Re:visit. Humanities & Medicine in Dialogue (Journal)
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Walter Schlorhaufer (1920–2006): Arzt, Professor, Schriftsteller
Full text linkAm 14.10.2020 wäre der Innsbrucker Hals-Nasen-Ohren-Arzt und Schriftsteller Walter Schlorhaufer 100 Jahre alt geworden – just in dem Jahr, in dem die Tagung Noise of Medicine ohne den Ausbruch der Corona-Pandemie hätte stattfinden sollen. Das Jubiläum war den Herausgeberinnen Anlass, diese proteische Persönlichkeit in Erinnerung zu rufen, deren Nachlass im Innsbrucker Brenner-Archiv verwaltet wird. Zwei Personen, die zu dessen Erschließung maßgeblich beigetragen haben, em. ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johann Holzner, von 2001-2013 Leiter des Brenner-Archivs und Dr. Anton Unterkircher, kommen in ihren Berichten zu Wort, um den Arzt und Schriftsteller vorzustellen und gleichzeitig Einblick in die Bestände des Innsbrucker Brenner-Archivs zu geben.Am 14.10.2020 wäre der Innsbrucker Hals-Nasen-Ohren-Arzt und Schriftsteller Walter Schlorhaufer 100 Jahre alt geworden – just in dem Jahr, in dem die Tagung Noise of Medicine ohne den Ausbruch der Corona-Pandemie hätte stattfinden sollen. Das Jubiläum war den Herausgeberinnen Anlass, diese proteische Persönlichkeit in Erinnerung zu rufen, deren Nachlass im Innsbrucker Brenner-Archiv verwaltet wird. Zwei Personen, die zu dessen Erschließung maßgeblich beigetragen haben, em. ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johann Holzner, von 2001-2013 Leiter des Brenner-Archivs und Dr. Anton Unterkircher, kommen in ihren Berichten zu Wort, um den Arzt und Schriftsteller vorzustellen und gleichzeitig Einblick in die Bestände des Innsbrucker Brenner-Archivs zu geben
Ton-in-Ton: Audio-Assoziationen und visuelle Synästhesie-Effekte in Pharmawerbung und Sozialkampagnen
Full text linkPublic Health Communication (PHC) has a strong interdisciplinary impact and unifies intermedial, transcultural and transgeneric aspects. It maps a field of action, which, as a form of discourse and communication, becomes more and more diversified. With the massive mediatization and the impact of the cultural, visual, pragmatic and multimodal turn, in the forms of communication and discourse as well as in the media formats this multimedia-oriented area of interaction shows – seen not only from the perspective of culture sciences and medical humanities, but also from an (inter-)culturally oriented, translation-relevant perspective – various interesting forms of hybrid discourse and texts with a special proportion of auditory elements. As a symptom of mediatization, the language and imagery of PHC include more and more acoustic references and allusions. Simple illustrations are replaced with complex stories embedded in a highly culturally determined context, which opens complex multi-sensory scenarios and opportunities for interpretation. Mediatization in the form of information campaigns in PHC thus becomes a special type of inter- or transcultural translation. Currently we see an evolution from a mono-dimensional information and dissemination strategy towards a multi-level and multidimensional form of communication, which is mediated in a highly hybrid, transmedially and transgenerically oriented way in the texts as well as in the forms of visualization – which more and more include the visualization of audio-associations. As a result of mediatization, communication in general has become more dynamic and also the reception of information can often be achieved only by docking on culturally or socially determined markers in text, visualization – and auditive scoring. Pharmaceutical advertising as well as awareness and social campaigns in PHC rely on various associations with acoustic phenomena of a language and culture-specific determination in the transfer of factual or emotional messages.Campaigns as well as advertising in various ways operate with an illustrative coding and a translation of audio-associations. The hereby generated culture-specific emotionalization of the symbiosis of information, public relation and a target group-sensitive individualization is based on complex dynamics of encoding and reception. By means of audio-associations, virtually by pseudo-auditive storytelling, the addressees of pharma advertising and social campaigns can be appealed to by evoking culturally coded synergetic, multimodal sensations. Hence, acoustic evocations generate in the mind of the addressees associative spaces, so that parasocial relations are established and it is made possible for the target group to understand and experience abstract relationships in a synergetic emotionalized context. By this means, a pronounced field of tension between objective factual information and the opening of new associative spaces is revealed.Creative agencies have increasingly been using various hybrids from visual as well as acoustic representations when designing their campaigns. The paper will look at prototypical examples of health campaigns and pharmaceutical advertising to show how allusions to sound and specific