UCSF Japanese woodblock print collection
This website provides information and enlargeable images of the collection of almost 400 Japanese woodblock prints, held by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Library and Center for Knowledge Management. The collection is based on health-related themes and is considered to be the largest collection of woodblock prints related to health in the United States. The prints provide a fascinating insight into traditional Japanese attitudes towards illness, the human body, women's health, religion, and the West. The prints can be searched, browsed or viewed by theme, including: contagious diseases (such as smallpox, cholera, or measles); drug advertisements for medicines or cosmetic products; foreigners and disease; religion and health; and women's health (including some vivid depictions of pregnancy and childbirth). A record description is provided for each image, which includes the title in Japanese and English, the creator of the resource (where known), the date (where known), and the type of resource.
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Darwin 200
'Darwin 200' is the website of a national event in the UK, which aims to celebrate the 200th birthday of the scientist Charles Darwin. The website has been created by the Natural History Museum and has a full description of the project, its aims, and partner events such as a BBC 'Darwin season' on television. There is also an events listing which is searchable by keyword or can be filtered by place. Visitors to the website can create their own customised programme of events. The website also has a guide to online Darwin resources, and an interactive map of "Darwin's Britain". This may be a useful website for those studying media coverage of science, public understanding of controversy in scientific history, and the role of the arts in contemporary science education.
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Project facade
This fascinating website from Project Facade presents a wealth of information on a relatively obscure aspect of the First World War: soldiers' injuries and war wounds. Created by artist and curator Paddy Hartley, with the support of a Wellcome Trust SciArt Production Award, the website is a response to, and artistic interpretation of, the surgical methods of facial reconstruction pioneered by New Zealander Sir Harold Gillies. In addition, the website enables Hartley to research and communicate the later life experiences of some of Gillies's WW1 patients. Hartley works in partnership with Dr Andrew Bamji, the Gillies Archive's Curator at Queen Mary's Hospital Sidcup, Dr Ian Thompson, a Biomaterial Scientist in the Oral Maxillofacial Department at Guys Hospital, London, the National Archives at Kew, and the families of some of the men who were operated on by Gillies, to produce sculptures that present "fragmented personal histories of the men who endured long and painful reconstructive surgery developed by Sir Harold Gillies and his surgical team". The attractively designed website contains details on plastic surgery itself, on the importance of uniforms both to group identity and individual/personal history, and a large collection of medical documents (including photographs) on the type and extent of injuries suffered by the servicemen. The website includes a number of very detailed and graphic images of extensive facial disfigurement and surgery. Although this project will prove to be an invaluable resource and addition to World War One studies and to medical and surgical history in general, it is primarily a "sculptural response" to the servicemen's stories that have been provided by the Gillies Archive and others, and it is this artistic interpretation that is the focal point of the project.
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Ian Fleming (1908-1964) : author and book collector
This website provides information about the book collection, held at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, that was built up by British author, journalist, book collector and Second World War Navy Commander, Ian Fleming (1908-1964). Fleming is most well-known as the creator of the character James Bond in 12 books and two short stories, leading to the enormously successful Bond films, as well as the author of the children's story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which was written for his son, Caspar. However, he was also a book collector, and he amassed a fine collection of books which concentrated on intellectual and technical progress from 1800. It included first editions of books on aeronautics, the telegraph and radio, as well as original papers describing x-rays and original material relating to the early background of of the atomic theory. In 1963, Fleming’s library formed the largest contribution by any individual collector to the London exhibition Printing and the Mind of Man. The website includes: a list of the Fleming manuscripts held at the library, 1952-1962; a link to an online exhibition catalogue about Fleming's book collection, entitled 'The Ian Fleming Collection of 19th-20th Century Source Material Concerning Western Civilization together with the Originals of the James Bond-007 Tales', written by David A. Randall, a Librarian at the Lilly Library; and a list of scientific articles collected by Ian Fleming.
