Arany Sas Pharmacy. Creative Commons. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic. By Kotomi.
A steep climb to Buda – the older half of Budapest – leads to the medieval Castle district and to the beautiful building of 18 Tárnok utca where the Arany Sas (‘The Golden Eagle’s’) Pharmacy Museum is located. Once a 15th-century merchant house, it was also home to the very first pharmacy in Buda which operated until 1745; the building itself was used as a pharmacy until World War One. The Anna street side of the building serves as an example for the 18th-century ‘Serbian shop-door’-style of dispensing medicines to customers in the street. Inside, the pharmacy’s 18th-century furnishings are on display, together with artistically shaped glass or wooden jars once containing powdered or liquid drugs, instruments and a reconstruction of an alchemist’s laboratory. Showcasing the history of medicine and chemistry, along with Renaissance and Baroque pharmaceutics and pottery, the Museum is a hub, albeit a tiny one, that reveals a changing understanding of medicine and long-gone alchemical splendour.
An 18th-century pharmacy counter. Creative Commons. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic. By Kotomi.
The captions accompanying the objects are in Hungarian and do not reveal substantial or detailed background information. It is possible to book a tour in English in advance, though if a translator is at hand, visitors might prefer to opt for a tour in Hungarian on the day of visiting. The tour guides are staff of the Semmelweis Medical History Museum to which the Pharmacy museum is attached and are not necessarily experts on the history of drugs. For a detailed presentation on the history of Hungarian pharmacies, it might be worth contacting the museum’s expert Ildikó Horány. In any event, visitors with little background in the history of medicine and pharmaceutical drugs can still marvel at the variety of beautiful vessels that once contained curious remedies, the grinders, scales and glass utensils, as well as the lovingly displayed 18th-century pharmacy counter and the alchemist’s laboratory. Historians of medicine, pharmacology and chemistry will definitely enjoy taking it all in.
Objects on display at Arany Sas. Creative Commons. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic. By Kotomi.
Literature: Ágnes Romhányi , ‘ Pharmacists in Hungary during the 18th Century. Their Education, Stores and Practice through the Visitation Reports of the Year 1786’, in G. Barth Scalmani et al. (eds), Research Workshop: The Habsburg Monarchy in the 18th Century (Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des 18. Jahrhunders 26, Winkler Verlag, 2011), 209-224.
Mária Vida, Pharmacy Museums of Hungary (Hungarian Society for the History of Medicine, Semmelweis Institute, Budapest: Révai Printing House, 1984)
The travel guide can serve as a useful basis for assignments at any level – as the equivalent to an essay/report of somewhere between 500 and 1000 words.
Articles should:
·List the physical location details of the site, and where appropriate link to a page with information about opening hours and admissions costs.
·Give a narrative tour of the site, supported with photographs taken by the author, with appropriate captions.
·Analyse the importance of the site to xxxx (e.g. the study of Charles Darwin, the history of asylums).
·Contain the authors reflections on what they learnt, explored, and experienced during the visit.”
Example uses of this task:
Where a module incorporates a field visit already, all students could write a guide as both an assessed piece and reflective exercise. The tutor could then submit the best two/three entries to the BSHS Travel Guide.
As an optional alternative to an existing short-task within a module, for those students who wish to undertake a relevant field visit.
Example marking criteria (undergraduate History):
First class pieces would demonstrate an exemplary command both of the subject matter and appropriate technical and scholarship skills. They would make a focused, well-evidenced and structured argument regarding the importance of a site. They would demonstrate independent thought, based on an evaluation of relevant existing arguments and theories. They will be ready for publication without revision for style.
Upper second pieces would demonstrate a good appreciation for the subject matter and appropriate technical and scholarship skills. They would present an argument regarding the importance of a site, using appropriate evidence. They would demonstrate some independent thought, based on an understanding of relevant existing arguments and theories. They will be ready for publication with only minor revisions for style.
Lower second pieces would demonstrate some appreciation for the subject matter and appropriate technical and scholarship skills. They would discuss the importance of a site, using evidence. They would demonstrate some understanding of the intellectual context of the site. They will be ready for publication without wholesale revisions for style.
Third or below pieces would show little/some familiarity with the subject matter. They may demonstrate a grasp of the importance of the site, or weak awareness of relevant intellectual context. The style of the writing may be incompatible with the BSHS Travel Guide.
From the outside, the building in which the Powell-Cotton Museum resides looks like any typical English stately home. Step inside, however, and you will find yourself immersed in a world of late-Victorian natural history in a visual display that spans the entirety of eight galleries from floor to ceiling. It was the explorer, Major Percy Horace Gordon Powell-Cotton (1866–1940), a hunter and early conservationist, who filled his family’s home with a collection of natural specimens from around the world. The collection is displayed in a series of dioramas, featuring animals against backdrops that represent their natural habitats, including the oldest untouched diorama – that is, a model of a scene including three-dimensional figures (in this case, real animals preserved through taxidermy) – of its type in any museum around the world.
