I made a trip to the Wellcome Collection located near Euston
to view the Super Human exhibition and the permanent exhibit Medicine Man.
Overall the Superhuman exhibition gives you the chance to explore human
enhancement from 600 BCE to 2050. The exhibit had a range of objects such as an
article from the Evening News ‘Meet Louise, the world’s first test-tube
arrival: Superbabe’ 1978 to a selection special prosthetic limbs for the young
children affected thalidomide one of the worst medical disasters. The
exhibition answers many questions as to what is human enhancement but also leaves
you with many more questions.
‘The Immortal’ created by Revital Cohen was the last object
I viewed inside the exhibit. I was immediately drawn in to the enclosed space
as the machinery is instantly recognizable too many people as life support
equipment. Also the artwork was blocked off from any distraction from the
exhibit being in its own entirely separate space. Revital Cohen acquired and
connected up a Heart-Lung machine, a Dialysis Machine, an Infant Incubator, a
Mechanical Ventilator and an intraoperative Cell Salvage Machine. These
machines made questions swirl around in my mind such as the ethics, rules
within the professional field of medicine as to how to use machines that mimic
the body’s structure in an appropriate way. Lastly and possibly most
importantly I wanted to know how scientists and doctors actually managed to get
to a point where they could create a machine to mimic a human being. The artist who created the installation was
Revital Cohen described that she wanted to mimic the body’s structure meaning
when you look at the installation you are effectively looking at a human being.
photograph by Revital Cohen
http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2012/05/the-immortal.php
After visiting the Wellcome Collection I thought it would be
beneficial to visit the current exhibition at the Museum Of London – Doctors,
Dissection and Resurrection Men. I felt the exhibition was split up into three
categories; the controversial nineteenth century body-snatchers or resurrection
men, the 1832 Anatomy Act and lastly the 2004 human tissue act. I felt the
information the exhibition was vital to begin to understand Revital Cohen’s
installation ‘The Immortal’. As it brought up the argument that the lifesaving
operations and machinery in ‘The Immortal’ and modern world would not exist without
resurrection men who endlessly studied human anatomy. The quote from Dr. Thomas
Southwood-Smith, 1824 describes the feelings many doctors had about dissection ‘USE
of the dead to the living’. On the other hand you could argue we may have got
to the point we are today without the need of resurrection men but we will
never know. The extract from the 1826 poem ‘Mary’s Ghost – A pathetic
Ballad’ written by Thomas Hood tells of many of the public’s feeling towards resurrection
men during the nineteenth century.
Mary’s Ghost – A pathetic Ballad
The body-snatchers, they have come
And made a snatch at me.
It’s very hard them kind of men
Won’t let a body be.
I can’t tell where my head is gone,
But Dr Carpue can;
As for my trunk, it’s all packed up
To go by Pickford’s van.
Don’t go to weep upon my grave
And think that there I’ll be;
They haven’t left me an atom there
Or my anatomy.
‘The bodies of the deceased patients of the hospitals of the
metropolis are Bought and Sold like those of sheep and oxen’ Ann Millard, 1825
another quote describing the public’s anger toward body-snatching. The
authorities did listen to the public and try and stop body-snatchers by
creating Man-traps in the early nineteenth century although they were made
illegal in 1827. Should the needs of medical science and the ‘greater good’
override individual consent.
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