How Medicine Became Modern: A Humanities Perspective

FAIN: GI-230706-15

Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH 44106-1712)
James M. Edmonson (Project Director: January 2015 to October 2019)

Implementation of a digital wall to allow visitors to interact with images of historic artifacts marking transformative moments in American medical history.

The Dittrick Medical History Center and Museum seeks support for the implementation of How Medicine Became Modern. This dynamic digital wall will allow visitors to interact with three-dimensional, high-resolution images of historic artifacts that mark transformative moments from the American medical past. These artifacts will respond to the user's touch, turning, opening, and--when activated--enlarging to provide stories, exciting events and contexts, and digitized film and audio. Each of these objects will connect the viewer to additional objects and the stories they tell about how doctors, patients, innovators, philanthropists, and the wider community came together to make medicine modern in the United States. The interactive display will demonstrate how medical innovations forever altered the American experience of health and medicine, and aligns with the NEH's initiative of examining the connections between the humanities and science and technology.