Percy Powell-Cotton was born in Garlinge in Margate, Kent. His family took ownership of Quex House in nearby Birchington when Percy was 15 years old. He began breeding chickens, hunting rabbits and photographing wildlife, keeping meticulous records of these endeavours. His early habits stayed with him when, in 1890, he embarked on the first of many expeditions, collecting natural history specimens in Kashmir, Northern India, and Tibet.
Over the ensuing 50 years, he embarked on around 30 similar expeditions across Africa and Asia, to gather and categorise zoological and ethnographical specimens. Unlike other Victorian explorers, Percy was primarily concerned with contributing to scientific knowledge through preservation and documentation, not with indiscriminately collecting trophies. He kept meticulous records for all the animals he gathered, including map references, longitude and latitude locations, detailed body dimensions, age, sex and external pathology. The specimens collected were transported back to Quex Park, prepared for display by the expert taxidermist Rowland Ward, and then placed in a specially designed pavilion in the gardens of the park, which Powell-Cotton had commissioned his brother to construct. The wide range of animal specimens has proved to be a valuable resource in taxonomic research, even to the present day. Consequently, Powell-Cotton has had several species named in honour of him.
Among familiar sights such as lions, elephants, apes, primates and many more, some of the animals on display at the museum are now highly endangered species; for example, the Ethiopian wolf, the Angolan giant sable and the white rhino. Notably, the collection also includes over 2,000 specimens of primates. Indeed, during his expeditions, Percy was responsible for identifying over ten new species or sub-species of primate, some of which he named after himself.
Percy was so dedicated to finding, documenting and preserving natural history specimens through his expeditions that not even marriage could interrupt him in his calling. In November 1905, while on an expedition in Kenya, he married Hannah Brayton Slater in Nairobi Cathedral and, rather than interrupt his ninth expedition, his new wife joined him on it, for a honeymoon that lasted two years. It was during this honeymoon, in 1907, that Powell-Cotton was badly mauled by a lion. Thinking the animal incapacitated by a good shot, as he approached it, the animal leapt on him, attacking with its claws and jaws. However, Powell-Cotton escaped relatively unharmed thanks to a rolled-up copy of Punch magazine that was in his breast pocket, and protected him from the worst of the onslaught. The lion, the suit that Powell-Cotton was wearing and the copy of Punch are now all on display at the museum.
The museum still regularly attracts huge numbers of visitors yearly. Wandering through the galleries of the museum, which teem with a diverse array of wildlife, it is possible to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of taxidermied animals. While it may not to everyone’s taste as a form of entertainment, as a slice of scientific history, the Powell-Cotton museum is certainly very important. To modern attitudes, this particular form of conservation may seem counterintuitive and even distasteful. However, the aim was not merely to display Percy’s prowess as a hunter, he was aiming to build up an encyclopaedia of animals, to preserve them for scientific purposes, and to allow members of the public to see them, by perhaps the only means they were able to, apart from in grainy photographs.
Indeed, making the collection available to the public is a strong underlying ethos of the museum. One of the most attractive features of it as it is today is the handling collection, which is kept in gallery 6 of the museum. Having received Arts Council funding in 2013, the museum is able to make accessible a selection of natural history and ethnographical objects for visitors to touch and play with, creating an ever-changing and evolving display. With this in mind, it is possible to argue that Major Powell-Cotton was one of the earliest and most successful science communicators, whose work reaches out from its origins in the Victorian era, right up to the present day.
Percy Horace Gordon Powell-Cotton. 2012. In Unknown Africa: A Narrative of Twenty Months Travel and Sport in Unknown Lands and Among New Tribes – Scholar’s Choice Edition. RareBooksClub.com.
Lisa Glass is a freelance writer specialising in scientific writing. She is currently a student at the University of Kent, on the Science, Communication and Society MSc programme.
Situated in cluster of red brick buildings to the east of Harvard, Harvard College Observatory (HCO) is an astrophysical institution managed by the Harvard University Department of Astronomy. Founded in 1839 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, HCO’s mission is to advance the knowledge of the universe through astronomical research and education. Harvard College Observatory contributed to astronomical research and both its research and premises are an example of the 19th and 2oth century achievements in the fields of science and architecture. HCO is a place of interest regarding the history of science, reflecting not only the history of astronomy and astrophotography but also the role of women in science.
