Health & Medicine

The Museum's collections of medical science artifacts represent nearly all aspects of health and medical practice. Highlights include early X-ray apparatuses, such as one of Wilhelm Roentgen's tubes, penicillin mold from Alexander Fleming’s experiments, and Jonas Salk's original polio vaccine. More recent acquisitions include the first artificial heart implanted in a human, the earliest genetically engineered drugs, and materials related to David, the "Bubble Boy." Other artifacts range from artificial limbs and implant devices to bloodletting and dental instruments, beauty products, and veterinary equipment. The contents of a medieval apothecary shop and an 1890s drugstore form part of the collections, along with patent and alternative medicines. The collections also document the many differing perspectives on health and medical issues, from patients, family members, doctors, nurses, medical students, and out-of-the-mainstream health practitioners.

In March 1856, the University of Michigan named a committee “to contract for the construction of a suitable microscope for the University.” Within a year or so, this committee had spent $469 for a microscope made by Charles Achilles Spencer, America’s first successful microscope
Description
In March 1856, the University of Michigan named a committee “to contract for the construction of a suitable microscope for the University.” Within a year or so, this committee had spent $469 for a microscope made by Charles Achilles Spencer, America’s first successful microscope maker. This enormous sum was charged to the account of "Natural History" and the microscope was placed in the hands of Alexander Winchell, a professor of geology who would soon be named Geologist of the State. Twenty years later, after Winchell had left the University, the costly microscope was transferred to the Physiological Laboratory in the Medical School. The transfer was arranged by Charles Stowell, a young doctor who would spend his career teaching physiology and microscopy, and who was clearly aware of the historic importance of the instrument. In an obituary notice penned shortly after Spencer’s death in 1881, Stowell explained that the objective was a 1/16 of “as near 180°as can be obtained.” That is, it had a very short focal length and a very wide angular aperture. When Stowell got his hands on this objective, he saw a crack “running across about 1/3 of the field,” and so returned it to the firm. Spencer replied that he could make a new objective nearly as cheap as he could remedy this, “for it is one of my first glasses.” Accepting the inevitable, Stowell ordered a new 1/18. We have not yet measure the objective, but note that it does not appear to have a crack.
Spencer referred to the stand of this microscope as a Pritchard, recognizing that the form had been popularized by Andrew Pritchard, an important London naturalist and optician. The “C. A. & H. Spencer / Canastota, N.Y.” inscription on the tube refers to the partnership between Charles A. Spencer and his cousin Hamilton, a partnership that began around 1848 and ended around 1854.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1849-1859
associated dates
1990-04-10
maker
C. A. & H. Spencer
ID Number
1990.0183.01
catalog number
1990.0183.01
accession number
1990.0183
This “Culpeper” type microscope is made from wood, cardboard and sharkskin (or shagreen). The base is circular and has three wooden vertical supports which connect the base to the round stage. The cardboard tube is covered with shagreen that is dyed green.
Description
This “Culpeper” type microscope is made from wood, cardboard and sharkskin (or shagreen). The base is circular and has three wooden vertical supports which connect the base to the round stage. The cardboard tube is covered with shagreen that is dyed green. The mirror is mounted on a wooden hinge attached to the center of the base. A circular mark with initials is burned into the underside of the base, but the letters are illegible. Focusing is achieved by moving the tube up and down. The base is circular and made from turned wood, and has three round wooden feet.
One of the main cottage industries of the city of Nuremberg was the manufacturer of toys. In the 18th and 19th centuries thousands of microscopes like the one in the Squibb Collection were produced. Besides the Culpeper type microscope, several other models were produced including a box shaped, compound monocular microscope attached to a base with a drawer, and a “drum” type microscope. Nuremberg microscopes are rare and sought after by microscope collectors.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
after 1750
ID Number
1991.0664.0904
accession number
1991.0664
catalog number
M-06300
collector/donor number
SAP 992
catalog number
1991.0664.0904
Brass screw barrel microscope with several lenses, ivory handle, six ivory slides, and wooden box covered with dark fish skin. James Wilson, an optical instrument maker in London, described the form in 1702.
Description
Brass screw barrel microscope with several lenses, ivory handle, six ivory slides, and wooden box covered with dark fish skin. James Wilson, an optical instrument maker in London, described the form in 1702. He did not make the first instruments of this sort, and never claimed to, but the form was often associated with him.
Ref: James Wilson, “The Description and Manner of Using a Late Invented Set of Small Pocket-Microscopes, Made by James Wilson,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 23 (1702): 1241-1247.
Reginald Clay and Thomas Court, The History of the Microscope (London, 1932), pp. 44-50.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1730-1760
ID Number
1991.0664.0906
accession number
1991.0664
catalog number
M-06302
collector/donor number
SAP 994
catalog number
1991.0664.0906
Binocular microscope with a “SPENCER / BUFFALO / USA” inscription, probably used by Burnett Stilwell (1896-1983), a milk inspector with the New York City Dept. of Health.Currently not on view
Description
Binocular microscope with a “SPENCER / BUFFALO / USA” inscription, probably used by Burnett Stilwell (1896-1983), a milk inspector with the New York City Dept. of Health.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
about 1940
maker
Spencer Lens Company
ID Number
2017.0184.040
catalog number
2017.0184.040
accession number
2017.0184
This medium-sized compound monocular is a Zeiss model IVa with coarse and fine focus, triple nosepiece (with three Zeiss objectives), square mechanical stage, trunnion, Abbé condenser with iris diaphragm that can shift from left to right, sub-stage mirror, horseshoe base, and woo
Description
This medium-sized compound monocular is a Zeiss model IVa with coarse and fine focus, triple nosepiece (with three Zeiss objectives), square mechanical stage, trunnion, Abbé condenser with iris diaphragm that can shift from left to right, sub-stage mirror, horseshoe base, and wooden box with extra lenses. The “Carl Zeiss / Jena / No 23175” inscription on the tube is in block letters (not cursive), and of the form that the firm used before introducing its trade mark in 1904. The microscope was probably purchased in the 1890s for use in the Hygienic Laboratory of the United States Marine Hospital Service, a facility that was then located on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and that later became the National Institutes of Health.
The first Marine Hospital Service Hygienic Laboratory had been established on Staten Island in 1887 by Joseph Kinyoun (1860-1919), a young American physician who had studied bacteriology with Robert Koch in Germany. Kinyoun equipped the Hygienic Laboratory with scientific apparatus “modeled after those used in the laboratory of Dr. Koch,” including “Zeiss’s latest improved microscope objectives and micro-photographic apparatus.” In September 1887, Kinyoun used a Zeiss microscope to examine the “excreta” of sick passengers on an Italian ship recently arrived in New York, and determined that the cause was cholera. This, says historian Eva Ahrén, “was the first time cholera was identified by means of microbial investigation in the Americas.”
Ref: Carl Zeiss, Microscopes and Microscopic Accessories (Jena, 1898), pp. 46-47.
Victoria Harden, Inventing the NIH: Federal Biomedical Research Policy 1887-1937 (Baltimore, 1986).
Eva Ahrén, “Joseph Kinyoun, the Hygienic Laboratory, and the Origins of the NIH,” http://irp.nih.gov/catalyst/v20i6/nih-in-history
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1890 - 1904
maker
Zeiss, Carl
ID Number
1980.0349.06
accession number
1980.0349
catalog number
1980.0349.06

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