sound discourses influence the reception of information and contribute to emotionalization, localization and individualization. Apart from this, it will show how sound becomes visible in text and illustration as a purposefully used culture-determined phenomenon.Public Health Communication (PHC) has a strong interdisciplinary impact and unifies intermedial, transcultural and transgeneric aspects. It maps a field of action, which, as a form of discourse and communication, becomes more and more diversified. With the massive mediatization and the impact of the cultural, visual, pragmatic and multimodal turn, in the forms of communication and discourse as well as in the media formats this multimedia-oriented area of interaction shows – seen not only from the perspective of culture sciences and medical humanities, but also from an (inter-)culturally oriented, translation-relevant perspective – various interesting forms of hybrid discourse and texts with a special proportion of auditory elements. As a symptom of mediatization, the language and imagery of PHC include more and more acoustic references and allusions. Simple illustrations are replaced with complex stories embedded in a highly culturally determined context, which opens complex multi-sensory scenarios and opportunities for interpretation. Mediatization in the form of information campaigns in PHC thus becomes a special type of inter- or transcultural translation. Currently we see an evolution from a mono-dimensional information and dissemination strategy towards a multi-level and multidimensional form of communication, which is mediated in a highly hybrid, transmedially and transgenerically oriented way in the texts as well as in the forms of visualization – which more and more include the visualization of audio-associations. As a result of mediatization, communication in general has become more dynamic and also the reception of information can often be achieved only by docking on culturally or socially determined markers in text, visualization – and auditive scoring. Pharmaceutical advertising as well as awareness and social campaigns in PHC rely on various associations with acoustic phenomena of a language and culture-specific determination in the transfer of factual or emotional messages.Campaigns as well as advertising in various ways operate with an illustrative coding and a translation of audio-associations. The hereby generated culture-specific emotionalization of the symbiosis of information, public relation and a target group-sensitive individualization is based on complex dynamics of encoding and reception. By means of audio-associations, virtually by pseudo-auditive storytelling, the addressees of pharma advertising and social campaigns can be appealed to by evoking culturally coded synergetic, multimodal sensations. Hence, acoustic evocations generate in the mind of the addressees associative spaces, so that parasocial relations are established and it is made possible for the target group to understand and experience abstract relationships in a synergetic emotionalized context. By this means, a pronounced field of tension between objective factual information and the opening of new associative spaces is revealed.Creative agencies have increasingly been using various hybrids from visual as well as acoustic representations when designing their campaigns. The paper will look at prototypical examples of health campaigns and pharmaceutical advertising to show how allusions to sound and specific sound discourses influence the reception of information and contribute to emotionalization, localization and individualization. Apart from this, it will show how sound becomes visible in text and illustration as a purposefully used culture-determined phenomenon
The Absence of Sound: Schweigen und Klang im Wartesaal
Full text linkThe words ‘patient’ and ‘patience’ are, etymologically speaking, closely related to the idea of endurance, particularly that of time and, consequently, to a (temporal) crisis. Both terms derive from the Latin pati which means ‘to suffer’. This notion of suffering time translates directly to the (medical) waiting room as a timescape: the waiting room is a liminal space of paradoxical temporalities, where patients await diagnosis and a treatment that will hopefully allow them to return to a pre-crisis mode of life. And this experience of time is anything but mundane. For patients and clients, who are facing uncertainty and a loss of agency, waiting becomes a form of (self-)control. Medical waiting rooms are thus spaces of peculiar temporalities, where those who wait are caught in a liminal space between outside and the doctor’s office. These spaces come with expectations intended to control those waiting on to ideally result in some sort of panoptic self-control. In a situation where the observation of others is discouraged, a form of self-surveillance leads those in waiting to direct the gaze at and against themselves. This article will examine how modernist and postmodern poetry represents and examines these spaces and their particular temporalities.
