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Skin Deep: Photographing Dermatology, an online exhibit

Here we present material from a Dittrick Museum digital exhibit--Photographing Dermatology: The collections of Dr William Thomas Corlett (1854–1948). William Thomas Corlett was born in Orange, Ohio and educated at Oberlin College from 1870 to 1873. He studied medicine at the medical department of the University of Wooster (forerunner of the College of Wooster), graduating in 1877. After teaching at Wooster for two years he traveled to London and Paris to study skin diseases and later become a Fellow of the London Royal College of Physicians. Corlett returned to Cleveland in 1882 and was appointed lecturer, then Professor of Skin...

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The Dittrick Museum Online Exhibits: SmallPox

Did you know that Dittrick has digital exhibits? Our website hosts several "online" exhibits, guest-written by talented people. Today, I will be presenting from "Small Pox: A city on the edge of Disaster," written by Patsy Gerstner, PhD. The full online exhibit may be found on the Dittrick website, under online exhibits. ...In the early years of the 20th century, the city of Cleveland experienced a major outbreak of smallpox. This epidemic brought the city to the edge of disaster in 1902. Only a program of community-wide vaccination halted the spread of this dreaded infectious disease. This was not...

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Juno, the Transparent Woman, and #WomensHistoryMonth

Today we want to talk about Juno in celebration of #WomensHistoryMonth! We have written before about our wonderful "greeter," Juno, the transparent anatomical model. She has become a mainstay here, but Juno is a well-traveled woman! 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.” Despite becoming part of East Germany after WWII, the museum continued to make these models and some of the employees managed to leave East for West, helping to create the Köln Krankenhaus Museum. It was here that Juno was "born";...

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A Change of Heart: Cardiology in Cleveland

America’s Number One Killer? Heart attack, or cardiac arrest, became a leading cause of death after the turn of the century. People had always suffered from cardiac problems, but they usually died from other causes, especially infectious diseases, long before reaching the age when heart problems threatened their well being. As medicine advanced and people lived longer, heart disease became a serious health issue. Today, of course, we think of it as one of the United States' top "killers"--and most are familiar with defibrillation “paddles” and the command “Clear!” But did you know that the defibrillator began here in Cleveland?...

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