The establishment of HCO is interwoven with the development of astronomy within higher education institutions in North America. There were two main reasons behind HCO’s foundation. The first reason was that in the late 19th century astronomy was beginning to be taught as a science subject and not as an extension of philosophy. The second motivation was that universities were starting to receive funds for astronomical research. Astronomy is a science based on observations and exact calculations, so there was a need for a place where researchers would have the means to conduct their research.
In 1973, HCO and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory formed the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). The entrance is at the west of CfA’s premises, near Madison Street, in 60 Garden Street. The first building of today’s CfA complex is the mansion of the HCO. It is a building made of bricks that it was built to safeguard astronomical data. The establishment of this building as well as the arrival of Harvard’s first ‘Astronomical Observer’ in 1839, William Cranch Bond (a well-known Boston clockmaker), marked the foundation of HCO. The first astronomical instruments were installed during the fall of the same year.
The mansion served as an office, when astronomer Edward Charles Pickering became director of HCO, in 1877. Pickering advanced HCO, by establishing a photographic program that covered both the northern and southern hemisphere, as well as opening the doors of astronomy to women. The new director recognised that the new technologies, such as telescopes and astrophotography, facilitated data collection and made possible to photograph light patterns around stars. Moreover, he acknowledged the women’s suffrage movement and the abilities of educated women. Pickering convinced the Harvard Corporation to hire women to work as ‘computers’, to catalogue and identify stars, a meticulous work originally performed by young men.
Photograph of the Harvard Computers, a group of women who worked under Edward Charles Pickering at the Harvard College Observatory. The photograph was taken on 13 May 1913 in front of Building C, which was then the newest building at the Observatory. The image was discovered in an album which had once belonged to Annie Jump Cannon. Image courtesy of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Back row (L to R): Margaret Harwood (far left), Mollie O’Reilly, Edward C. Pickering, Edith Gill, Annie Jump Cannon, Evelyn Leland (behind Cannon), Florence Cushman, Marion Whyte (behind Cushman), Grace Brooks. Front row: Arville Walker, unknown (possibly Johanna Mackie), Alta Carpenter, Mabel Gill, Ida Woods (Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. This media file is in the public domain because its copyright has expired).
Moving towards the top of the Observatory Hill there are a number of domes.
Grounds of Harvard College Observatory, circa 1899. (Source: Harvard College Observatory. This media file is in the public domain because its copyright has expired).
Since the late 19th century, the grounds of HCO have consisted of numerous domes surrounding the mansion, as well as laboratories, dormitories and a dance hall- today converted to laboratories, offices and meeting halls. Within these premises the women ‘computers’, who were college graduates, teachers and single mothers, known as ‘Pickering’s Women’ or ‘Pickering’s Harem’, implemented essential classification research on photographic images and identified around 400,000 stars. Their work allowed the determination of the composition and position of these stars. Pickering employed more than 80 women to photograph and catalogue the stars, effectively mapping the night sky. The work of many of those women at HCO advanced astronomical research: Annie Jump Cannon, for instance, catalogued over 350,000 stars and developed a classification system that it is still used today; Williamina Fleming worked on the first system to classify stars by spectrum; Henrietta Swan Leavitt generated a law to calculate stellar distances and Antonia Maury assisted in spotting for the first time a double star and formed her own classification system.
Women ‘computers’ at the Harvard College Observatory, circa 1890. The group included Harvard computer and astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868–1921), Annie Jump Cannon (1863–1941), Williamina Fleming (1857– 1911), and Antonia Maury (1866–1952). Seated, third from left, with magnifying glass: Antonia Maury; standing, at center: Williamina Fleming. (Source: Harvard College Observatory. This work is in the public domain because its copyright has expired).
The Sears Tower on Observatory Hill is part of the observatory’s Building A and is now considered a historic astronomical observatory, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Sears Tower-Harvard Observatory (Source: Daderot. The copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain).
This square brick building with a Greek Revival entrance is the oldest part of the complex and was built in 1843. In 1847, a visit from a comet became the stimulus to purchase the 15-inch Great Refractor from Munich. This, HCO’s first telescope, was placed in the Sears Tower and was active for nearly 75 years. It was the most important device for astronomical research in the United States for 20 years. This telescope contributed to important achievements in astronomy: the discovery of the eighth satellite of Saturn in 1848; the first observation of Saturn’s inner ring in 1850; the first daguerreotype of the bright Vega, in 1850, as well as to take detailed images of the moon (1847 – 1852). In 1851, these first clear photographs of the moon were honoured with an award at the Great Exhibition in London. During the past 50 years, the Great Refractor has been used for public ‘Observatory Nights’ and special research projects. It is now being restored. The Sears Tower is now used as a laboratory, library and observatory.
Sketch of the 15-inch Great Refractor telescope at Harvard College Observatory (Source: Harvard College Observatory. This is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain because its copyright has expired).