These poems often represent patients at the moment of animated suspension and depict the resulting insecurities and anxieties. A particular focus will lie on the soundscapes of these waiting rooms, ranging from the representation of literal sounds like chatter, TVs, radios or other technological devices. More interestingly, sounds and perceived forms of silence are used by authors to metaphorically express what is regarded as inexpressible: one’s physical and psychological pain, a pain that destabilizes a coherent sense of self and suspends a sense of identity. This dissolution, consequently, is often depicted as a cascade of dissolving entities: space and time, self and other and, ultimately, language.
I will, firstly, discuss contemporary ‘waiting room’-poems that express and verbalize how a physical and psychological sense of self and the perception of fragmented time intersect. To that end, this article will focus on a range of contemporary anglophone poems, ranging from Elizabeth Bishop’s seminal “In the Waiting Room” (1976), a poem that traces the effects of temporal dissociation on a narrative sense of self, to Julia Darling’s poem of the same title (2015).The words ‘patient’ and ‘patience’ are, etymologically speaking, closely related to the idea of endurance, particularly that of time and, consequently, to a (temporal) crisis. Both terms derive from the Latin pati which means ‘to suffer’. This notion of suffering time translates directly to the (medical) waiting room as a timescape: the waiting room is a liminal space of paradoxical temporalities, where patients await diagnosis and a treatment that will hopefully allow them to return to a pre-crisis mode of life. And this experience of time is anything but mundane. For patients and clients, who are facing uncertainty and a loss of agency, waiting becomes a form of (self-)control. Medical waiting rooms are thus spaces of peculiar temporalities, where those who wait are caught in a liminal space between outside and the doctor’s office. These spaces come with expectations intended to control those waiting on to ideally result in some sort of panoptic self-control. In a situation where the observation of others is discouraged, a form of self-surveillance leads those in waiting to direct the gaze at and against themselves. This article will examine how modernist and postmodern poetry represents and examines these spaces and their particular temporalities.
These poems often represent patients at the moment of animated suspension and depict the resulting insecurities and anxieties. A particular focus will lie on the soundscapes of these waiting rooms, ranging from the representation of literal sounds like chatter, TVs, radios or other technological devices. More interestingly, sounds and perceived forms of silence are used by authors to metaphorically express what is regarded as inexpressible: one’s physical and psychological pain, a pain that destabilizes a coherent sense of self and suspends a sense of identity. This dissolution, consequently, is often depicted as a cascade of dissolving entities: space and time, self and other and, ultimately, language.