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vPath Museum : the virtual pathology museum
This website presents the digitised study collections of Barts and the London, School of Medicine and Dentistry. Drawn from three separate museum collections, this is an extensive database of specimens prepared for medical study, many including case notes (dating back in some instances to the early twentieth century). Registration is compulsory, but approval is automatic and free for email addresses from a recognised academic or clinical domain (for example .ac.uk or .nhs). Whilst intended for clinical study, the resource is obviously of interest to those studying or researching the history of medicine and dentistry as well as those looking for high quality and unusual anatomical images. Equally this web resource stands alone as an exemplary ‘virtual museum’. The VPathMuseum was created with financial assistance from the AHRC.
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Bad blood : the Tuskegee syphilis study
This is an online exhibition on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study which was carried out by the US Public Health Service between 1932 and 1972. In its aim to document how syphilis spreads and kills, the work enlisted the participation of 399 African Americans in Alabama who were suffering from the disease. Told only that they were being treated for 'bad blood', all forms of known therapy were deliberately withheld from them. The deception, described as 'deeply, profoundly, morally wrong' by Bill Clinton in the official apology issued to the victims and their family members on behalf of the US Government in 1997, remains one of the most disturbing episodes in the history of medical research and experimentation. This website makes available the Final Report of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Legacy Committee produced on the 20th of May 1996 and provides links to the full transcript of the Presidential Apology and other relevant sites.
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CSM virtual museum : the Cornubian Orefield [Cambourne School of Mines virtua...
This is ‘virtual museum’ of the Cornubian Orefield – the mineral rich geological formation which underlies much of Cornwall. Exploited for thousands of years, the orefield was mined industrially from the early nineteenth century, and the Cornish mining landscape is now a UNESCO world heritage site. This website, the result of AHRB (now AHRC) funded research introduces the geology and industrial history of the Cornubian Orefield, illustrated with items prepared from the extensive collections of Camborne School of Mines, the Royal Cornwall Museum, Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, Penzance, Cornwall, Bodmin Town Museum, and various individuals. The website includes a substantial bibliography relating to the history of mining and geology in Cornwall.
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AHRC material culture of polar exploration workshops
Established to support the International Polar Year 2007-2008, this series AHRC of AHRC funded workshops and related research project aims to uncover the hitherto hidden histories of the IPY Field Stations. The project sees the international field station as a crucial and under researched ‘nexus’ in the organisation of science, which nevertheless has tended to become the focus of competing social and geopolitical tensions. With this perspective, the project aims to understand the impact of the ‘archipelago’ of international field stations on the surrounding territories and on the science produced, both from a cultural and historical perspective and as a way of furthering the aims and acceptance of future science. As well as abstracts of papers presented at the first workshop, the website includes biographies of researchers involved in the project and its relationship to the International Polar Year 2007-2008.
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Salomons Museum
This is the website for Salomons Museum, the onetime home and estate of the Salomons family. The Salomons included Sir David Salomons, Member of Parliament, equality campaigner and the first Jewish Lord Mayor of London and his son, the scientist and road transport pioneer Sir David Lionel Salomons. As well as the family's historic home and estate (one of the earliest buildings in the country be powered by electricity and including Sir David Lionel Salomons' purpose-built Science Theatre) the museum is cares for the various collections built up by the family: badges; ballooniana; Jewish history; London; electrical/scientific; estate and family; transport; medals; World War I. The collection’s illustrated catalogue is available online, and the website includes a virtual museum tour and information about public access. Salomons Museum has received AHRC funding.
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Japanese calendar
The Japanese Calendar is one of several informative and nicely presented online exhibitions from the National Diet Library of Japan, accessible in parallel English and Japanese versions. Using the Library's calendar collection, it traces the history of the Japanese calendar, focusing particularly on the Daishō-reki calendar used in the Edo period (1603-1867). The site is divided into two broad sections: calendar history; and unriddling the Daishō-reki calendar. The first explores the development of the Japanese calendar from its introduction from China via Korea in the late 6th-early 7th centuries to the adoption of the Western calendar in 1873. Thumbnail images of calendars from various periods can be enlarged and brief descriptions can be accessed via the 'data' icons. The section on the Daishō-reki calendar describes the Japanese lunisolar calendar, which varied from year to year and consisted of long and short months with intercalary months from time to time. As the calendar spread, pictures and sentences to indicate long and short months were introduced; the exhibition includes six of these illustrations as puzzles for the viewer to work out (with answers).
