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. |
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Selected Objects |
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AbioCor Total Artificial Heart
AbioCor Total Artificial Heart is the first electro-hydraulic heart implanted in a human. Approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration for clinical trails, the AbioCor was implanted in ...
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ACTA Model 0100 CT Scanner
CT (computed tomography), sometimes called CAT (computer-assisted tomography) scanning, uses x-ray equipment to obtain image data from different angles around the body, and then computers to process that information and ...
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Acupuncture Instrument Set
Acupuncture has gone in and out of fashion over the centuries in both China and the West. Part of a 2,000-year-old system of medicine that originated in China, acupuncture spread ...
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Clinical Axial Thermometer
How do you know you are running a temperature? Do you feel hot or do you feel cold? There are many ways to determine body temperature. A hand placed on ...
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Dr. Kilmer's Female Remedy
"Specially adapted to female constitutions," this was the first product made by Dr. Kilmer & Co., an enterprise founded in the 1870s by a successful medical practioner from Binghamton, New ...
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Health Food: Macrobiotic Brown Rice
Brown rice became popular in the United States as part of the whole and organic foods movement that began in the 1960s and 1970s. Health food stores sprang up to ...
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Iron Lung
This early respirator for producing artificial respiration over long periods of time was designed and constructed by the donor, John Haven Emerson. Completed in July 1931, it was first used ...
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No. 5 Field Case Surgical Set
Many of the surgical sets used during the American Civil War were made to the specifications of the Union Army. This Civil War surgical set was made by George Tiemann ...
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Prototype of a Magnetic Separator
In 1981, Dr. Curt Civin, at the Johns Hopkins Oncology Center, identified an antibody that binds to a protein on the surface of certain bone marrow cells that give rise ...
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Roentgen X-Ray Tube
This is one of the first x-ray tubes used by physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1845-1923), who discovered this new form of radiation at the University of Wurzburg in Germany, on ...
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Samuel Hahnemann's Drug Kit
This brown, leather-covered case with hinged lid was used by German physician Dr. Samuel C. F. Hahnemann (1755–1843) the founder of homeopathy. It contains three trays holding 146 small vials ...
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YORICK, The Bionic Skeleton
Yorick is a plastic male skeleton imbedded with electronic and mechanical devices used to replace worn body parts. Yorik was created by Ed Mueller, an engineer in the Division of ...
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