Stories from the stores

Its a worrying title for a blog, but ‘remember that you must die’ or ‘memento mori’ in Latin, was a common saying that our historical counterparts took to heart. Popular from the 16th to the 19th centuries, memento moris can can be anything from pocket watches, pendants, rings, ribbon slides, even statues and walking sticks. Some carried a lock of hair from a departed loved one, woven into a scene. Most show skeletons, skulls or coffins and – not for the faint-hearted - decaying corpses.

Memento mori, England, 1810-1850 (A78828, Science Museum, London)

Most of these items are in our store, but they recently got a rare outing, many of them for the first time. The Rubin Museum of Art in New York held an exhibition Remember That You Will Die: Death Across Culture bringing together their own fabulous collection of Himalayan art with Western material culture.

My favourite object that went on loan was this:

Pocket watch, 1700-1930 (A103905, Science Museum, London)

A watch could not be a more perfect reminder of the shortness of life. On the watch face is a small inscription meaning ‘time flies’ to hammer the message home. The thing that makes this object even more remarkable is it that it was once owned by Queen Mary, wife of British monarch George V. She presented it to Henry Wellcome at Buckingham Palace in 1931 to add to his enormous collection.

Much to my colleagues’ envy, I’ve been asked to courier the loan back to Britain. Loans take a lot of organising, the lions’ share by our Collections Registry and Conservation teams. But couriering is not glamorous - there’s a lot of waiting around in cargo sheds at 5am and once you’ve seen one aircraft hanger, you’ve seen them all. I must admit I will be keeping to myself that I’m travelling with memento moris so not to scare the more nervous flyers….

Gilray's 'A Scientific Lecture', 1802, depicts Humphry Davy 'bellowing' laughing gas

What have Humphry Davy, Mike Melvill and my dentist got in common? Answer: They’ve all exploited the chemistry of nitrous oxide, popularly known as ‘laughing gas’.

Davy experimented with euphoria-inducing properties of the gas with his friends Samuel Taylor Coleridge and James Watt. Davy was working at the Pneumatic Institution, set up by Thomas Beddoes to investigate the medical properties of inhaled or ‘factitous airs’. Davy pursued his experiments – part scientific, part recreational – with his normal con brio and was fortunate not to have seriously damaged his and others’ health.

Lucy Baldwin's Analgesic Apparatus, 1955-80, mixed oxygen and nitrous oxide during midwifery (Science Museum/Science & Society)

My dentist, alongside doctors and medics, has long employed nitrous oxide as an analgesic, to relax patients and as a prelude to anaesthesia.

And Mike Melvill? Well, as pilot of SpaceShipOne, the world’s first privately developed spacecraft, he depended on its ability to oxidise rocket fuel for the thrust that carried him spaceward on his pioneering sub-orbital flight of 2004.

Dobson Ozone spectrometer, 1926. Dobson's technique for detecting ozone led to the discovery of the ozone hole over Antartica in 1985. (Science Museum/Science & Society)

So nitrous oxide has a variety of uses but it also has a dark side. Whether produced naturally or by industrial activity it leads to ozone depletion of the upper atmosphere. This lets in more of the Sun’s harmful ultra-violet radiation which the ozone molecules normally absorb. Plus, nitrous oxide acts as a particularly effective greenhouse gas, trapping the heat re-radiated from the Earth’s surface and causing global temperature rises.

No laughing matter indeed.

On the 1^st July they’ll have been in England for three years. The other home countries got theirs some months earlier. On a typical day we might pass hundreds of them, but they’re such a part of the landscape now that we barely notice them at all.

Statutory no smoking sign at the main entrance to the Science Museum (Stewart Emmens)

On that day in 2007, England followed Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by making it illegal to smoke in most enclosed public spaces and work premises. As part of this major public health legislation, shops, pubs and other businesses – including museums – were obliged to display a sign, like the one above, at each entrance.