I will, firstly, discuss contemporary ‘waiting room’-poems that express and verbalize how a physical and psychological sense of self and the perception of fragmented time intersect. To that end, this article will focus on a range of contemporary anglophone poems, ranging from Elizabeth Bishop’s seminal “In the Waiting Room” (1976), a poem that traces the effects of temporal dissociation on a narrative sense of self, to Julia Darling’s poem of the same title (2015)
Der akustische Tod: Zu medizinischen Fantasien in Günter Eichs Hörspiel Träume
Full text linkCommencing with Günter Eich’s classic Dreams, this paper focusses on implications in medical history that acoustically emerge in this radio play on three different historical epochs: colonial history (above all with regard to sleeping sickness), the ‘Third Reich’ (questions of collective social pathologies that caused the ‘rupture in civilization’ [Zivilsationsbruch] of genocide), and finally the Cold War or the threat of nuclear war (effects of radioactive contamination in radiation patients). The real concern of the analyses, however, is to expose, with the help of a method that can be called ‘reading of disproportionality’, the stereotypes that ground Eich’s image of Africa as well as his idea of the National Socialist deportation trains. The ‘atomic war dream’, on the other hand, stands out pleasantly from contemporary literary productions on the same subject because of its critical view of the lack of sensory perceptibility of radioactivity. It has the merit, as Günther Anders, the philosopher and opponent of nuclear war, states, of warning against the danger that things are technically feasible but their consequences inconceivable.Commencing with Günter Eich’s classic Dreams, this paper focusses on implications in medical history that acoustically emerge in this radio play on three different historical epochs: colonial history (above all with regard to sleeping sickness), the ‘Third Reich’ (questions of collective social pathologies that caused the ‘rupture in civilization’ [Zivilsationsbruch] of genocide), and finally the Cold War or the threat of nuclear war (effects of radioactive contamination in radiation patients). The real concern of the analyses, however, is to expose, with the help of a method that can be called ‘reading of disproportionality’, the stereotypes that ground Eich’s image of Africa as well as his idea of the National Socialist deportation trains. The ‘atomic war dream’, on the other hand, stands out pleasantly from contemporary literary productions on the same subject because of its critical view of the lack of sensory perceptibility of radioactivity. It has the merit, as Günther Anders, the philosopher and opponent of nuclear war, states, of warning against the danger that things are technically feasible but their consequences inconceivable
Walter Schlorhaufer und Der Brenner: Am Beispiel der Hörspielbearbeitung von Daniel Sailers Kunz von der Rosen
Full text linkAm 14.10.2020 wäre der Innsbrucker Hals-Nasen-Ohren-Arzt und Schriftsteller Walter Schlorhaufer 100 Jahre alt geworden – just in dem Jahr, in dem die Tagung Noise of Medicine ohne den Ausbruch der Corona-Pandemie hätte stattfinden sollen. Das Jubiläum war den Herausgeberinnen Anlass, diese proteische Persönlichkeit in Erinnerung zu rufen, deren Nachlass im Innsbrucker Brenner-Archiv verwaltet wird. Zwei Personen, die zu dessen Erschließung maßgeblich beigetragen haben, em. ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johann Holzner, von 2001-2013 Leiter des Brenner-Archivs und Dr. Anton Unterkircher, kommen in ihren Berichten zu Wort, um den Arzt und Schriftsteller vorzustellen und gleichzeitig Einblick in die Bestände des Innsbrucker Brenner-Archivs zu geben.Am 14.10.2020 wäre der Innsbrucker Hals-Nasen-Ohren-Arzt und Schriftsteller Walter Schlorhaufer 100 Jahre alt geworden – just in dem Jahr, in dem die Tagung Noise of Medicine ohne den Ausbruch der Corona-Pandemie hätte stattfinden sollen. Das Jubiläum war den Herausgeberinnen Anlass, diese proteische Persönlichkeit in Erinnerung zu rufen, deren Nachlass im Innsbrucker Brenner-Archiv verwaltet wird. Zwei Personen, die zu dessen Erschließung maßgeblich beigetragen haben, em. ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johann Holzner, von 2001-2013 Leiter des Brenner-Archivs und Dr. Anton Unterkircher, kommen in ihren Berichten zu Wort, um den Arzt und Schriftsteller vorzustellen und gleichzeitig Einblick in die Bestände des Innsbrucker Brenner-Archivs zu geben
Besser als Skrillex: Die Diskursivierung von MRT-Geräuschen