In 1955, Donald Menzel, chair of the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University and Director of the HCO, supported the relocation of the the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) to Cambridge. George Field facilitated the interactions between HCO and SAO by creating the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in 1973. HCO is now part of the CfA that supports research in astronomy and astrophysics as well as sponsoring a variety of workshops, conferences and seminars. Additionally, CfA is a venue aimed at engaging the public with science by organising ‘Observatory Nights’- free of charge for the public- at the premises of the HCO, as well as by hosting lectures and events on astronomy throughout the year.
Harvard Observatory Photographic Plate, 1897. This telescopic image of the Large Magellanic Cloud was produced on a photographic plate by Harvard Observatory. Each individual notation made on the plate denotes a star, astronomical object or area of interest designated for possible further investigation (Source: Harvard College Observatory. This work is in the public domain because its copyright has expired).
Alison Doane, curator of a glass database, highlighted the contribution of HCO in astronomical research stressing that: ‘Besides being 25 percent of the world’s total of astronomical photographic plates, this is the only collection that covers both hemispheres,’ (The New York Times, July 10, 2007). HCO houses now a collection of historic significance which includes around 500,000 glass astronomical plates (mid 1880s – 1989) as well as Daguerreotypes and collodion plates of the planets, the moon, the sun and solar eclipses (1849 – 1885). Digital Access to a Sky Century @Harvard (DASCH) is a project in progress which aims at digitalising and archiving these glass plates that cover 100 years of temporal variations in the universe.
Bailey, S. I., The History and work of Harvard Observatory, 1839 to 1927: an outline of the origin, development, and researches of the astronomical observatory of Harvard college together with a brief biographies of its leading members’ Published for the Observatory, (McGraw-Hill Book Company, INC: New York and London, 1931)
Bunch, B.H., & Hellemans, A., The History of Science and Technology: A browser’s guide to the great discoveries, inventions, and the people who made them, from the dawn of time to today, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004)
Jones, B.Z., The Harvard College Observatory: The First Four Directorships, 1839-1919, (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971)
Mack, P. E., ‘Strategies and Compromises – Women in Astronomy at Harvard College Observatory 1870-1920’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 21:1, (1990): 65- 76
The Library is situated on 12 Török utca and is housed in a beautiful neo-baroque villa.
Established in 1837 by the Royal Society of Physicians in Budapest, the cultural and historical legacy of the current Semmelweis Museum, Library and Archives of the History of Medicine is much older than the 170 years of its official existence. Its substantial collections comprise more than 150,000 volumes, including over a thousand rare treats of hand-written early modern manuscripts, incunabula, numerous books on medicine and science, and an invaluable Index Medicus of scientific periodicals. The treasures to be found in the library are historical testament to the aim of the society’s founders “to cultivate science”, and, due to the multicultural make-up of Hungarian society in the nineteenth century, more than 30 languages are represented.
László Magyar and UCL’s IBSc History of Medicine students at the Semmelweis Library. By Carole Reeves.
In 1968, the Semmelweis Medical History Museum and the Library and Archives were merged administratively and are now treated as a single institution. As a consequence, the Library became somewhat less visible than the more widely advertised Museum. Although the Library is open to anyone interested in the history of science and human health, only academics specialising in one of the disciplines represented by the library’s holdings are currently frequenting the premises. In an article from 2011, the Library staff and director concluded that the library and its archive “remain underutilized”, not only by the international scholarly community. Potentially daunted by the Hungarian language, few are aware that there are some 1,717 publications in a variety of languages in the ‘collection of rarities’ alone, such as a fifteenth-century astrological-medical text in Latin by an unknown author, a variety of prints in German (a legacy of the Habsburg empire), as well as valuable English, French and Italian editions and manuscripts on science, medicine, philosophy, occultism, witchcraft and theology. A visit is highly recommended.On occasion of our visit, László Magyar, medical historian and director of the Semmelweis Library, had organised a little exhibition of curiosities with a cross section of the juiciest items found in its archives. Among beautifully illustrated prints from the early modern period, ranging from herbalist accounts to treatises on alchemy and anatomy, unusual early modern scientific endeavours were also represented, including a fascinating account of a curious physician who conducted experiments with accused witches to test their ability to fly whilst being locked up in barrels. The test subjects, having swallowed their customary potions beforehand, did indeed emerge from the barrel with a report of a journey through the air, which led the scientifically-minded physician to conclude that the witches’ journeys were spiritual ones – possibly induced by drugs – rather than actual flight. It should also be noted that, next to being a passionate archivist, László Magyar happens to be an expert on the history and theory of Vampirism; a like-minded researcher can therefore be assured to find a variety of sources on the subject in the Semmelweis Library.
