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historical archive form Dr. Àngel Ferrer Cagigal's Department of Pathological Anatomy
The development of Catalan pathological anatomy and
histology still needs to be studied in depth. Below we present
an array of materials that may contribute to this research,
to the study of the academic and hospital institutionalisation
of these disciplines. In particular, this material is subsequent
to the consolidation of cellular theory, as a basis for microscopic
pathological anatomy on the second half of the 19th Century,
and coetaneous to the so-called “Spanish histological
school” on the first third of the 20th Century.
The historical archive we present includes documentation and
work tools organized around Dr. Àngel Ferrer Cagigal’s
Department of Pathological Anatomy of the Faculty of Medicine
of the University of Barcelona. Dr. Ferrer’s stay in
Barcelona was not very long, since 1923, when he obtained
the professorship, until his death on 1936. Dr. Ferrer focused
his activity on general pathological anatomy, above all macroscopic,
always linked to a room in the hospital. Regarding his activity,
it is worth to mention the foundation in the Teaching Hospital,
next to the old autopsy room, of an anatomical pathological
museum on 1924. The creation of such museum meant the establishment
of a series of protocols aimed to preserve and classify materials
for the study of certain pathologies. Mostly, the museum used
the hospital autopsy room as a working resource. From this
place, they proceeded to gather materials, to the photographic
registration of the different pathologies they faced, to the
writing of autopsy protocols specifically designed and printed
to this end, to the production of natural anatomical preparations
and to the acquisition of artificial anatomical preparations,
above all in plaster, of superficial anatomical processes.
This working method showed its results in Dr. Ferrer Cagigal’s
journal Medical Clinic and Institute of Pathological Anatomy
and Annals of Legal Medicine, Psychiatry and Pathological
Anatomy (1924-1933).
The historical archive preserved by the Museum of History
of Medicine of Catalonia contains a demonstrative enough sample
of the mentioned materials, which were used, within a museological
spirit, for the teaching and knowledge production on pathological
anatomy. The artificial anatomical preparations of macroscopic
injuries stand out as a tool that in the 1930s kept the utility
trait of its original notion, as well as a noteworthy collection
of photographs, in black and white, taken with the aim of
objectifying the analysed pathologies and necropsy protocols.
The identification of photographic registrations of these
pathologies doubtlessly constitutes a complex challenge nowadays.
The Museum archive also preserves a remarkable collection
of about thirty watercolours, signed by Dr. Ferrer and his
collaborators in the department, representing macroscopic
and microscopic pathological processes and which were part
of the department museum. Beyond the museological use of these
pictorial representations, the watercolours show the coexistence
of two techniques of objective registration of reality: drawing
and photography. Even though drawings were criticised since
the end of the 19th Century as an instrument unable to register
the truth of the observed nature, the technical deficiencies
of colour photography –not overcome until the middle
of the 20th Century- kept the trust in drawing and the cooperative
work between physicians and medical illustrators, as it can
be seen in most of the medical atlas of macroscopic images
published at the time.
Dr. Ferrer’s museum of pathological anatomy did not
pass the test of time. Changes in the department and the need
of space in the hospital and the faculty of medicine meant
its gradual dismantling. Some of those pieces are conserved
in the department of Legal Medicine, others in our Museum,
though most of this patrimony is lost.
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