Object of the Month: November 2021 A Charm Against Tuberculosis? Robert Koch, the discoverer of TBC-bacillus and the founder of bacteriology, became a heroic figure both in literature – in Czechoslovakia, in Karel Driml’s Bacilinek puppet play – and in the visual arts at the turn of the 20 century. The portrait of the Berlin […]
Object of the Month: October 2021 Hospital Lung Ventilator KPT-N In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Czechoslovak automatic pulmonary ventilators were being developed in the Presna mechanika (Prema, Precise Mechanics) factory in Brno by a team led by ing. Jaromír Bernreiter (1916-1966). Dr. Hugo Keszler (1916-1994), the head of anaesthesiology at the Clinical and Experimental […]
Object of the Month: September 2021 Urotropin The many medicines and chemicals tested to treat patients during the „Spanish Flu“ epidemic of 1918-1919 included newly developed chemotherapeutics. Prominent among them was urotropin (hexamethylenetetramine, hexenamin), tablets carried by many soldiers in their battle dress pockets, whether as solid fuel for warming rations or as prevention and […]
Object of the Month: August 2021 Pneumothorax After Küss, Waldek and Wagner, Prague, around 1925 The BCG (bacillus Calmette-Guérin) tuberculosis vaccine was introduced to medical practice in the 1920s. Only in the 1940s were antibiotics employed to cure the disease: beginning with a combination of streptomycin, para-aminosalicylic acid and isoniazid. In previous decades, physicians treated tuberculosis […]
Object of the Month: July 2021 Surgeon’s Diploma Issued to Franz Gebell, Wien, 1836 We, the Director and the Dean of the medical- surgical studies at the ancient and world famous University of Vienna confirm publicly that Franz Gebell, born in Cracow in Poland, having undertaken the proper course of study, underwent the rigorous exams […]
Object of the Month: June 2021 The Oldest Vaccination Attest in the Medical Museum Collection A vaccination certificate is inscribed with two names, that of a doctor or a surgeon on the one hand and that of the vaccinated child – or adult – on the other. The document has been marked by two human destinies […]
Object of the Month: May 2021 Vaccination Certificate, 1828 In the spring of 2021, after a year and half with COVID-19, coronavirus vaccines promise protection against the disease to each of us, as well as the swift end to the pandemic and return to „normal“ times. Many of us have the certificates of one or both […]
Object of the Month: April 2021 A Vaccine Pen Smallpox is the first infectious disease to be fought by vaccination. Variolation, immunization against smallpox by introducing material from pustules of a patient, had spread in Europe early in the 18th century: a surgeon cut the skin with a scalpel or a lancet and rubbed the liquid into the […]
Object of the Month: March 2021 Jet Injector from the Smallpox Eradication Campaign In 2021, the hope of people menaced by the coronavirus turns to vaccination. Several vaccines for the SARS-CoV 2 virus have been produced: the compounds are being tested and inhabitants of various countries await the injection that will protect them from the […]
Object of the Month: February 2021 Altest To celebrate all those who kept Dry February (or January) even during the pandemic In the interwar years, the temperance movement intensified both in Europe and in America. The Czechoslovak Abstinence Union (before 1918, The Provincial Society against Alcoholism) and other public health associations including the Red […]