Science Museum Group Journal Issue 11

Science Museum Group Journal Issue 11

In this Spring 2019 issue of the Journal, we present an eclectic mix of articles: from a discussion of the Crystal Palace dinosaur models as heritage artefacts to an assessment of a game designed to teach the history of medicine to nurses, and a study of the conservation of an eighteenth-century clock. You’ll also find a mini-collection of papers on the theme of wounds, in which you can enjoy some fairly gruesome descriptions of early modern facial surgery, a discussion of Ambroise Paré’s innovative treatment of gunshot wounds, and a study of the role of processions in healing societies fractured by plague. We’re very proud to include the winning entry from last year’s writing prize, Jules Skotnes-Brown’s From the White Man’s Grave to the White Man’s home?'. The judges were impressed by the way the author cleverly compares visitor accounts and curatorial intentions for the 1924/25 British Empire Exhibition, challenging our understanding of how the exhibition was actually experienced by audiences. Two further articles present research on the Science Museum Group’s own collection – Annie Thwaite’s study of ten significant amulets, and Julie Ackroyd’s search for the provenance of a beautiful seventeenth-century medical chest – and we conclude with an obituary of the influential and much-loved academic, Jeff Hughes.
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    From the White Man’s Grave to the White Man’s Home? Experiencing ‘Tropical Africa’ at the 1924–25 British Empire Exhibition
    (2019-05-01)
    Skotnes-Brown, Jules
    The 1924–25 British Empire Exhibition was the largest colonial exposition in British history. Twenty-seven million people explored its 238-acre grounds, gazed at its displays, and marvelled at its architectural wonders. While exhibits ranged from a series of so-called 'native villages', to a spectacle of tropical medicine, the official intent was consistent – to promote the development of a more self-sufficient Empire. The exploitation of 'underdeveloped' African Crown Colonies was considered important in securing this vision. Eschewing the image of 'Diseased Africa', curators sought to encourage temporary settlement and investment by suggesting that medicine had transformed tropical Africa into a land of infinite wealth for the intrepid capitalist. In contrast to many analyses of World’s Fairs, which have focused on catalogues and official materials at the expense of visitor’s narratives, I uncover the tensions between curatorial intention and visitors' experiences. Through an analysis of divergent responses from science communicators and lay-publics, I argue that the curators' vision of 'Brightest Africa' was sometimes received, sometimes contested, misinterpreted, or lost in translation. This was because the fair was more than a series of exhibits: it was a miniature city, populated by living displayed peoples, which prompted concerns about disease, sanitation, and racial comingling. While catalogues and captions to the displays sought to pacify the White Man’s Grave, the curators misjudged the effect of the sensorial experience of the exhibition, which often suggested the opposite. Its sights, smells, and sensations conformed to a stereotype of tropical Africa as a deadly place, rather than a 'white man’s home'.
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    A discourse with deep time: the extinct animals of Crystal Palace Park as heritage artefacts
    (2019-05-01)
    Laurence, Alison
    When the Crystal Palace at Sydenham opened in 1854, the extinct animal models and geological strata exhibited in its park grounds offered Victorians access to a reconstructed past – modelled there for the first time – and drastically transformed how they understood and engaged with the history of the Earth. The geological section, developed by British naturalists and modelled after and with local resources was, like the rest of the Crystal Palace, governed by a historical perspective meant to communicate the glory of Victorian Britain. The guidebook authored by Richard Owen, Geology and Inhabitants of the Ancient World, illustrates how Victorian naturalists placed nature in the service of the nation – even if those elements of nature, like the Iguanodon or the Megalosaurus, lived and died long before such human categories were established. The geological section of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, which educated the public about the past while celebrating the scale and might of modernity, was a discursive site of exchange between past and present, but one that favoured the human present by intimating that deep time had been domesticated, corralled and commoditised by the nation’s naturalists. Initially, the claim that extinct animals were aligned with British national heritage was a construction that matched the agenda of the Crystal Palace Company. Over time, the extinct animal models themselves (rather than the animals they represented) became historical artefacts recognised as heritage assets.
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