Full text linkMagnet resonance imaging (MRI) is employed in medical diagnostic procedures and scientific research. The technology produces strong magnetic fields to visualize tissues and organs of the human body. During its operation the MRI machine makes extremely loud noises. This article shows how this very specific ‘noise of medicine’ is conceptualized within public and private discourses. The main hypothesis states that there are specific ‘discoursivations’ (‘Diskursivierungen’, i.e. constitutions of discoursive knowledge) depending on different kinds of communicative genres, text types and practices. The main research questions are: What linguistic procedures are employed to describe, scale and evaluate MRI noises? Is there a correlation between various conceptualizations and linguistic units of discourse (such as text types or genres)? The corpus contains expert literature, textbooks, explanatory videos, online discussion forums as well as narrative interviews with patients. The theoretical discussion is concerned with three topics: First, the term ‘discoursivation’ is explained with respect to linguistic methods of investigating the constitution and negotiation of knowledge in discourse. Second, communication forms, communicative genres, text types, linguistic practices and patterns of discoursivation are defined and differentiated. Third, some central notions of ‘sensory linguistics’, i.e. the study of the representation of perception in language, are presented, with a specific emphasis on results regarding the auditive perceptual field. The findings can be grouped into three conceptualizations of MRI noises. The first type is coined “MRI noises as phenomena of sound that can be scientifically explained”. In this discourse, the noises are very clear-cut physical entities with certain characteristics and an undisputable cause. This cause has no bearing on the medical examination method itself, apart from minor practical problems. This type is mainly reserved to the specialist texts and contains the construction of declarative, encyclopedic knowledge. This is not surprising, yet it is scrutinized as a way of escaping reflection on the noises, even in explanatory videos that are directed at patients. By doing so, emotional responses to the noises are delegitimized. The second conceptualization is termed “MRI noises as medical phenomenon”. This type revolves around the noises’ potential to seriously harm the health of patients. In addition to the declarative information similar to the first type, the emphasis is on action knowledge for medical personnel. However, patients are informed rather superficially (e.g. by standardized information sheets). Finally, the third type of conceptualization, “MRI noises as subjective experience”, is discussed more thoroughly. It is concerned with how patients narrate their experiences and discuss their perception of the noises with other persons such as the interviewer or fellow discussants in social media discourse. The cognitive script of an MRI examination can be derived from the interviews. There are certain strategies of describing and scaling the somewhat elusive quality of the noises (namely the use of adjectives, comparisons and imitation). Interestingly, narrating the individual reactions to the noises can be used as a tool of constructing one’s identity, for example as being robust to stress and pain. All in all, the MRI noises are a vividly debated noise of medicine
Lärm macht (Un-)Sinn: Resonanzen in der frühen Anstaltspsychiatrie
Full text linkStarting from a concept of resonance as a metaphor for relational qualities, the article presents exemplary approaches to historical conceptions of noise and silence as well as to practices pertaining to acoustic phenomena in 19th-century asylum psychiatry. The elaboration of resonance relations is done by the example of three different situational sound events. The first event is the ban of the gag “Mundeisen” at the k. k. Provinzial-Irrenanstalt Hall in Tyrol. This measure was taken by the authorities based on an extensive report in November 1834. Secondly, taking a more patient-oriented approach to resonance spaces, an individual case study is brought into focus. Based on this case – the story of a man hearing inner voices who in 1846 was characterized as a raving lunatic and was admitted to the asylum with the diagnosis “insanity with individual fits of rage” – descriptions and attributions of ‘noise’ can be brought into view more precisely. From different perspectives, the pathography addresses noise and silence, rest and unrest, alarming and disturbing external noise, frightening internal voices, and the literal failure of the patient’s voice in an institutional resonance space. As a third event, spectacular early experiments with ether at the Tyrolean asylum in February 1847 also reflect the question of the sense and nonsense of noise in psychiatry. All three examples exemplify that ‘noise’ – but also ‘silence’ – was thought of in an ambivalent relation to ‘normality’. Noise served to classify, exclude, and pathologize, but it was precisely the linking of ‘noise’ with ‘nonsense’ that also assigned a diagnostic and communicative value to socially undesirable or out-of-place noises within the resonance space of an asylum. Besides, through the synopsis of three different sound events the attention can be