The conference “Medical Technology Through the Ages” took place on April 25 and 26 at the RUB’s Medical History Collection and the German Mining Museum in Bochum as part of a BMBF research project. The conference focused on best-practice examples for handling medical and mining history collections in research, teaching, and science communication, as well as the conservation of plastics, particularly elastomers. Conference participants gained insight into the storage facilities of the montanDok at the German Mining Museum as well as into the exhibition and educational work of the RUB’s Medical History Collection. The featured image shows a mining rescue device from the Dräger company, which is on permanent loan and on display in the RUB’s Medical History Collection. The conference program can be found here.
The BMBF-funded research project “Sleep – Pain – Stress – Cultures and Techniques of Biofeedback Systems from 1960 to 1990: Material Culture Research in the Medical Technology Collection of the OVGU,” led by the Curatorial Department of Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, has been approved for the period from 2023 to 2027. The Medical History Collection at Ruhr University Bochum and the Institute for Ethics and History of Medicine are research and practice partners in the project.