HAInews 2023/02 HAIlight in May: Object Stories from Heidelberg's Nursing Care
Chloroform drop bottles from the time of the First World War, a women's urinal from the 1920s, an incubator for premature babies from 1959 – objects like these are part of the collection on the history of medicine, nursing and other health professions at the Institute for Medical History and Ethics at Heidelberg University, which was started in 2018 and now comprises around 1,000 objects.
In 2022, the Institute's holdings were expanded by the collection of the children's nursing school – selected pieces from this were presented by Institute Director Prof. Dr Karen Nolte on 9 May 2023 at the “HAIlight in May” under the title "Object History/Histories".
The event at the Institute for Medical History and Ethics was not only attended by 16 local alumnae and alumni, including Amanda Daquila, the director of the University's New York branch office, but also by seven other participants from the region as well as from Tübingen, Dresden, Kiel and even Iceland. The idea for this HAIlight came from the long-time committed HAI member Prof. Dr Christine Auer: the moderator of the nursing sciences group in the HAI network is a professor of medical education and studied nursing in Heidelberg. Nursing was also the focus of Karen Nolte's presentation, which concentrated on so-called borderline objects that cross the boundaries of a profession and are used by both doctors and nurses. The Institute's collection holdings are also developing towards a focus on the non-medical health professions, as Karen Nolte explained: “This fits well with our Institute and is also a kind of unique selling point.”
Ergonomically shaped warming and cooling bottles, anesthesia instruments, syringes and so-called "mute nurses", tables used during surgeries, were presented by the director of the institute in her lecture, either as a picture presentation or as concrete objects. She explained, for example, the history of anesthesia, which was originally administered and monitored by nurses until the 1980s, before anesthetists took over. Or the background to the milk kitchens, which played an important role in the early days of the children's hospitals and were intended to help reduce infant mortality: Because many workers could not breastfeed their babies because of their working hours and therefore produced baby food themselves, which often led to the death of the babies. As a solution for these mothers, the Heidelberg Luisenheilanstalt, which later became the University Children's Hospital, set up milk kitchens like other children's hospitals, where mothers could pick up daily portions of milk for their babies. Karen Nolte also presented a specially shaped milk bottle that babies in the clinic could use to drink on their own in their cots – illustrating that even then, too few nursing staff had to care for too many children at once.
Object history is not simply a supplement to nursing history, but also enables a completely new perspective on it, namely on nursing practices, Karen Nolte explained. Objects illustrate the everyday routine of care and show how certain care practices functioned, which are not necessarily passed on in the sources: "Because it is rather the special that is passed on there, but not necessarily the self-evident.”