Medical Collections Not for the Faint of Heart

Earlier this year my peers and I in the Public History program had the opportunity to examine UWO's Medical Artifact Collection under the instruction of Dr. Michelle A. Hamilton. As all of us can attest, this collection was equal parts fascinating and grotesque; it was amazing to be able to get our (gloved) hands on 19th century medical artifacts and learn how to handle and examine them as true historians and/or museum curators would, but I'm sure few of us can forget the dried blood that remained on the blades of some of the saws and scalpels, even after nearly a century of disuse.

In my position this summer as the Archives Assistant at the Sunnybrook Health Science Centre Archives my first task was to catalogue all of the archive' s photographic holdings. The majority of the collection consisted of aerial views, interior and exterior shots of the hospital under construction and various departments, equipment and staff from the 1970s. To be honest, for the most part the photos were a bit of a snooze. Thankfully, every once in a while there was a photographic gem (like the black and white shot from the 1940s of an Italian prisoner of war who was undergoing physiotherapy after having one of his legs amputated from the knee down) to keep things interesting.

This week, however, I've moved on to cataloguing the archive's Medical Art Collection. While this means a fair bit of wading through past hospital brochures and stationary layouts for printers, it also means discovering some really beautiful and detailed anatomical sketches that were originally commissioned from the hospital's Art Department by doctors for teaching or learning purposes.

My favourite find so far - hands down - is the file of facial sketches that were done for a doctor that was about to undertake reconstructive surgery of a patient's nose. The file contains various reference materials (e.g. Polaroid's of a human skull, anatomical sketches from a textbook of the underlying structure of muscles, veins, etc. in a human face, and photographs of the actual patient before surgery). The artist then used those items to complete a series of sketches of the patient himself, what the patient's skull structure likely looked like and what certain nerve systems, veins and/or arteries looked like. The artist then layered all of these sketches over each other to complete a final sketch of the patient which showed all of these different parts in relation to each other.

After the drawings were complete, the doctor who had commissioned the sketches then added his own notes about the surgery overtop of them, indicating where arteries and veins were layered closely together, where certain systems were buried under deeper layers of tissue and cautioning himself to not "put the incision too close to the margin of [the] nostril."

As the title of this blog posts suggests, the final pieces of the file were considerably more graphic than pen and ink sketches and doctor's surgical notes and definitely not for the faint of heart or the squeemish: included in the file were photographs of the patient taken during the procedure when part of his nose had been removed and immediately post-op when stitches and bruising were evident.

To see the artist's process from beginning to end was fascinating enough on its own, but then it was also really neat to see evidence of the use to which the sketch was put. It definitely added another layer to my appreciation of medical art and how items from the archives could/should be used to educate and engage the public at the hospital. With its combination of art, education and enough of the "grotesque" to fascinate without sensationalizing or exploiting the patient (sometimes a thin line for the public historian to walk), the file in its entirety would make an excellent exhibit for one of the hospital's display cases. In fact, this might be exactly the type of public history-related project that I suggest to my supervisor that I take on by the end of the summer.

We'll see. I'll keep you posted.

[Note: Artwork by P. Cunningham, posted with permission from the Sunnybrook Archives]

Public History is Alive and Well in the Archives

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone reading this blog that I’ve always been enamored with museums. As a child my parents made sure to expose both my brother and I to as many museums as possible. And, whether these were traditional or living heritage, large or small, they were a staple of family vacations, day trips and parentally-supported school outings. Occasionally, my parents even managed to schedule museum visits for after games when we’d travel for soccer tournaments (they were sneaky like that). Most of the time, I loved wandering from room to room looking at artifacts and dioramas. And when I didn’t? Well, I still learned something. More importantly, I learned to appreciate the important role that museums play in caring for the history, heritage, culture and values of a place and/or a people.

Even with all that interest in museums, I had never given much thought to archives and the role that they play within a community. In fact, I’m almost ashamed to admit that the first time I ever stepped foot into an archive I was already in my fourth year of university. I certainly never envisioned myself – a scant 8 months since starting the Public History program at UWO – working in one archive and volunteering at another. But, this summer I’m doing both.

The main portion of my internship this summer will take place at the Sunnnybrook Archives (SBA) in Toronto where I’ll be an archives assistant to a graduate of UWO’s Public History program, Phil Gold.

The Sunnybrook Archives exists primarily to collect, organize, describe, make available and preserve records materials of historical, legal, and administrative value to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. As the Archives Assistant, I’ll be working in all areas of the archives, including working first-hand with print and graphic records, and with medical artifacts and other college memorabilia. My primary duty will be to assist Phil with the arrangement and description of the collection (specifically the archive’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs Fonds) according to RAD standards in preparation for the submission of a fonds level description to ARCHAEION. It’ll probably be a tedious and exacting process, but one that I’ll learn a great deal about archival practices from.

Since my contract with Sunnybrook Archives is only part time, I’ll be making up the remaining hours of my internship by volunteering at the Ontario Jewish Archives working on a number of archival and public history projects. To begin with, I’ll be helping organize/work “front of house” activities at the archive’s Doors Open Toronto site this weekend. From there I’ll move onto doing an inventory and some digitization of the archival holdings belonging to R.H. McGregor Elementary School in Toronto in preparation for a more extensive school history section on their webpage and a display for the school’s entryway. I’ll also have a hand in a few smaller projects, including helping to organize the OJA’s summer tours, helping update one of the Holocaust Education Centre’s displays and working on a number of item level RAD-compliant descriptions and digitization of some of the archive’s photographic records.

There are two other major projects that I’ll be working on at the OJA this summer and I’m very excited to have the opportunity to have a hand in both of them. The first is a podcast to accompany the OJA’s Facets of Fame: Portraits by Toronto Photographer Al Gilbert display at the Market Gallery in the St. Lawrence Market (see Facets of Fame blog post). I’ll be responsible for setting up interviews with some of the artist’s subjects for inclusion in the podcast, scanning images from the exhibit and helping to create a script for the podcast (Look Ma, I’m writing for the public!). The second major project that I’ll be working on is the continuation of the OJA’s huge oral history project. The project aims to record the stories of WWII veterans and I’ll be responsible for scheduling interviews, conducting pre-interviews and accessioning the videos once they have been recorded.

The summer’s barely begun and already I’m feeling very lucky to have the opportunity to work with the Director of the Ontario Jewish Archives, Ellen Scheinberg, who has been kind enough to include me in so many of the institution’s public history projects. The wide variety of projects she has schedule for me to help on will surely broaden my exposure and practical hands-on experience with public history in the “real world.”