Before a Live Studio Audience

Posted in Surgery, Videos with tags , , on August 31, 2010 by Øystein

In an effort to bring surgery back into the public domain, the Wellcome Collection in London arranged a Live Surgery event last year, broadcasting live open heart surgery to an audience of 200 lay people.

It’s interesting to hear people’s expectations and reactions in this short clip from the event. It reminds of the time when I showed the start of a prostatectomy video to my grandparents once. When I stopped it after a minute or so saying “So that’s what I do for a living”, they yelled “Don’t stop, we got to see how it ends!”.

Surgery sure is intriguing.

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Inner Landscapes – An Interview with Penny Oliver

Posted in Medicine with tags , , , , , on August 27, 2010 by Øystein

"Diverticulosis". Painting by Penny Oliver.

About a year ago I was contacted by Penny Oliver, a reader of this blog who presented herself as a studio artist who concentrated her energies on anatomical and histological paintings. She wrote:

Your line of work is one of the resources that keeps me going!  Without the documentation of surgical procedures and the study of tissues, I would have a hard time doing what I do.

Medical photography as a basis for art! I decided to ask this interesting artist for an interview, and here it is. Read more »

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Harvey Cushing’s Patients

Posted in Photography, Surgery with tags , , , on August 26, 2010 by Øystein

Credit: The Harvey Cushing Brain Tumor Registry, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library.

Head over to the New York Times to see a selection of photos from the collection of almost 10,000 glass plate negatives of patients treated by Dr. Harvey Cushing between 1902 and 1933. Read more »

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Bubonic Plague Figurine

Posted in Medicine with tags , , , , on August 22, 2010 by Øystein

Photo by Øystein Horgmo, Creative Commons BY-NC.

We went camping in Finland this summer and spent one day in the city of Turku. In the city museum part of Turku Castle I found this wooden figurine, depicting a victim of the Black Death.

By the time we reached this part of the castle however, my kids (3 and 6 years old) were so fed up (I can’t blame them) I didn’t have time to write down any details about the statuette. If someone reading this have, please write a comment.

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Summer Leave

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on July 17, 2010 by Øystein

Photo by Øystein Horgmo, Creative Commons.

I’ll spend most of the summer away from internet connections, so there won’t be any posts for some weeks. Have the best of summers and shoot some nice photos!

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Photo in Legion Magazine

Posted in Medicine, Photography with tags , , , , on July 15, 2010 by Øystein

Joseph Lister's carbolic spray. Photo by Øystein Horgmo, Creative Commons.

A few months ago I was contacted by Legion Magazine, a publication affiliated with the Royal Canadian Legion, regarding use of the above photo of Joseph Lister’s carbolic spray. A deal was struck and today I received a copy of the July/August issue in the mail.

The photo is part of a feature called “Then & Now”, detailing 100 years of medical advancement, from bandages and ambulances to antiseptics and scalpels. Read it online here.

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Harvey Pekar’s Cancer Year

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , on July 13, 2010 by Øystein

Harvey Pekar, hospital file clerk and comic book creator was found dead yesterday.

Pekar is best known for his American Splendor series, but he also wrote one of the most gripping accounts of cancer I’ve ever read – the autobiographical Our Cancer Year. Read more »

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Better and Complications

Posted in Medicine, Surgery with tags , , , on July 12, 2010 by Øystein

Atul Gawande scrubbing for surgery. Photo from gawande.com.

“How helpless human newborn babies are,” my wife commented as we were watching some TV programme about surrogate mothers. “I read something really interesting about that recently,” I said, and realized I’d just referenced something I’d read in “Better” or “Complications” by Atul Gawande for the umpteenth time that week. Read more »

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“My Medical Museum” Should Go On

Posted in Links, Medicine with tags , , on July 8, 2010 by Øystein

Photos from mymedicalmuseum.com

In May Medgadget announced a competition called My Medical Museum, that encouraged people to visit their local medical museum and post a presentation on the competition website. The winner was announced yesterday: Adam Simone presenting the Warren Anatomical Museum in Boston. A great presentation combining text, photos and graphics to give you a virtual stroll around the museum.

With only 6 entries, however, the potential of this competition has not been fully realized. In my opinion the submission time was too short (about a month) and the competition website is very counter-intuitive and hard to navigate. There’s no easy way to locate the entries or find the winner.

The idea is too good to end with this, so I suggest to the good people at Medgadget to convert the competition into an ongoing project and make the site more user-friendly. There should be plenty of people interested in submitting, even without a prize.

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Morbid Anatomy on Display

Posted in Links, Medicine, Photography with tags , , , on July 6, 2010 by Øystein

"Venus Endormie". Photo © Joanna Ebenstein

A selection of Joanna Ebenstein’s photos of medical museum artifacts are on display over at the American Medical News website.

Joanna is a graphic designer and photographer who runs the excellent blog Morbid Anatomy, where she explores the meeting of art and medicine.

For more of her work, including photos from several medical museums around the world, check out her online exhibition The Secret Museum and her morbid anatomy collections on Flickr.

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