Smoking signage collected from various London pubs in 2007 (Stewart Emmens)

A train's first class smoking compartment, 1936 (Science Museum / Science & Society)

The bans were a big expansion of earlier legislation which had banned smoking in many workplaces, but also in buses, cinemas and even on the London Underground. All signs of our changing relationship with smoking. And there is an earlier generation of smoking signs that hint at levels of acceptance which seem almost inconceivable now.

No smoking sign from a hospital ward, c1960-1975 (Science Museum)

For example, while the sign may have reminded the smoker that the ward was out of bounds, it does give the impression that if you just nipped out to the corridor – you’d be free to puff away with impunity. 

Of all our many and varied medical objects in storage, it’s the artificial limbs that visitors often find the most striking. Occupying two whole rooms, the majority were acquired from Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton, which opened 95 years ago this month.

Limbs from Queen Mary's Hospital in our London store (Stewart Emmens)

The date is significant. By 1915, the trickle of amputees shipped home to Britain in the early weeks of the First World War was becoming a torrent. The authorities, who were obliged to provide them with artificial limbs, were soon overwhelmed. The new hospital was a response to this crisis.

Limb fitting at Queen Mary's Hospital, c1916-1918 (Science Museum / Science & Society)

As the War progressed, St Mary’s became the main focus of limb production and fitting in the UK. A specialist service it retains to this day.

This collection contains examples from across the 20^th century, but those relating to the two World Wars form the largest groups. Retained by the hospital when veterans were issued new prostheses, they have some of the most intriguing back stories.

Artificial leg with extensive 'home repairs' (Science Museum)

Perhaps the strangest is this limb, worn for over 40 years by one ex-soldier. Made of fibre and intended only as temporary measure, its owner didn’t return Queen Mary’s for his proper limb-fitting. He preferred to prolong this pylon leg’s life – through occasional applications of glue, wire mesh…..and cement. It now weighs over 20 kg. Amazingly for most of that 40 years he worked as a roof thatcher and tiler.

Artificial leg made for a prisoner of war, c.1943 (Science Museum)

More subtly ingenious is this limb, handed in by a survivor of a Japanese prisoner of war camp. One of several made by fellow captive and surgeon Julian Taylor, it’s made from metal salvaged from a crashed aircraft. As an added touch for the British owner, who’d have worn little more than shorts in the sweltering heat, it is – of course – painted pink.

For me, the 30^th anniversary of Pac-Man highlighted two things in particular. Firstly, I’m as rubbish at playing it now as I was in the 80s, but secondly it’s a reminder of just how far computer games have advanced in three decades. In contrast, a less publicised 30 year anniversary reminds us that some other things don’t progress as quickly as we’d like.

World Health Organisation leaflet about smallpox, Africa, 1970-1971 (Science Museum)

Back in May 1980, the World Health Assembly confirmed the global eradication of smallpox. Last week a statue was unveiled by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to celebrate the event. But 30 years on, despite continuing advances in medical knowledge, it remains the only infectious human disease eradicated by direct intervention.

Like it’s disfiguring pustules, smallpox had scarred human history. Killing tens of millions over many centuries, it’s presence is well represented in our collections.

Ivory smallpox vaccination points used by Edward Jenner (Science Museum)

If Edward Jenner’s 18^th century vaccine first opened to door to eradication, it took the global campaigns of the 20^th century to finally get the disease under control.

Smallpox vaccination, Manchester Town Hall, 1962 (Science Museum / Science & Society)

After a huge international effort, the last naturally occurring cases were recorded in 1977. The final death from smallpox came the following year, bizarrely and tragically in Birmingham, after an accidental exposure at a research facility.

Hopefully, we won’t have to wait until 2040 for the next success. A handful of other diseases are slowly getting close to the brink. And while the original target date for eliminating the most well known of these – polio – has past, it’s possible that like smallpox, it too could soon be confined to history.

18th century caricature showing three corrupt doctors (Science Museum / Science & Society)

The Greek authorities recently named and shamed a number of tax-avoiding doctors. A move that is perhaps more revealing of blame-shifting than an indication that the profession is morally suspect. Not that doctors are always the saints we’d like them to be. Just because they’ve taken the Hippocratic Oath, doesn’t mean they’re going to stick to it.

