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SUMMARY:Collecting Mesopotamia in Henry Wellcome's Historical Medical Muse
 um - Ruth Horry (Department of History and Philosophy of Science)
DTSTART:20121115T133000Z
DTEND:20121115T153000Z
UID:TALK41425@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:William Carruthers
DESCRIPTION:In 1913\, pharmaceuticals entrepreneur Henry Wellcome opened t
 he Historical Medical Museum in London to display his vast collection of m
 edically related objects. The Museum presented the progress of medicine fr
 om ancient times to the present day. Its displays traced modern medicine
 ’s roots back to several ancient civilizations\, including Mesopotamia a
 s well as Greece and Rome. Literate civilization flourished in Mesopotamia
  (Assyria and Babylonia)—geographically now modern Iraq—from c.3500–
 75 BCE. My talk explores how the Historical Medical Museum collected and d
 isplayed its own particular version of Mesopotamia\, manipulated to fit it
 s own display narrative.\n\nWellcome’s staff purchased a variety of orig
 inal objects and also commissioned copies from other collections. Purchasi
 ng material without reading the original ancient languages\, however\, pro
 ved a challenge\; when no expert could be found to examine them\, the Muse
 um relied on aesthetics alone. Consequently\, a large number of texts unre
 lated to medicine entered the collection\, including over 250 ancient rece
 ipts for buying grain and sheep. The museum also invested in copying objec
 ts\, which provided them with new opportunities. Copies were fashioned for
  maximum impact on display: small artefacts were super-sized\, new represe
 ntations were hybridized from original sources\, and three-dimensional Bab
 ylonian statues were created anew from two-dimensional originals.\n\nThe H
 istorical Medical Museum provides a case study of how archaeological artef
 acts were collected by non-expert staff and displayed for non-specialist a
 udiences. Following the 'life histories' of Mesopotamian objects in Wellco
 me’s collection also sheds light on the role played by archaeological co
 llections in history of medicine in the early twentieth century.
LOCATION:Seminar Room S1 Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge
  CB3 9DT
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