The 50-Year Evolution of the William P. Didusch Museum of the American Urological Association.

OBJECTIVE: To explore the history and evolution of the William P. Didusch Museum. METHODS: We reviewed the literature and personal accounts regarding the founding of the museum and changes to the museum over its history. RESULTS: William P. Didusch was a world-renowned medical artist and was the staff artist for the Brady Urological Institute under Hugh Hampton Young. The William P. Didusch Museum was founded in 1971 and comprised the collection of Didusch's drawings and instruments, which were housed at the American Urological Association (AUA) headquarters. In 1972, Didusch became the museum's first curator. At the time of Didusch's death, the AUA purchased a new building and began extensive renovations. In 1987, Dr. William W. Scott, the museum's third curator, cataloged the items housed in the museum before it was reopened in 1989. Dr. Rainer Engel took over as curator in 1993 and supervised renovations to the exhibit area. In 2003, the museum moved to the new AUA Headquarters in Linthicum, Maryland, and the central exhibit on the history of the cystoscope was finalized. Under Dr. Ronald Rabinowitz as Historian, the museum history committee and leadership were restructured and included a website with a virtual museum tour, links to history exhibits, and a newsletter. CONCLUSION: The William P. Didusch Center for Urologic History continues to evolve in pursuit of its mission to document, preserve, and present the history of urology and to educate and engage the medical community and the public.

The lethal and sterile doses of gamma radiation on the museums pest, varied carpet beetle, Anthrenus verbasci (Coleoptera: Dermestidae).

Museums preserve historical cultural artifacts and serve as an essential resource for current and future generations seeking first-hand knowledge about the diversity of life on Earth. However, significant changes in climate from temperature and humidity cause serious biotic degradation. Despite ongoing insect control treatments, insect pests are still a major problem for museums due to the lack of suitable and unsafe environments that are provided for the storage and display of the collection. The varied carpet beetle, Anthrenus verbasci (Coleoptera: Dermestidae) is one of the major stored product pests whose larvae cause serious damage to household items and museum specimens. Therefore, this research aims to study the effect of gamma radiation on the larval, pupal and adult stages. The effects of gamma radiation have been studied on 3rd instar larvae (100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 Gy). The results showed that mortality in the larval stage significantly increased with increasing gamma radiation dose, which was reflected in the eclosion of the adult stage. The exposure of one-day-old pupae to 200, 400, 600, 800 and 1000 Gy of gamma radiation showed that the higher the dose, the lower the percentage of adult emergence. Additionally, there was a significant increase in the percentage of mortality in A. verbasci adults with increasing radiation doses when the newly emerged adults were irradiated with 200, 400, 600, 800 and 1000 Gy. The LD50 and LD90 of gamma radiation doses on larvae, pupae and adults were calculated, and the malformations in all stages were photographed. The fecundity and fertility of A. verbasci adults that were exposed to radiation as one-day-old pupae decreased gradually with increasing doses of gamma radiation and reached 100% sterility when exposed to a dose of 150 Gy. Among all the treatments, the sterile dose (150 Gy) or lethal dose (1000 Gy) showed superior performance over other treatments and was adjudged as the best treatments, which prevented the subsequent development and complete mortality of the pest.

["The Shakespeare of medicine": works and days of John Hunter (1728-1793)].

John Hunter is rightly ranks with such most famous researchers and physicians as Galen, William Harvey and Andreas Vesalius. His role as the founder of the "experimental surgery" of the New Age and the creator of the famous Hunterian Medical Museum in London is significant for the history of medicine. His contribution into development of dentistry is incontestable. His work "The Natural history of human teeth: an explanation of their structure, use, formation, growth and diseases" (1771) was translated into many languages, but it was never published in Russian. The accuracy of description of the anatomy of teeth, jaws and mouth cavity, the view? contemporary for us, of development of the jaws and their relationship with the masseters, the introduction of such terms as "canines", "incisors" and "anterior molars" into scientific circulation and everyday practice of dentists, the illustrations excellent by their quality and accuracy - all this is John Hunter. His works predetermined path of development of many medical directions, giving food for thought to his followers and disciples. The article reveals the facts of his biography, demonstrates significance of contribution of John Hunter into medicine in his works on anatomy, surgery, natural history of dentistry and stomatology.