Katalin Kapronczay, László Magyar, Constance E. Putnam, ‘The Library of the Royal Society of Physicians in Budapest becomes today’s Semmelweis Medical History Library’, Journal of the Medical Library Association 99 (1), Jan. 2011, 31-39. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3016667/
Although not an obvious tourist destination, Bushy Hill is the biggest landmark in the area of South Woodham Ferrers, Essex, and has played a notable role in the history of technology, as well as unintentionally providing natural science revelations.
From the 1950s, Bushy Hill was one of the sites used by Marconi for its radar development programme, and as a result of the prominence of this technology upon its summit, it has come to be known as “Radar Hill”. It is visible for miles around and commonly used as a navigation point for planes flying using Visual Flight Rules (VFR). Many people have therefore seen Bushy Hill, but few are aware of its interesting history.
The United Kingdom’s radar system had been rapidly run down towards the end of the Second World War, but the first Soviet nuclear test in 1949 and the beginning of the Korean War in 1950 gave a new urgency to improving air defences. Marconi won significant contracts to develop radar, and acquired the Bushy Hill site in the mid-1950s in order to carry out trials on proposed new radar technology.
Bushy Hill was selected because existing sites were “rather too good”: they were located in dips and depressions that insulated radars from noise (called “clutter” in radar terminology) caused by reflections of radar signals from unwanted sources such as the ground.* However, to improve radar performance, it was necessary to find a way of reducing clutter. Bushy Hill, with unobstructed 360˚ views, and conveniently close to the Chelmsford headquarters of Marconi radar, was the perfect site. A large, 75 feet wide antenna was installed, and used to develop a range of transmitters and signal processing systems which were sold all over the world.
Bushy Hill has a Type 80 aerial mount, which had revolutionised radar in 1953. Developed under an RAF programme with the curious title GREEN GARLIC, this system dealt with both early warning and controlling interceptions. These extra seconds of advance notice acquired greater significance with the 1955 development of the Soviet H-bomb and the existence of new supersonic bomber planes. In 1959, the Marconi Company was awarded a government development contract for a passive detection system known as WINKLE, and a high speed receiving aerial was also installed. Despite the cutting edge technology, in the early days activities at Bushy Hill were restricted to daytime-only working because of complaints that the radars interfered with television reception, as both operated on Band 1 at the time.
This military-industrial site conducting work driven by Cold War concerns would also provide unexpected research legacies for a field far removed from supersonic jets and hydrogen bombs. Clutter caused by the ground had been effectively eliminated by the development of a Moving Target Indicator (MTI), but there were still small echoes appearing, moving slowly and randomly. Due to lack of explanation for these mysterious echoes, they were dubbed “Angels”. There were two possible explanations. During the early years of World War Two, large flocks of birds had been picked up on radar, and even individual large sea birds detected – the Angels could therefore be birds. However, the behaviour of these Angels wasn’t consistent with any known bird behaviour, so it was assumed that they must be pockets of warm air generated by factory chimneys or warm roofs.
Dr Sir Eric Eastwood and a small team had a great many very early mornings at Bushy, recording the flow lines which the Angels followed using a method similar to time-lapse photography. Rings which expanded outwards at dawn, like the ripples on the surface of water when a stone is thrown in, were at first assumed to be caused by the stoking of factory furnace, but an expedition to the site showed that there were not only no factories, and no buildings at all – the location of the rings was in the middle of open countryside! A copse of trees covered with starlings revealed the cause of the strange rings of Angels: successions of waves of birds, separated by three minute intervals, took off from the roost moving in expanding circles to feeding grounds. The Bushy Hill radars also confirmed the suspected “vesper” (evening) flights of swifts, and provided information on the migration of birds.
During subsequent years, Bushy Hill has been used for the development and testing of many systems, as well as being used as a showroom to demonstrate the performance of systems to potential customers. The large radar was also used as a source of radar signals to a number of users, such as the Radar Establishment at Great Malvern, the Marconi Research Centre at Great Baddow, and the RAF at Bawdsey. The RAF used this service to monitor some of its exercises. The site is still operated by BAe Systems as a trials site, so the site itself is not open to visitors, though the surrounding hills are often used for tobogganing.
Thanks to Roy W. Simons, OBE, C. Eng., FIEE, F.I.Mgt., Chris Gardiner of the Marconi Veterans Association, and the MOGS forum for their kind assistance with this article.
*One unexplained effect of clutter was that the Dutch coast appeared to be travelling slowly towards the UK!
