Museum Review: Dittrick Medical History Center

http://artsci.case.edu/dittrick/museum/

Readers of the Bulletin will need no introduction to the Dittrick Medical History Center at Case Western University in Cleveland, a leading medical history museum and archive. Those who were at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine will no doubt recall their splendid microscope collection on display for the Garrison lecture reception.

Historians of medicine will be interested to learn that on display at the museum are two collections that explore the commingled histories of birth and birth control. Upon entering the museum visitors are confronted with two visually stunning and historically critical objects that begin the “Reconceiving Birth” exhibit; a mid-nineteenth-century birthing chair—on loan from the Mutter Museum, Philadelphia—and an eighteenth century midwifery manikin modeled upon that of Madame du Coudray. “Reconceiving Birth” continues by deviating from a general, and mostly straightforward, history of birth as it has been told through a Western, and largely male dominated, lens to the perhaps more interesting, specific experience of birthing in Cleveland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Seamlessly combining instruments, artefacts, texts, and digital technologies alongside an impressive secondary gloss, the exhibit dismisses the trend of streamlining museum exhibits with minimal text and hyperbole.

Yet, we were both struck by a few weaknesses of the opening exhibit: the near linearity of the narrative and the missing voices of African Americans and women. This remains a male- and white-dominated exhibition. Visitors continuing through the museum, into the “Contraception Collection,” however, are forced to reconsider linearity and male hegemony.

The Dittrick Museum acquired the Contraception Collection in 2004 from Canadian pharmacist Percy Skuy (formerly the president of Ortho Pharmaceutical); since then, the collection has grown to feature over one thousand artifacts chronicling the history of fertility control from the ancient world to the present day. Among the more fascinating items in the Contraception Collection are an IUD made of airplane parts from a World War II prisoner-of-war camp in Indonesia, and candy wrappers used (allegedly) as condoms in Australia in the 1980s. Although its real strengths are in twentieth century American birth control methods, including IUDs, cervical caps, condoms, and oral contraceptives, the collection also features older folkloric traditions involving potions and plants—wild yams from Mexico, ancient Egyptian crocodile dung, and carrot seeds, which were recommended as an effective contraceptive by Hippocrates. It highlights, therefore, not only birth control methods produced by or advocated by pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishment, but also those practices that ordinary women across time and space have called upon to manage their fertility.

Much to the credit of curator James Edmonson, the exhibit itself embodies the best practices of modern museums: its organization is clear and logical, and its space and flow encourage visitors to wander but also focus. Creating a balance between displaying artifacts and explaining them through text is a challenge for any museum, and particularly one that features such fascinating and sometimes-titillating material items. The Dittrick, however, has managed this balance beautifully, allowing visitors to focus their attention on the historical artifacts but also providing them with plenty of written background and context.

Alongside Vienna’s Museum of Contraception and Abortion and the Museum of Sex in New York City, the Contraception Collection is a must-see for students of the history of medicine and sexuality, physicians, medical students, and more advanced researchers. It offers insight on not only the history of contraception but also urban history, the study of material culture, women’s and gender history, and the history of the body.