Brain malformations in diprosopia observed in clinical cases, museum specimens and artistic representations.

BACKGROUND: Diprosopus is a rare malformation of still unclear aetiology. It describes a laterally double faced monocephalic and single-trunk individual and has to be distinguished from the variant Janus type diprosopus. RESULTS: We examined seven double-faced foetuses, five showing true diprosopus, and one each presenting as monocephalic Janiceps and parasitic conjoined twins. Four of the foetuses presented with (cranio)rachischisis, and two had secondary hydrocephaly. Three foetuses showed cerebral duplication with concordant holoprosencephaly, Dandy-Walker cyst and/or intracranial anterior encephalocele. In the Janiceps twins, cerebral duplication was accompanied by cerebral di-symmetry. In the parasitic twins the cyclopic facial aspects were suggestive of concordant holoprosencephaly. In one of the true diprosopus cases, pregnancy was achieved after intracytoplasmic sperm injection. Whole-exome sequencing, perfomed in one case, did not reveal any possible causative variants.The comparison of our double-faced foetuses to corresponding artistic representations from the Tlatilco culture allowed retrospective assignment of hairstyles to brain malformations. CONCLUSION: Brain malformations in patients with diprosopus may not be regarded as an independent event but rather as a sequel closely related to the duplication of the notochord and neural plate and as a consequence of the cerebral and associated craniospinal structural instabilities.

Technology and Subaltern Knowledge at the Catalan Olive Oil Museum.

The Catalan Olive Oil Museum (Museu de l'Oli de Catalunya) deals with the production of olive oil in one of Spain's major oil clusters. Its rich approach to museography has successfully avoided the "book on the wall" or information-dense labeling in other museums. And its direct connection with the local oil cooperative and the Center for Oil Culture has been positive in building a solid narrative for the museum. The excessive emphasis on the "treasures" inside an oil cruet, however, introduces important limitations when looking from a history of food technologies viewpoint. The article considers the exhibition's potential by concentrating on categories like subaltern knowledge, food quality, industrial districts, circulation, and experts.

Scanning electron microscopy study of Lars Silns cheilostome bryozoan type specimens in the historical collections of natural history museums in Sweden.

The type specimens of 42 cheilostome bryozoan species introduced by Lars Siln between 1938 and 1954 and housed at three different Swedish institutions (the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, the Biological Museum in Lund and the Museum of Evolution in Uppsala) are here revised using scanning electron microscopy, with two exceptions, for the first time. As a result of this revision, new morphological observations were made for some species, such as ooecia in Antropora erecta, a costal pseudopore in Jullienula hippocrepis, intracolonial variation in the number of intracostal windows in Costaticella gisleni, and oral spines in Triphyllozoon mauritzoni. Some other observations confirmed the presence of structures/polymorphs in type material that had previously only been noted in non-type specimens, such as spinose interzooidal kenozooids in Retevirgula triangulata and putative brooding zooids in Bugulina kiuschiuensis. Structures originally interpreted as hydroid tube openings on the dorsal side of Triphyllozoon microstigmatum were confirmed to be avicularia, while the supposed kenozooidal attachment rootlet of Fedora nodosa might be the polypide tube of a coronate scyphozoan. In addition, the original combination Heliodoma goesi is here reinstated after Lagaaij assigned the species to Setosellina in 1963. The following new combinations are also proposed: Labioporella aviculifera for Siphonoporella aviculifera; Mangana canui and Mangana incrustata for Callopora canui and Tegella incrustata, respectively; Sphaerulobryozoon ovum for Fedora ovum. Lectotypes were selected when appropriate. This work clarifies the exact identity of some species that have never been recorded after their first description, such as Stylopoma magnovicellata and three species of Triphyllozoon, and contributes to the current increasing effort to digitize historical key specimens in natural history museum collections.