Address:
Further information
Dr Eric Eastwood, ‘Radar’s Contribution to Studies of Birds’, New Scientist No.282 (1962)
Jack Gough, Watching the Skies: The History of Ground Radar in the Air Defence of the United Kingdom (HMSO, 1993)
R. W. Simons & J. W. Sutherland, ‘Forty Years of Marconi Radar from 1946 to 1986’ GEC Review, Vol. 13, No.3, (1998)
Opened in 1934 the National Science Museum, located at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, holds one of the largest collections of historic scientific instruments in the Ireland. St. Patrick’s College was founded in 1795 as a catholic seminary in an attempt to stop Irish clerics travelling to revolutionary France for ecclesiastical studies and, it was fear, radicalisation. The campus contains many stunning nineteenth-century buildings, some of which were designed by the famous architect Augustus Pugin. Also located at the entrance to the College is Maynooth Castle which was built in the thirteenth century by the Kildare branch of the Geraldines, who for centuries were one of the most powerful families in Ireland.
Large electro-magnetic used by Nicholas Callan
The museum has multiple displays of various scientific and technological instruments but its central focus is the work of Nicholas Joseph Callan. Born on the 22 December 1799, Callan entered Maynooth College in 1816 and spent most of his life in that institution. It was here that Callan studied natural and experimental philosophy under Dr Cornelius Denvir. Following his ordination in 1823 Callan briefly studied aboard, before returning to Maynooth in 1826 to assume the chair of natural philosophy. Callan performed many experiments and to help in conducting these he was to produce his own, relatively cheap, cast-iron battery, later marketed as the ‘Maynooth Battery’. However, Callan is best known as the inventor of the induction coil. The coils built by Callan were of considerable power producing sixteen-inch sparks. As there was no equipment available to test the current produced, Callan instead used that most abundant of natural testing apparatus: his students. According to long established tradition, this was stopped when he managed to render a future arch-bishop of Dublin unconscious and Callan was forced to rely on chickens for testing current from thereon. Callan was for many years a largely forgotten figure however he was recently awarded the Blue Plaque by Institute of Physics and Bronze Plaque by Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers. The museum displays several of Callan’s induction coils and electro-magnets. The largest of the electro-magnets on display is 1705cm high and 775 cm in width and was made by the local blacksmith. Alongside these are other instruments used by Callan for his experiments, in addition to a variety of electrical instruments that the museum has accumulated. There is a complementary collection of scientific writings as well in the college archive in the Russell Library, much of which has been catalogued electronically. While the Callan display is the central feature of the museum there is also much more for those with an interest in the history of science and technology.
Callan Medium Coil, capable of producing 200,000 volts
The museum has a collection of historic instruments used for experimentation on light, many of which are of French origin. In addition are displays of instruments for the study of meteorology, pneumatics, hydrostatics, heat and a collection of early telegraphic and telephonic apparatus. Worth a special mention is the fine display of cartographic instruments including circumferentors, clinometers, compasses, land chains, levels and other such instruments. These are of particular importance due to the value of estate and ordnance survey mapping records to Irish historians. The display demonstrates the broad range of instruments used in these important endeavours, allowing historians of technology and cartography as well as the general public a rare chance to view such instruments. The fact that a large proportion of the instruments on display were produced in Dublin gives an insight into the thriving scientific instrument industry in the city in the nineteenth century. The collection would be a good starting point for an investigation of this much understudied area and the insight that it could provide into wider scientific and commercial networks.
Electrostatic Generator, c.1877
Due to the nature of the founding institute –a Roman Catholic seminary- the museum was originally opened as a museum of ecclesiology, it was due to the appointment of numerous curators from the Departments of Physics and Chemistry and the legacy of Nicholas Callan that the National Science Museum developed alongside the Museum of Ecclesiology. It is for this reason that both museums are contained within the one building. While the National Museum of Science is a relatively small affair when compared to its British counterparts, it is important in an Irish context containing as it does a significant repository of historical scientific instruments that are rarely accessible in Ireland. As 2014 is the sesquicentenary of Nicholas Callan’s death the museum presents a great opportunity to view the work of this important Irish scientist.
The museum has limited opening times which can be viewed at the museum website. Group visits and visits outside of the set opening times can be accommodated by contacting the curator Dr Niall McKeith. Further information is available at http://www.nuim.ie/museum/
In the wake of Enlightenment medical reforms initiated by Habsburg’s Empress Maria Theresa, Hungary’s first Faculty of Medicine at the University of Trnava also received a Department of Anatomy in 1769. Although the department frequently changed names and location (it is now the Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology at the Semmelweis Medical University in Budapest), it has maintained its legal continuity ever since its foundation. The building that now houses the department’s historical anatomical-pathological collection was constructed between 1897 and 1898 and was then renowned as the most modern Anatomy hub of its day.
As with all historical collections, the one on display in the Anatomy Museum tells several stories: of old ways of doing anatomy and new reforms, of passionate physicians and victims of gruesome diseases, of quests for knowledge and an obsession with the weird and wonderful among nature’s creations.