Buried within our vast and varied medical collections are a number of objects associated with good doctors that turned (very) bad.

Photographs and letters relating to Dr Neill Cream (Science Museum)

Dr Neill Cream appears quite the dapper Victorian gentleman doctor. Born 160 years ago, on May 27, he was trained at prestigious medical schools in London and Edinburgh. But his charm and appearance belied his true character – a backstreet abortionist drawn to London’s sordid underbelly. Nicknamed the ‘Lambeth Poisoner’, he was hanged for a series of murders. His alleged cry of “I am Jack…” as the rope went taut would tantalize generations of Ripper enthusiasts. The letter, sent to his fiancée from prison, contains declarations of innocence – and a plea for an alibi.

Dr William Palmer's cigar case and cigar (Science Museum)

An even more infamous doctor once owned this cigar case – complete with unsmoked cigar. Dr William Palmer, aka the ‘Prince of Poisoners’, was one of the 19^th century’s most notorious characters. Better suited to a life of drink and gambling than healing, Palmer was convicted of a single murder after a sensational trial. However, it is believed he poisoned many more – including his own children and other relatives. He was hanged in front of a crowd of some 30,000 in 1856, but lives on in the enduring pub refrain of ‘what’s your poison?’, believed to be inspired by his exploits.

Compared to Cream and Palmer, those Greek doctors seem paragons of virtue.

One of the most curious meteorology objects I’ve discovered recently is the weather glass. It was first described in 1558 by the Italian scholar Giambattista della Porta.    

Giambattista Della Porta (c.1535-1615) surrounded by representations of his many interests, which included natural history, astrology, alchemy, mathematics and natural philosophy (Science Museum Library / Science & Society)

Della Porta’s apparatus was essentially the same as the air thermoscope, which I wrote about a recently. The alternative design shown below was in use from the 1600s. As the air in the vessel expands and contracts water moves up and down the spout, indicating changing atmospheric conditions. 

Weather glass, 1700-1900 (Science Museum / Science & Society)

Before air pressure was understood, the instrument was sometimes called a perpetuum mobile – perpetual motion – because the water level fluctuated with no known cause.

The English physician and mystic Robert Fludd (1574-1637) interpreted the weather glass as a ‘key to two worlds’. For him, it was a microcosmic symbol of the universe and a model for the human body. Others claimed that it could predict the weather days, weeks or even months in advance.  

By the 1660s leading experimental philosophers, who had recently begun to distinguish between temperature and air pressure and to use the thermometer and barometer respectively to measure them, tended to dismiss the weather glass since it responded to both variables.

However, it remained attractive for domestic use due to its simplicity, and portability: one maker claimed in 1917 that his was ‘More Sensitive than the Most Perfect Barometer’. Weather glasses can be bought on ebay and are still popular with amateur weather forecasters today. 

And whilst Fludd’s occult philosophy fell out of favour, some of his ideas persisted. Throughout the 1700s and 1800s many people continued to regard the weather glass and the barometer as reflections of the human body and psyche, since instruments and humans were both influenced by atmospheric conditions. 

Around 1710, John Patrick advertised this barometer/mirror combination, encouraging users to dress for the weather and perhaps reflect on the air's influence on their own health or mood (Science Museum / Science & Society)

Paperweight in the form of 'the pill', c1970 (Science Museum)

The oral contraceptive – better known simply as ‘the pill’ – is a part of everyday life. And while its very existence still attracts strong and conflicting opinions, it has revolutionised the lives of countless women in the last 50 years. Because it was on May 9, 1960, that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conditionally approved the drug Enovid 10mg – the world’s first birth control pill.

Bottle of Enovid 10mg pills (Science Museum)

Surprisingly, Enovid had already been available for several years. Used by tens of thousands of women for infertility and menstrual problems. But its contraceptive properties were confirmed by a number of researchers – notably John Rock and Gregory Pincus.

