An Interactive Story About Dr. Kahn's Spectacular London Anatomical Museum

See the lovely story and images--with attendant noises, some hilariously squishy--HERE

Excerpts:

Ladies were admitted only on specified days, when Kahn insisted the most offensive models were removed from display.

The Museum, and its educational focus, initially found favour with publications like the Lancet and Medical Times. However, the establishment turned against Kahn when he started selling quack remedies. The Lancet then labelled the Museum ‘a den of obscenity… determinedly arranged for the purposes of depraving the minds of the ignorant and unwary’. 

Taken to court by The Society for the Suppression of Vice, Kahn was successfully prosecuted under the 1857 Obscene Publications Act, which made it illegal to publish texts on venereal disease and sexual health aimed at a general audience. 

Journey of Collections

See the Wellcome's interactive story on collectors and collecting.

And here's a netsuke of a dog carrying his own nutsack:

Erotic Art, Sexual Aids, etc. etc. from the Wellcome Collection

In a new exhibition, the Wellcome will have plenty of things that society keeps hidden out on full display. A full set of objects here, and some of my favorite examples:

Peruvian, date unknown

Greek, 5th century BCE

Chinese, date unknown

German, 1980s

Victorian and 20th-Century Medical Men

Many of the collections where I do research were owned by single collectors--men that generally had a background in medicine that blossomed into an obsession with medical objects and their histories. These include Sir Henry Wellcome (Wellcome Collection, London), Josiah C. Trent (Trent Collection, Duke University), Howard Dittrick (Dittrick Museum), Arno B. Luckhardt, LeRoy Crummer, and various people that connected them: the booksellers Henry and Ida Schuman, physician Harvey Cushing, etc. etc.

Howard Dittrick, whose museum has three manikins, was originally awed by Henry Wellcome's Collection--which had dozens of ivory manikins bought before his death in 1936--and in an obituary he wrote for Josiah Trent he makes sure to mention that "[Trent] was particularly proud of a group of 15 ivory manikins of rare beauty.*

*Bulletin of the History of Medicine23 (Jan 1, 1949): 95.

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