directed to manifold facets of noise, heard sounds as well as noise in a more metaphorical sense.Starting from a concept of resonance as a metaphor for relational qualities, the article presents exemplary approaches to historical conceptions of noise and silence as well as to practices pertaining to acoustic phenomena in 19th-century asylum psychiatry. The elaboration of resonance relations is done by the example of three different situational sound events. The first event is the ban of the gag “Mundeisen” at the k. k. Provinzial-Irrenanstalt Hall in Tyrol. This measure was taken by the authorities based on an extensive report in November 1834. Secondly, taking a more patient-oriented approach to resonance spaces, an individual case study is brought into focus. Based on this case – the story of a man hearing inner voices who in 1846 was characterized as a raving lunatic and was admitted to the asylum with the diagnosis “insanity with individual fits of rage” – descriptions and attributions of ‘noise’ can be brought into view more precisely. From different perspectives, the pathography addresses noise and silence, rest and unrest, alarming and disturbing external noise, frightening internal voices, and the literal failure of the patient’s voice in an institutional resonance space. As a third event, spectacular early experiments with ether at the Tyrolean asylum in February 1847 also reflect the question of the sense and nonsense of noise in psychiatry. All three examples exemplify that ‘noise’ – but also ‘silence’ – was thought of in an ambivalent relation to ‘normality’. Noise served to classify, exclude, and pathologize, but it was precisely the linking of ‘noise’ with ‘nonsense’ that also assigned a diagnostic and communicative value to socially undesirable or out-of-place noises within the resonance space of an asylum. Besides, through the synopsis of three different sound events the attention can be directed to manifold facets of noise, heard sounds as well as noise in a more metaphorical sense
Der Sound des Drogenentzugs: ‚Unlaute‘ in Egodokumenten des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts
Full text linkNoise and silence played a major role in drug withdrawal. The present analysis focuses on the perception of withdrawal sounds as well as the withdrawal space. In the context of withdrawal, external perception played a greater role than self-perception; ‘sounds’ of withdrawal were perceived as unpleasant noise for fellow patients, but also for the nursing staff. In addition, communication with withdrawal patients was characterized by a (non)-wanting to hear – (non)-letting to communicate. This was often the result of a repeated abuse of trust on behalf of addicts, especially within the family and in relationships with friends. The article is based on autobiographies, diaries, and medical records from the end of the 19th to the early 20th century. In addition, autobiographically influenced literary works are included in the analysis.Noise and silence played a major role in drug withdrawal. The present analysis focuses on the perception of withdrawal sounds as well as the withdrawal space. In the context of withdrawal, external perception played a greater role than self-perception; ‘sounds’ of withdrawal were perceived as unpleasant noise for fellow patients, but also for the nursing staff. In addition, communication with withdrawal patients was characterized by a (non)-wanting to hear – (non)-letting to communicate. This was often the result of a repeated abuse of trust on behalf of addicts, especially within the family and in relationships with friends. The article is based on autobiographies, diaries, and medical records from the end of the 19th to the early 20th century. In addition, autobiographically influenced literary works are included in the analysis
„[...] dass die Schädigung der ruhigen Kranken durch die Unruhigen eine Grenze bildet, welche nicht überschritten werden darf.“: Raum, Körper und Sinne in der Psychiatrie um 1900
Full text linkUsing the example of the establishment of the first surveillance wards of the Psychiatric Clinic in Heidelberg under Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926) in the spring of 1892, this paper explores the question of noise regulation by examining the entanglement of spaces, bodies, and senses. One of the problems that asylums used to face was the noise that the patients made by shouting, singing, whistling, crying, slapping against things, etc. As psychiatrists observed, one noisy patient could cause others to make noise and the sensory regime of a ward could collapse within a few minutes with a single voice rising up – a sensory regime that in mental asylums was oriented towards silence (as an expression of order) since the early 19th century and which was enforced at different times with different methods of sedating and immobilizing the patients, regulating their affects. Focusing on the entanglement of spaces, bodies, and the senses, this