47 MARINA LIENERT · CARIS-PETRA HEIDEL The Medical-Historical Collection The origins of the Collection Exhibits collected by the Duke of Weissenfels provided the basic stock for a larger collection of the Collegium Medico-Chirurgicum in Dresden. This was the first Saxon school of surgery, opening in 1748. It was succeeded by the Provisional Teaching Institute of Medicine and Surgery (1814/15) and the Surgical-Medical Academy (1815 to 1864). These institutions also made use of comprehensive collections in their training of military doctors, surgeons and medical practitioners. Unfortunately, none of these exhibits made it into the possession of the indirect successor institution, the Medical Academy “Carl Gustav Carus”, founded 90 years after the Surgical-Medical Academy closed. However, a physician interested in medical history began acquiring new objects for teaching purposes. Heinrich Fritz, head of the X-ray and Radium Institute of the Dresden-Johannstadt Hospital from 1948, then Professor of Radiology and Radiotherapeutics at the Medical Academy “Carl Gustav Carus” and Director of the Radiology Clinic, collected more than 20 different X-ray tubes, documenting the development of the relatively new discipline. They were on display in a purpose-built cabinet and were used in the training of medical students and medical technical assistants. Nevertheless, there seem to have been no systematic efforts at the new institution to collect material witnesses to medical history, despite the efforts of Heinz Egon Kleine-Natrop, a proven expert and promoter of Dresden’s medical history at the Medical Academy “Carl Gustav Carus”. Kleine-Natrop was the first Director of the Dermatological Clinic and full Professor of Dermatology from 1957. This lack of system when it came to acquiring historical exhibits was perhaps due to the proximity of two important institutions, both of which had been founded before World War I and already owned extensive medical history collections: the Karl Sudhoff Institute for the History of Medicine and the Natural Sciences in Leipzig and the “Deutsches Hygiene-Museum” in Dresden. In 1978, the introduction of history of medicine as a compulsory subject at all medical higher education institutions in the GDR led to the establishment of an independent department for the history of medicine at the Medical Academy “Carl Gustav Carus”, headed by Günter Heidel. Heidel was a lecturer who had written his habilitation on the subject, and when the department was elevated to the status of Institute in 1990, he became the first Chair of the History of Medicine at the Medical Academy “Carl Gustav Carus”. Establishing this discipline in teaching and research was the primary goal of the Chair. It explains why simultaneously developing a medical history collection of substance was neither planned nor possible, due to a lack of staff and funding. However, as far as the limited means allowed, material witnesses relevant to medical history were acquired second-hand, a practice that continues to this day. Treadle drill and dentist’s chair, circa 1890 The treadle drill was supposedly used by a dentist in Dresden as late as the 1960s. In 1746, Count von Hennike took possession of the Duchy of Weißenfels in the name of the King of Poland and Elector of Saxony. He found several anatomical specimens in the duke’s collections and sent them to Dresden to be used in training surgeons. Seiler 1820, p. 439–440 Although there are more glorious causes for the foundation of high schools and universities than secular need, there can hardly be a more cogent, let alone a more humane one for a medical school than that its establishment is necessary in the strict sense of the word. Kleine-Natrop 1964, p. X
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