József Lenhossék, head of the Anatomy department in 1859, modernised the department’s teaching and research and laid down the foundation of today’s Museum of Anatomy. Like Florence and Vienna, it once owned a series of beautifully made anatomical and surgical wax models, which had been donated to the university by Joseph II in the late eighteenth century. Unfortunately, the majority of these were destroyed during the siege of Budapest in the winter of 1944-45; but a few have survived and are now on display in Semmelweis’ birth house, the Museum of the History of Medicine. The Anatomy Museum still holds Lenhossék’s preparations, in particular those showing the vascular and central nervous system, as well as a number of objects from the private collection of an eccentric dentist named József Iszlai who fell victim to the late-nineteenth-century craze for ‘Dental Anthropology’, becoming the most ardent and passionate collector of skulls and teeth. He donated his dental preparations and skull collection (deemed ‘world famous’ by the Hungarian founder of paleostomatology György Huszár) to the university in 1902.
Today, the museum’s overall collection further benefits from an annual competition amongst medical students preparing new objects, which adds an average of 4-5 items to the collection each year. This, and the fact that the collection is still used to teach medical students the art of anatomy, is rather unique: old objects and new ones are not strictly separated as the past and the present usually is, but live side by side, serving the same educational purpose as the very first anatomical-pathological objects collected for the museum. The wooden shelves holding row upon row of pathological objects in formaldehyde-filled glass jars still convey the former grandeur and the excitement pertaining to the growing field of anatomy and pathology in the nineteenth century, and modern-day students continue to handle these objects with the same fascination as their forebears.
Brains, Guts and Bones: objects from the annual student competition at the Museum for Anatomy. All images courtesy of the Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology, Semmelweis University, Budapest.
On our visit, we got an exclusive tour of the collection, together with the history of Anatomy buildings before and after WWII, from László Molnár, head of the Archives of the Semmelweis Medical University. As the museum serves primarily educational purposes, only students of the medical faculty can use the museum throughout the year (they can even borrow plastinated preparations). The public can visit only by appointment (to be booked via email: vidravera@freemail.hu) from mid-October to the end of November and from the beginning of February until the end of April. The Anatomy museum is certainly worth a visit, not only for historians of medicine!
– Stephanie Eichberg, UCL Science and Technology Studies, London – Katalin Pataki, History of Medicine, Central European University, Budapest
Address: Anatomy Museum, Semmelweis Medical University Budapest, Tűzoltó utca 58
Further information
Regarding the history of the Anatomical Institution and of the University, Miklós Réthelyi (rethelyi@ana.sote.hu) and Géza Tótpál (totpal@ana.sote.hu) can be contacted (also in foreign languguages).
The Museum of Ethnography in Budapest (the Néprajzi Múzeumin Hungarian), founded in 1872, is housed in a stunningly beautiful building in Kossuth Square, across from the Hungarian Parliament. It was built by the Austro-Hungarian professor and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Alajos Hauszmann, and historians of science and medicine are likely to find quite a few gems among its vast collection of artefacts related to Hungarian, European, Oceanian and African folk culture. The Hungarian folk objects on display date from the 19th century up until World War II and comprise costumes, pottery, furniture, masks and magical objects.
The entrance hall to the Museum of Ethnography, Budapest. By Jean-Pierre Dalbera. Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. Unported license.
Although foreign-language audio tour guides are available, the Ethnography Museum in Budapest is not (yet) the professionally commercialised venue you will find in other European countries. The beauty of that is that the objects and their history speak for themselves and are not overburdened by historians’ interpretations. The downside is that the experts behind the scenes remain somewhat hidden. So, if you are interested in particular aspects or objects of the museum, it might well be worth to get in touch with the people at the museum before your visit.
With the help of our Budapest tour guide and translator Ádám Mézes, a PhD in History of Medicine at the Central European University, we managed to arrange a meeting with Erika Koltay, an in-house expert on folk objects related to health and disease, who is well versed in some curious strands of Hungarian popular medicine with deep roots in the past. Traces of it are still found in cultural practices in rural villages in Hungary and Transylvania that she regularly visits to preserve the knowledge and related objects for the museum. A baked ring of bread (with flour provided by 9 different people in the village), for example, was/is used for a symbolic rebirth ritual in which a newborn infant is pushed through the ring to ‘clean’ it from potential future illnesses. To ‘throw out the baby with the bathwater’, to cite another example, used to contain a literal threat in Hungary: throwing out your baby’s bathwater after sundown meant an open invitation to witches to use said bathwater to harm or get hold of the child.
