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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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Rediscovering the Birthing Chair: Delivering Life While Sitting Up

Blog by Anneliese Braunegg, student at Case Western Reserve University Essay winner, USNA 287Q Gothic Science, SAGES 2015 Instructor: Dr. Brandy Schillace Envision two women. Each is in labor, each is in pain, and each is accompanied by a professional caretaker who is assisting her in giving birth. Here the similarities end. The first woman lies on a hospital bed with her hair strewn across the pillows; she is accompanied by a doctor, and she is simultaneously pushing her baby into the world as he pulls on it with forceps. The second woman sits on a birthing chair that was brought to...

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Check that Temperature! Rhythm Method, Thermometers, and the Gynodate

Sex, contraception, and reproduction: if you think those are topics best avoided in a museum, think again! Next week, the Dittrick hosts its annual Percy Skuy Lecture on the History of Contraception, and this time, it's all about temperature. Hot under the collar? It might be your cycle! Leo J. Latz, a Chicago doctor, first championed the Rhythm Method (based on work by Ogino-Knaus) in the United States. In 1932 Latz published The Rhythm of Sterility and Fertility in Women, which sold over 200,000 copies by 1942; he contended that the “findings of modern science disclose a rational, natural,...

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