Film - Semiconductor Media, 'The Syphilis Treatment Kit', 2017, Science Gallery Melbourne

Carolyn Fraser, Exhibitions Curator, Community Programs, State Library Victoria
The item that we have on display is a box of Mercurosal which was a mercury salt that was used in the treatment of syphilis. Interestingly it is unused, the packaging contains 12 vials of the mercury salt, and it includes a little razor blade as well to open the vials which were then dissolved into a solution that was injected into the bloodstream.

The kit is included in a collection of medical packaging that we have, almost everything in this collection is 19th century patent medicines, and everything else is empty so it’s unusual that this kit includes the drug itself.

The State Library Victoria holds millions of items in our collection – we are a library but our collection extends way beyond books and printed matter to all sorts of objects, we describe them as realia. This item is one of those objects.

The Mercurosal we’ve included in an exhibit which is part of our World War I display, and it’s an exhibit that looks at the Langwarrin Military Reserve which during WWI was used as a venereal disease hospital. And interestingly, Langwarrin Military Reserve had initially been used as an alien internment camp. And it was only at the end of 1915 that the AIF, the Australian Imperial Force, realised that they had such an enormous problem with venereal disease amongst soldiers participating in WWI, and they decided to repatriate those soldiers from Egypt to Langwarrin.

Heavy metals, including arsenic, has been used treat venereal disease, syphilis in particular, most likely since the 11th century. It was not used in an injectable form until much later. Earlier it was applied topically. People also sat inside wooden steam boxes with just their heads showing, and they were subjected to steam that included mercury. And one of the reasons for these treatments was the fact that heavy metals do act as poisons. They did have a certain efficacy – men were cured using these drugs but the long-term effects were really quite horrendous.

One of the enormous benefits of a collection such as ours is that it is the material culture of our society that tells the stories of how people lived, what they did, their activities, and something like this really tells us a lot about what people went through during that period of the war.

Film - Semiconductor Media, 'The Placenta', 2017, Science Gallery Melbourne

Dr Ryan Jefferies, Curator, Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, University of Melbourne

The specimen we are looking at here is a real human placenta, it was preserved in the 1950s. This was originally part of the Royal Melbourne Hospital Pathology Collection and is now held within the Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology at the University of Melbourne. The museum was established by renowned Victorian pathologist Sir Harry Brookes Allen in the 1880s, and is now a collection of over 12,000 specimens and anatomical models used by students studying anatomy and pathology.

In terms of the science of the placenta, what’s so fascinating about this is that it’s the body’s only disposable organ. So, this specimen is from identical twins and we can see the twin umbilical cords attached to the single placenta. In contrast, for fraternal twins there is actually two different placentas each with their own individual umbilical cord.

This placenta specimen has been preserved in a Wentworth solution, which includes a small amount of formaldehyde along with a very viscous glycerol solution. This has been a traditional method of preserving specimens really from the late 1800s. One of the interesting things about preserved blood is that it changes colour, going from the original red colour to a deep brown-black. This is because of the formaldehyde within the preservation solution, which causes the blood to oxidise and causes the DNA within the body part to cross link.

Times have certainly changed in how we preserve human body parts, but also in the use of real specimens themselves. We are now seeing the advent of new technologies in terms of preserving human material, notably now with the introduction of plastination. But beyond that, there’s a push in terms of teaching practices away from using actual real human material. We are now seeing radical advances in terms of medical imaging and in terms of 3D scanning and 3D printing. It’s now possible to 3D scan an entire specimen and then 3D print this out in a photo resolution-accurate way. 3D printed models allow the opportunity for students to directly handle the models, rather than handling the more valuable original body parts.

Film - Semiconductor Media, 'The Scarifier', 2017, Science Gallery Melbourne

Dr Jacqueline Healy, Senior Curator, Medical History Museum, University of Melbourne

My favourite item in the collection is the scarifier, because I think it combines two things – functionality and beauty, with an added bit of horror. And I think that’s the thing about medicine, medicine is something we rely on to make us well and keep us well but it’s also something that we are also frightened of and suspicious of.

Over 2000 years ago, Hippocrates had a view that the body needed to be in balance. And why was that was because there were four humours – there was blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Now, bloodletting was about restoring the balance, so if you had some certain conditions it was thought that by bleeding you, you would feel better and it would restore that balance.

Then in 2000 AD, Galen, another great medical theorist, he also supported that view, and that meant that bloodletting was in fact a major form of treating whole range of conditions until the mid 19th century.

Now the thing about bloodletting is that it didn’t necessarily do what it was supposed to do, but at the same time there wasn’t enough evidence that it didn’t work either.

So if we go back to the scarifier, what it was was this remarkable mechanism to get the blood out. Now originally, people relied on things like a little lance which was a little knife, and they’d do a little snip at your elbow or your neck and the blood would come out. The scarifier was far more sophisticated, as you can see this metal object where blades drop down and they just pulled that along your arm and so the bleeding was quite profuse. So that’s why I like it, because of its extraordinary efficiency in terms of collecting blood.

Now bloodletting was dangerous as well. If too much blood was taken, people would die. The medicinal benefits of it were limited. But it’s a very important message here when we look at this object and why it’s so important to have it in the medical history museum. Is the question – why did bloodletting last for so long when it had limited benefits in whole range of areas and it was used so widely. It was because of the mindset that was around it. It was only when new theories emerged in the 20th century, and early 19th century as well, that people questioned that bloodletting was in fact a useful medicinal procedure.