Erika Koltay, Ethnography Museum, showing a bread ring to our UCL History of Medicine IBSc students. By Carole Reeves.
Some claim that these types of ‘contact magic’, based on the theory of sympathy, were introduced by Paracelsus whose wanderings brought him to Hungary in the early sixteenth-century, but the rituals are in fact much older. What is more interesting, although the original magical knowledge on which many such everyday cultural rituals are based has been largely forgotten by the majority of Hungarians, they are – albeit in a weaker form – strangely persistent in modern-day Hungarian society: hair and nail clippings are still thrown into the fire lest they be used by someone else for harmful magic against you, and wooden dolls to ‘take off’ the illness are still to be found in some rural households. Not to mention that there are still a few wise women in rural areas practising magical healing.
Objects in the Museum of Ethnography, Budapest. By Jean-Pierre Dalbera. Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. Unported license.
Magic and folk traditions may appear contrary to science, but they also reveal knowledge that is making sense of the world just as science is. Even today, Hungarians appear to be more open to alternative medicine than in many other European countries; for some, scientific medicine and folk traditions often live side by side, complementing rather than opposing each other. Hence, learning about the history of cultural objects as found in the Museum of Ethnography is to glimpse a different way of understanding body and mind, health and disease.
Erika Koltay, ‘History of Alternative Medicine in Hungary in 19th and Early 20th Century’, Comm. de Hist. Artis Med. 188-189 (2004), 57-68
Peter Babulka, Centuries of the Traditional Medicine in Hungary (accompanying text to the Millenial exhibition organized by P. Babulka, 2000) http://web.axelero.hu/golyahir/exhibition
Buried between 1731 and 1838 in the crypt of a Dominican church in the northern Hungarian town of Vác, a number of naturally preserved and fully dressed mummies in their decorated coffins were forgotten for over 150 years and only discovered in 1994 during the church’s renovation. Reflecting a wide sample of Vác residents, the mummies include three nuns, 30 priests, the wife and child of the local postmaster, surgeons, and the founder of the Vác hospital and first director of the town’s school for the deaf.
The Dominican church of Vác where the mummies were found. By Carole Reeves.
Eighty-nine percent of the mummies, ranging in age from newborns to a lady of 95, had at one point been infected with tuberculosis and around 35 percent were suffering from the disease at the time of death. Evidence of the infection on the bones are visible to the naked eye. The strains of tuberculosis bacteria found in the people buried in Vác offer a unique opportunity to study the pathogens from a time before the development of antibiotics and prior to the Industrial Revolution. However, what makes this a particularly important project for historians is the existence of intact and very comprehensive archives relating to most of the individuals in this close-knit community, including birth and death records, and family archives.
Stacked decorated coffins of the Vác mummies. By Carole Reeves.
Almost all of the individuals have been identified by name and in many cases their life stories and the manner of their deaths can be pieced together from written sources. Several generations of the same families were buried together. Infection of the population with the tuberculosis bacillus (which is believed to occur mainly in early childhood) increased as the town grew, industrialised (to some extent), and saw immigrants arriving from rural areas. Of individuals born before 1740, about 48 percent carried the TB bacillus, but this rose to 100 percent in those born during the years 1760-1774. This type of population movement – from rural to urban areas – was associated with a rise in TB deaths in the 19th and 20th centuries at the height of industrialisation but being able to observe it in the 18th century is important. Most of the mummies have been transferred to the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest for further research and are not available for viewing by the public although we were fortunate to have a behind-the-scenes tour because bioarchaeologists from UCL have been working with experts from the Museum.
Ildiko Pap (centre) amidst UCL’s History of Medicine IBSc students at the Natural History Museum, Budapest. By Carole Reeves.
Ildikó Pap, one of the Hungarian researchers involved in the Vac-mummy project, acted as our tour guide and told us all about the mummies, related research on pre-antibiotics tuberculosis and the Museum’s collection. Viewing the remains of very recognisable individuals and hearing their detailed life stories was very moving, and caused some debate amongst us as to whether the crypt should have been sealed and left undisturbed in perpetuity, or whether indeed the Vác mummies should be reburied. We then travelled by train – a half hour journey from Budapest’s Nyugati Station – to the pretty town of Vác on the River Danube to visit the permanent exhibition of mummified townspeople and their stunning ornate coffins.
A Vác mummy. By Carole Reeves.
The costumes worn by the exhibited mummies are replicas of the originals, which are fragile and have undergone conservation but are contributing to another important aspect of this project – the history of costume and textiles. After the museum visit, as it was a very wet and chilly day in mid-February, we visited a couple of the glorious cake shops dotted around the town square to sample Hungarian hospitality at its sweetest!
Address: Budapest, Hungarian Natural History Museum, Ludovika tér 2-6, 1083 Hungary
