MEDICAL MUSEUM: PHOTOS
T H A C K R A Y M E D I C A L M U S E U M
I have always had a strange fascination with the medical field, in fact if not for my lack of skills and limited knowledge I would have pursued a career in forensic science. However this does not stop me from still using illustration as a tool to explore my personal interests, Medical Illustration is a profession still being used today and so a link between the two is not impossible for me. I chose Health from the three themes given to me as I figured I have knowledge and passion for it in both a personal sense, in terms of interests, and medical sense, in terms of my never ending list of health problems.
I chose to visit the Thackray Medical Museum for my independent field trip as I having been meaning to visit the museum since moving to Leeds and this was a good opportunity (excuse) to go.
I don't know what I was really expecting from the museum however once there I found myself slightly disappointed, not in the displays themselves, but the fact they didn't inspire me in the way I had hoped they would. A majority of the exhibitions explained the growth of disease in the nineteenth century and the lack of understanding people had for the way bacteria could develop leading to early deaths and an attempt at treatments from medical professionals at the time.
I found it quite interesting to see the various bottles and containers used to store the developing medicines. The packaging and lettering is something I began to find more and more fascinating while walking around the museum, the majority of photos I took focused on the strange shapes of the bottles and boxes for the medicines. I think it could be interesting to use in a future project, to look at the variety in designs and the effort used to create such intricate images for something as simple as a medicine bottle, especially in comparison to modern day.
ABOVE: Iron Lung, a negative pressure ventilator
ABOVE + BELOW: First X-Ray on film
Below are a series of X-Rays available to view against a light screen in the museum
Apparently each x-ray showed a problem that you were to diagnose however no answers were available so all my guesses are shown below each image, they may be completely wrong.
Lateral view of lower Spine, (image is actually upside-down) Lumbar Compression Fracture in L2, inferior vertebral notch.
Pelvic dislocation of the left femur in a female
Dislocation of the right shoulder, humerus has become separated from scapula
Break in the lower left humerus, internal head of triceps
I honestly don't know about this one, the lateral view of the skull shows something around the temporal. It looks as though someone has had surgery, either way they've got a hole in their head.
