the write up, which explores the marred past of these devices in the war and post-war period--"a past that very few know about, a past that tells a story of redemption and new beginnings." In the 1920s, the Deutsches-Hygiene-Museum in Dresden, Germany, created a fully operable model of the human body, depicting “the human body as a machine.”  A transparent female form was made to join him. Despite becoming part of...

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Of Syphilis and Salvarasan: Uncle Sam Get's Involved

For this week's post, I am resurrecting some material from 2011. The U. S. Public Health Service and the privately operated American Social Hygiene Association, commissioned artists working under the WPA (Works Progress Administration) to design posters for their campaign against venereal disease. The lithographed posters, mostly produced from 1936 to 1942, were distributed by state and local boards of health and public health and safety programs. Digital copies of posters came from the Library of Congress, the Wellcome Library, and the American Social Hygiene Association archive at the University of Minnesota. The images seen here are from the Library...

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Of Syphilis and Salvarsan: The danger and promise of cure

If You have Syphilis... During the Victorian period, syphilis was little short of an epidemic (it has even been referred to as the "third plague"). During WWI, syphilis became an enormous problem for the soldiers on the Western Front, resulting in a public health campaign. But what happened once you actually had the disease? In today's post, we will look at the effects of cure: the injection of Salvarsan 606. The Disease: Syphilis caused open and weeping sores called chancres--these did not itch or cause pain, but were incredibly unsightly. They affected soft tissue, but could also inflame joints and destroy mucous...

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