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Haddād manuscript collection
The online catalogue for the Haddād manuscript collection, part of the Wellcome Library website, provides catalogue details for the 87 Arabic manuscripts in the library's collections. The manuscripts come from the collection of Dr Sami Ibrahim Haddād (1890-1957), a Lebanese physician and historian of medicine, and range from the 14th to the 20th centuries. They include works on medicine by a number of well-known Islamic scholars like al-Majusi and Ibn Sina, as well as works by Jewish authors writing in Arabic and lesser-known works written or transcribed by Christian Arabs, including Arabic versions of medical manuals by the 19th-century French physician who practised in Egypt, Antoine Barthelemy Clot Bey. The catalogue entries include information on the physical aspects and history of the manuscripts themselves as well as descriptions of the contents of the texts (in Arabic). The full catalogue entries must be viewed as PDF files. This resource allows researchers to consult the contents of the collection in detail before visiting the library to use the manuscripts themselves, and will be of interest to researchers in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies as well as those interested in the history of Islamic medicine.
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The Newberry library : the Hermon Dunlap Smith center for the history of cart...
This website, for the Newberry Library's Hermon Dunlap Smith Center, founded in 1972, aims to 'advance knowledge of the history of cartography, defined as the history of creation, use, and interpretation of maps and the relationship between mapping and other facets of human history'. Moreover, the centre seeks to 'promotes the use of the Library’s cartographic collections by scholars, educators, and the general public through conferences, exhibitions, fellowships, institutes, lectures, publications, seminars, consultations, and workshops'. To that end, the website is simply designed: there are details of, and often links to further information on, lectures and conferences, seminars, virtual exhibitions (for example, on the mapping of the French Empire in North America), resources and teaching historical maps, relevant publication information, and the cartographic collections held by the library. The website has a wealth of resources and information on the usefulness of maps in understanding history.
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Publications of Prof. Rabie E. Abdel-Halim on history of medicine
This website contains full text digital reprints of publications of Professor Rabie E. Abdel-Halim, Emeritus Professor of Urology and Kuwait Prize Laureate, on history of medicine, surgery, urology, anaesthesiology, health education and other sub-specialties during the Medieval Islamic Era. The articles are available in PDF format (although one or two are also in HTML) and are arranged by theme. There is, furthermore, details on upcoming articles published by Professor Abdel-Halim.
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Historical issues [computer security]
This website presents a collection of articles regarding history and computer security and cryptography. The articles include, for example, details on Captain Rochefort's oral history interview in 1969 by Commander Etta-Belle Kitchen. Captain Rochefort was assigned in June 1941 as OIC, Combat Intelligence Unit, Pacific Ocean Areas, located at Pearl Harbour. The article contains part of the original transcript, which concerns the attack by Japanese forces on the American naval base of Pearl Harbour in December 1941. The focus is on the role of United States Naval signal intelligence during the war, and its role with regards to the attack on Pearl Harbour. There are, further, articles on the breaking of the German enigma code during the Second World War and links to related sites for further information.
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Plague and public health in Renaissance Europe
The introductory section of this site briefly outlines the bubonic plague in Renaissance Europe. The introductory section also outlines the original aims of the project, which were to create a 'hypertext archive of narratives, medical consilia, governmental records, religious and spiritual writings and images documenting the arrival, impact and response to the problem of epidemic disease in Western Europe between 1348 and 1530'. The site currently provides access to some primary source material on Florence, Pistoia and Lucca in 1348. It will be interesting to see whether the site will fulfil its original aims as it has been a while since the content was last added to.
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