This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the sixteenth annual meeting of the Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science (SAHMS).

First: a word on pronunciation: is it SAHMS, with a long “a”, or SAHMS with a short “a”, pronounced like the name, Sam? There seemed to be some difference of opinion on this.

At any rate, this conference was a lot of fun for me: I presented a paper on my dissertation research on acupuncture, which was well-received despite a technology snafu and the fact that at the time, I was recovering from a really nasty chest cold. I met some delightful people who are all working on really engaging topics. I got to hang out with an old friend from my days at the Indiana Medical History Museum (IMHM). AND I got to look at some really cool stuff, such as these things, in the library of the St. Louis College of Pharmacy. (Top: a 19th century illuminated pharmacy sign; below: a pharmaceutical lozenge maker) 

Here’s what I love about history of medicine folks: even those of us who engage with esoteric theories or talk about abstract concepts concerning the definitions of medicine, the body, and disease – we all love material culture. We’re all aware of medical technology and how individuals experience objects through their encounters with medicine and therapeutics.

And that’s one theme I want to explore in this blog: the relationship between material objects and the way we do history. How do we integrate the wealth of materia medica that exists into our teaching and research? There are entire museums dedicated to the history of medicine, displaying antiquated medical equipment, patent medicines, and bizarre therapeutic devices. How can we engage with these materials without reducing them to the status of Medical Oddity of the Week.

Here’s an example: I used to teach Survey of American History 1 (the colonial era through Reconstruction) at a community college in Indianapolis, and when we came to the Civil War, I would borrow a field amputation kit from the IMHM to bring to class. During my lecture on battlefield medicine, I would take the kit out and show the various implements - the bone saw, the trephine, the various scalpels for slicing through skin and muscle and tendons. Some of the students were wowed by this, some of them turned a little green around the gills.

But it was amateur hour. An exercise in the macabre: “look at this gruesome instrument! Think about where it has been!” What did my students learn from this? That life in the past was harsh, brutish, and short? That their history teacher had gone mad and was waving around dangerous sharp objects that might still carry the germs of tetanus or worse?

How could I have done better with these objects? We could have discussed how this was the best care available and the ways in which the instruments would be used. Or how the amputation kit was designed to be compact and easy to carry while still containing all the necessary implements a surgeon would need to carry out any form of amputation quickly and efficiently. Or I could have brought in primary sources that discussed the experience of battlefield surgery, as a way of more fully understanding the experience of medicine in the Civil War. 

Using objects is more than just Show and Tell. It's an opportunity to bring physical stuff from the past into the present and to think about how the context of the everyday frames individuals' experiences of that stuff. 

On a frostbitten early February evening, I found myself in the northern Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint, searching for a bar I’d never been to – let alone heard of – until an intriguing promotional email landed in my inbox only two weeks before. From the Obscura Society, an organization dedicated to “seeking out the secret histories” that surround us, the email promised that a 20-dollar ticket would provide me with an evening of “quack medicine and pseudoscience, exploring a bizarre assortment of antiquated instruments and ideas used over the ages in the pursuit of health and pleasure.”

This magical ticket also came with drinks. I bought two, and invited my spouse along for a pre-Valentine’s day adventure into the world of "Medical Love." 

Our presenter for the evening, Denny Daniels, had brought to this shabby-yet-cozy watering hole a selection of items from his traveling Museum of Interesting Things, pertaining chiefly to medical and personal care items designed to render the body either more attractive or more sexually responsive (or in some cases, both).

After first showing off his phonograph complete with original wax cylinder, which he had no qualms about actually playing for us, he launched into some of the more common but less-sexy items: an empty phial of cocaine, an empty bottle that had held irradiated water, a third bottle of actual snake oil that still had the oil and a tiny preserved snake inside it. This last item was really pretty cool - I'd never seen an actual snake oil phial. 

Other items were less medial more more erotic: picture post cards with risque images of women in bathing suits (shocking!), rude jokes, and even a picture box that would, for a quarter, play a moving image of a belly dancer for you.

The objects in which the medical and the erotic most seamlessly blended were, of course, in the mechanical department. There were electrical devices with different attachments that, with the proper usage of the several attachments, could stimulate hair growth, promote weight loss, and cure female frigidity. Our host even had the temerity to plug one such device in, which promptly shorted out and sent literal sparks flying.

Another such device, which Mr. Daniel dated to the 1920s, a Violetta Machine, was also sold through Sears & Roebuck, with the aim of stimulating hair growth, alleviating arthritis, and stimulating the blood. It was a sort of glass tube wand that plugged into an outlet and, when turned on, looked like one of those static-electric balls they used to sell in mall stores. The audience was invited to line up and hold their hand up to the device; with some hesitation, I queued up. When my turn came, I nervously waved my hand within an inch of the device, and though I flinched in anticipation, I received a jolt less severe than a static shock you might get from rubbing your feet on a carpet and touching a metal doorknob.

The Museum of Interesting Things is a curious institution. It is owned, curated, and presided over by its founder, Mr. Daniel, who seems to have built the collection based around whatever objects he finds, well, interesting. So it is not entirely medical in nature. Nor does Mr Daniel seem to have much specialized knowledge about the history of medicine, but what he lacks in academic training he more than makes up for with enthusiasm, a willingness to read whatever material is available on the items he finds – and to corroborate his findings with other catalogs – and a passion for understanding an object on its own terms.

 This last bit is what resonated most with me: while Mr. Daniel did not always provide a great amount of either the medical or historical context for the objects he displayed, he vehemently urged the audience to understand that some of these so-called quack remedies, while not capable of doing everything they were advertised to do, nonetheless could be effective in some applications. Though there is much to be said for preservation, the opportunity to get up close to an object, to touch it, observe how it might work on the body, to experience the physical reality of what some therapeutics could mean, to me, shed light on important aspects of the therapeutic experience that we, as academic historians of medicine, can only guess at at times through our research and writing.