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.