Given the social changes ‘the pill’ would facilitate, the 9 May announcement was something of a ‘slow burner’. Margaret Sanger, America’s leading birth control campaigner, who raised much of the research funding, only learned of it after her son read a press story. While Searle, the makers of Enovid, chose not to re-market it as a contraceptive for several months. But, the door had been opened. By 1965, over 5 million American women were on ‘the pill’ and its use was spreading across the world.

Packing contraceptive pills in a UK factory, 1965 (Science Museum / Science & Society)

As for Enovid, it’s solitary reign was short-lived as other branded products appeared. And like other early pills, it eventually became linked to thrombosis and other health problems. Later prescribed in lower doses, production of the drug was discontinued in 1988.

Fifty years of experience have helped improve safety and oral contraceptives are amongst the most prescribed drugs worldwide – a situation unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. And while long consigned to the pharmacological scrapheap, one iconic drug’s place in this ongoing story is assured.  Happy Birthday Enovid!

My colleague Vicky is right. Spring is finally here. And yet… winter drags on, as the lingering winter vomiting disease continues to make its presence felt.

A family of viruses – known as the noroviruses – thrive in crowded conditions and are especially fond of schools, where pupils then take bugs home. An unpleasant scenario my young daughter and I played out a few days ago.

Avoiding it is partly down to luck. But one major defence is the good old public health maxim – ‘wash your hands after you’ve been’. While such basic hygiene seems obvious, there was a time we barely used to bother.

Public health poster from the 1950s. (Science Museum / Science & Society)

A Hungarian doctor, Ignaz Semmelweis, first highlighted the life-saving potential of hand-washing in 1847.  Like other champions of medical hygiene, such as Joseph Lister, he was initially ridiculed. Only after the acceptance of germ theory were such good practices really followed.

Hygienic habits amongst the public were also slow to catch on. Access to clean water was limited in 19^th century Britain and many homes didn’t have sinks, let alone bathrooms.

The 'Optimus' water closet. (Science Museum / Science & Society)

Lavatories, like the one above, were reserved for wealthier backsides. Public toilets, when they arrived, cost money. Most people relied on unhygienic communal toilets which had to service many households. And not without reason were the Victorian masses called ‘the great unwashed’. Effective soap was a luxury until well into the 20^th century.

We have examples of such products in one our smellier store cupboards. Cakes of soap still queasily fragrant nearly a century after they were made.

Cakes of soap (Stewart Emmens)

In time, good hygiene was seen as a public duty, especially in regard to washing hands. But people do need reminding.

Public health stickers (Stewart Emmens)

These stickers are from the mid 20^th century and were to be placed in staff toilets, especially those used by people preparing food. Because then, as now, you didn’t really want any little ‘hidden extras’ with your pie and chips.

So, what’s the connection between contact lenses and rocket engines? The answer, I probably don’t hear you cry, is hydrogen peroxide and cleanliness.

Blown glass contact lens, 1930s (Science useum/Science & Society)

The lens holder includes a small piece of material (I have yet to identify it) that catalyses the decomposition of the peroxide solution. If it didn’t then the peroxide would remain and, having successfully killed the bugs on your lenses, then do its best to kill the cells of your cornea too. And this is where the rocket engine connection comes in.

The reaction that decomposes the peroxide also produces oxygen – you can see it bubbling off the catalytic material. That same type of reaction, albeit using extremely concentrated hydrogen peroxide, was exploited in the engines of Britain’s Black Arrow space rocket to launch the Prospero satellite into orbit in 1971.

Uprated Black Arrow rocket engine, c. 1970 (Science Museum/Science & Society)

The catalyst used was silver metal gauze and it decomposed the peroxide violently into oxygen and steam, which then ignited kerosene fuel, and so provided thrust to lift the rocket. In fact, earlier rocket engines dispensed with fuel altogether and replied on the thrust of the decomposing peroxide alone.

Oh, and the cleanliness connection? Well, peroxide rocket engines are considered ‘clean’ or green as their exhaust, after all, contains little more than oxygen and steam.