For those of you in Thompson Library on a particular Friday afternoon in March 2024 to attend the Book Talk by Dr. Clare Griffin about her Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022),
Mixing Medicines
you might want to stop by the Teaching with Special Collections: From Vault to Classroom exhibition. There are several exhibit cases in the Special Collections Display Area (THO 115) just off of Thompson Library’s atrium that include Slavic materials – Architecture, Theatre Research Institute and Independent Study, and the case dedicated to 25 Years of the Medieval Slavic Summer Institute – but the case with objects directly relevant to Dr. Griffin’s work are found in the Medical Heritage Center‘s exhibit case, which is located in the Gallery (THO 125).
Kristin Rodgers, Collections Curator at the Medical Heritage Center, taught a course on digital storytelling in 2014. Students were asked to choose an artifact from the collection and produce a digital story, relating the object to their own experiences in some way. Two of the objects displayed include a “Bleeding Bowl” and a “Scarificator.” Although Dr. Griffin does not mention those particular objects, she does reference the practice of “bloodletting” in her book.
Teaching with Special Collections – Digital Stories about Objects
To quote from Kristin Rodgers’ captions, “the scarificator was a spring-loaded instrument that has a series of twelve blades that snap out to cut the skin to allow for bloodletting…. it was in use from the early 1700s until the early 1900s….” The bleeding bowl “used in conjunction with the scarificator … was used to collect patient’s blood.” Such dishes (cup or bowl) were “popular from the time of antiquity up to the late 19th century…. Many bleeding bowls also included the presence of notches inside in order to accurately measure the amount of blood in ounces that was drained from the body. “
You may watch the digital stories created by Kristin’s students about the bleeding bowl, the scarificator and other objects at go.osu.edu/digitalstories.
The Book Talk by Dr. Clare Griffin was recorded and will be available for viewing. Teaching with Special Collections: From Vault to Classroom will be open until July 31, 2024.
