Medical societies and scientific culture in nineteenth-century Belgium by Joris Vandendriessche

Author:Joris Vandendriessche [Vandendriessche, Joris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, History, Modern, 19th Century, Medical, Europe, Science
ISBN: 9781526133229
Google: QnS5DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2018-09-28T04:14:19+00:00

Collections of ordinary facts

The Society for Pathological Anatomy of Brussels (1857) forms a suitable case study for scrutinizing the shifts in medical sociability in the second half of the century, and, more importantly, their impact upon the networks of collecting anatomical specimens. The society, which remained active until 1914, was, first of all, much more successful in collection building than the societies that have hitherto been discussed. It proved an essential factor in the expansion of the anatomical collections of the Free University of Brussels. Central to this success was the permission, granted by the Commission for Hospitals, to collect specimens in all the institutions under its supervision, such as the St. Jean Hospital, the St. Pierre Hospital and the city's maternity.53 The Society of Pathological Anatomy was thus able to build upon the existing tradition of collecting specimens within these different institutions – a tradition of which the Vesalius Society was also part – and could bring these scattered efforts together. By 1866, it had assembled around 300 specimens.54 And in the early 1870s, the creation of a catalogue of the collection prompted the donation to the University of numerous specimens which had been the property until then of the different hospitals.55 Professor Jean-Hubert Thiry, the then president of the society, expressed his gratitude to the members of the Commission for Hospitals: ‘Thanks to you, Gentlemen, the Free University finally possesses a museum of pathological anatomy worthy of her.’56

In terms of its membership and activities, the Brussels society clearly differed from the Medical Society of Ghent or the Academy of Medicine. Instead of resident members and regional correspondents, a core group of interns at the Brussels hospitals and a few academics made up its members. And instead of a general scientific focus, the society concentrated on the presentation of specimens and the discussion of the clinical cases from which they were collected. As Renaud Bardez has shown in his study of the Brussels Faculty of Medicine, these particular ambitions of the society cannot be understood in isolation from the views of its founder, the Brussels Professor of Anatomy Gottlieb Gluge. His ambition to integrate pathological anatomy into clinical medicine, as a means of making the clinic more ‘scientific,’ materialized most clearly in the Society for Pathological Anatomy.57 Since being appointed in 1838, Gluge had experienced difficulties in introducing pathological anatomy into the medical curriculum. It remained, in fact, only an optional course. By discussing cases and specimens with students during society meetings, Gluge was able to circumvent these limitations and simultaneously teach and advance his views of an integrated, clinical approach to pathological anatomy. In this way, Bardez has argued, he anticipated the further intertwinement of the Faculty of Medicine and the urban hospitals – ‘these inexhaustible mines of pathological resources’ – both scientifically and on the infrastructural level in the late nineteenth century.58

The society's meeting reports reveal its regular modus operandi. During its bi-weekly meetings, on average four to five clinical case studies were discussed.59 These typically started

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