Alejandro Posadas (Buenos Aires 1870 - París 1902). introductor de recursos didácticos en los procesos de enseñanza y de aprendizaje en los estudios médico-quirúrgicos en la Universidad de Buenos Aires / Alejandro Posadas (Buenos Aires 1870 - Paris 1902). introducer of teaching resources in teaching and learning processes in medicalsurgical studies at the University of Buenos Aires

Alejandro Posadas fue un destacado cirujano en la Buenos Aires del siglo XIX. Sus trabajos contribuyeron al desarrollo del conocimiento médico. El objetivo del presente artículo es describir las actividades de Alejandro Posadas desde perspectivas diferentes: cirugía, investigación, educación médica y la innovación que sus métodos aportaron al proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje.

Alejandro Posadas was a renowned surgeon in the Buenos Aires of the XIX century. His works contributed to the development of medical knowledge. The purpose of present research article is to describe the activities of Alejandro Posadas from different perspectives: surgery research, medical education and that the innovation of his methods brought them in the teaching and learning processes.

Visualizing Vesalius.

The anatomist whose name became a trademark for all that is high standard in medicine was more engaging and nuanced than his portrait suggests. Padua was the epicenter of the Italian Renaissance in the XVI century, a place of unparalleled artistic and intellectual attainments where Vesalius started the revolutionary road towards the development of medical knowledge.

Analysis of a homemade Edison tinfoil phonograph.

Thomas Edison's phonograph was a landmark acoustic invention. In this paper, the phonograph is presented as a tool for education in acoustics. A brief history of the phonograph is outlined and an analogous circuit model that describes its dynamic response is discussed. Microphone and scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV) measurements were made on a homemade phonograph for model validation and inversion for unknown model parameters. SLDV measurements also conclusively illustrate where model assumptions are violated. The model elements which dominate the dynamic response are discussed.

Draughtsmen, botanists and nature: constructing eighteenth-century botanical illustrations.

At first glance botanical illustrations of the eighteenth century might be interpreted as being naturalistic portraits of living plants. A more detailed investigation, however, reveals that the pictures were meant to communicate typical features of plant species in the way of a model. To this end, botanists of the period gave botanical draughtsmen specialist training; copying earlier examples and standardised motives from drawing books was a common part of this training. The practice of copying elements of previously published drawings and integrating them into new pictures was also widespread. However, only carefully selected elements were taken over, and even these were improved in terms of their correctness and appropriateness to the new context. This procedure was a strategy that eighteenth-century botanists used so that they would present an illustration that met their own requirements more satisfactorily than existing depictions. From this perspective, botanical illustrations can serve as historical sources on the working practices of eighteenth-century botanists and draughtsmen, which are usually not mentioned in textual sources.

Arthur van Gehuchten takes neurology to the movies.

OBJECTIVE: To present the cinematographic production of Arthur Van Gehuchten (1861-1914) and to put this collection into its medical and sociocultural context. BACKGROUND: The arrival of Edison's Kinetoscope (1891) and Lumière's Cinématographe (1895) provoked the immediate interest of neurologists who foresaw the potential of motion pictures for illustration, research, and teaching. RESULTS: Arthur Van Gehuchten, professor of anatomy and neurology at the Catholic University of Louvain, was trained as a microscopist and a cytologist. From neuroanatomy, he progressively broadened his interest to neurology. Van Gehuchten was an avant-garde teacher, eager to adopt new visual aids. In 1895, he attended the first cinematographic screenings. Medical cinematography was soon brought into disrepute in European academic circles, when films made by the French surgeon Doyen were copied and shown on fairgrounds. Nevertheless, in 1905, Van Gehuchten began to film neurologic patients. He used this technique extensively to demonstrate clinical signs, to illustrate neurologic diseases, and to document functional evolution following surgery. For decades, these films were screened for medical students by Van Gehuchten's successors to the chair of neurology. The original nitrate films (more than 2 hours) have been recently rediscovered. They have been restored by the Royal Belgian Film Archive, where they are the oldest Belgian films. CONCLUSIONS: At the beginning of the 20th century, Van Gehuchten built up a collection of moving pictures for teaching purposes. This was one of the first such undertakings. This unique set of films has miraculously survived, and serves as an important archive of nervous diseases and their manifestations prior to the advent of modern therapies.