paper analyzes four treatment methods that were applied in the surveillance wards and were intended to calming the patients and upholding the sensory regime of the clinic: bed treatment, permanent bath, drugs, and isolation. Each of these methods was linked to a specific arrangement of the space (the sick room, the bathroom, the single room) and the patients’ bodies (lying in bed, lying in water, being locked in a room). These arrangements were directed towards influencing the patients’ behavior by modifying the sensory perception of the patient being treated and consequently also of those around him or her. The close connection of the different rooms in the surveillance wards should allow, through the rapid transfer of noisy patients from one room to another (and from one sensory regime to another) to establish, at least temporarily, a boundary between the (more) quiet and the (more) noisy patients. Finally, the article focuses on the different sensory regimes that day (visual) and night (acoustic) unfold and the shift in the way noise was perceived, depending on whether itwas day or night. It elaborates on how day and night not only framed the sensual perception, but also the possibilities of the nurses to (re-)act on the restlessness – including the noisiness – of the patients. This article highlights the ways in which sensory experience is tied to material configurations and the ways in which institutional power is exercised by manipulating the senses.Using the example of the establishment of the first surveillance wards of the Psychiatric Clinic in Heidelberg under Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926) in the spring of 1892, this paper explores the question of noise regulation by examining the entanglement of spaces, bodies, and senses. One of the problems that asylums used to face was the noise that the patients made by shouting, singing, whistling, crying, slapping against things, etc. As psychiatrists observed, one noisy patient could cause others to make noise and the sensory regime of a ward could collapse within a few minutes with a single voice rising up – a sensory regime that in mental asylums was oriented towards silence (as an expression of order) since the early 19th century and which was enforced at different times with different methods of sedating and immobilizing the patients, regulating their affects. Focusing on the entanglement of spaces, bodies, and the senses, this paper analyzes four treatment methods that were applied in the surveillance wards and were intended to calming the patients and upholding the sensory regime of the clinic: bed treatment, permanent bath, drugs, and isolation. Each of these methods was linked to a specific arrangement of the space (the sick room, the bathroom, the single room) and the patients’ bodies (lying in bed, lying in water, being locked in a room). These arrangements were directed towards influencing the patients’ behavior by modifying the sensory perception of the patient being treated and consequently also of those around him or her. The close connection of the different rooms in the surveillance wards should allow, through the rapid transfer of noisy patients from one room to another (and from one sensory regime to another) to establish, at least temporarily, a boundary between the (more) quiet and the (more) noisy patients. Finally, the article focuses on the different sensory regimes that day (visual) and night (acoustic) unfold and the shift in the way noise was perceived, depending on whether itwas day or night. It elaborates on how day and night not only framed the sensual perception, but also the possibilities of the nurses to (re-)act on the restlessness – including the noisiness – of the patients. This article highlights the ways in which sensory experience is tied to material configurations and the ways in which institutional power is exercised by manipulating the senses
Revisiting clinical knowledge through medical artefacts: Venereal wax moulages, past and present
Full text linkMany ancient and all but forgotten anatomical collections are held in European towns such as Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Heidelberg, Montpellier, Stockholm, Zurich, Bologna, Firenze, Geneva, Amsterdam, etc. Exhibited in dedicated museums or attached to university hospitals, these collections usually contain wet or dry natural specimens, as well as wax casts. The latter were the subject of Wax Bodies. Histories of clinical and artistic uses of syphilis ceroplastics, a recent international research workshop held in Paris. The event, organized as part of an ongoing research project on the history of syphilis, brought together some 50 historians, dermatologists, artists, ceroplasticians and museographers on June 30th and July 1st, 2022. The venue was held at the remarkable Musée des moulages de l’hôpital Saint-Louis, which holds some 5,000 pathological casts, about a quarter of which represent body parts afflicted by syphilis