James M. Edmonson, Phd
James M. Edmonson is Chief Curator of the Dittrick Medical History Center and Museum of Case Western Reserve University. A graduate of the College of Wooster, he received an MA and PhD in the history of technology at the University of Delaware. Since becoming Curator at the Dittrick Museum in 1981 he has written on medical technology, authoring Nineteenth Century Surgical Instruments (1986) and American Surgical Instruments (1997). His most recent publication is Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine, 1880-1930 (Blast Books, 2009), co-authored with John Harley Warner (Yale).
In 2004 Jim secured the donation of the Percy Skuy Collection on the History of Contraception, the largest collection of its kind in North America. The Skuy Collection has since been a major focus of the Dittrick’s endeavors, culminating in the exhibit “Virtue, Vice, and Contraband: A history of contraception in America,” opened in September 2009. He is working on a companion book project, an illustrated history of contraception, and is developing a major gallery installation on the history of childbirth.
|