A small collection of rare and new chitons (Mollusca: Polyplacophora) from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

A collection of rare, mainly deep-sea species of chitons collected from South Australia, Tasmania and Heard Island has been processed. In the materials there was a second find of Belknapchiton opiparus, which made it possible to significantly supplement the previous descriptions of this species. For the first time, species of genus Stenosemus have been found for Australia and Macquarie Island. Two new species (Leptochiton australis n. sp. and Belknapchiton gowlettholmesae n. sp.) have been described. A high degree of endemism of the faunas of chitons of the family Leptochitonidae of Australia and New Zealand has been confirmed.

O Gabinete de Curiosidades da Universidade de Coimbra: uma proposta museológica e científica / The Cabinet of Curiosities at the University of Coimbra: a museological and scientific initiative

Resumo Os gabinetes de curiosidades constituem a origem do museu moderno. Na utopia da Wunderkammer existe a aspiração à convivência entre arte e ciência. Como docente do novo Curso de Philosofia Natural da Universidade de Coimbra (1772), Portugal contratou o naturalista italiano Domingos Vandelli, que transportou consigo uma coleção, com objetos do seu gabinete em Pádua, à qual anexou uma outra coleção, recolhida em Portugal (1764-1768), repositório ainda não tributário do paradigma naturalista de Lineu. É com fundamento na descrição dessas duas coleções que defendemos a relevante proposta - para a ciência e para a museologia - do Gabinete de Curiosidades do Museu da Ciência da Universidade de Coimbra, inaugurado em maio de 2022.

Abstract Cabinets of curiosities are the origin of modern museums. The utopia these Wunderkammer contain also includes aspirations for art and science to coexist. The Italian naturalist Domingos Vandelli was contracted as an instructor for the new course in natural philosophy at the University of Coimbra (1772), and brought objects from his own cabinet in Padua; he combined these with another collection mounted in Portugal (1764-1768), which did not yet conform to Linneus's naturalistic paradigm. Based on descriptions of these two collections, we defend the important initiative underway at the Cabinet of Curiosities at the University of Coimbra's Museum of Science, which was inaugurated in May 2022.

Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) as a new tool for morphological characterisation of both newly collected and museum voucher specimens of the Trypanorhyncha Diesing, 1863 (Platyhelminthes: Cestoda).

Taxonomic issues within Trypanorhyncha, e.g., the inaccurate light microscopic visualisation of the hook patterns, are solvable by confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM). We applied CLSM imaging to study Trygonicola macropora (Shipley et Hornell, 1906) and Dollfusiella michiae (Southwell, 1929) from Neotrygon caeruliopunctata Last, White et Séret from Bali, Indonesia. To illustrate the strength and limitations of CLSM, images of Otobothrium cysticum (Mayer, 1842) and Symbothriorhynchus tigaminacantha Palm, 2004, both permanent mounts from a collection, were also processed. The CLSM created image stacks of many layers, and edited with IMARIS Software, these layers resulted in three-dimensional images of the armature patterns and internal organs of both species. BABB (benzylalcohol and benzylbenzuolate) clearing was applied to T. macropora. We conclude that trypanorhynch cestodes stained with Mayer-Schuberg's acetic carmine permanently mounted in Canada balsam are suitable for CLSM, allowing detailed analyses of museum type-material as well as freshly collected and processed worms. BABB resulted in imaging the testes in detail, suggesting other stains to be used for CLSM in trypanorhynch cestode research. Application of CLSM for studies of other cestode groups is highly recommended.

John Archibald (Archie) Donaldson OBE (1914-1993).

Archie Donaldson was a dentist with a great intellect. He was an outstanding editor of the British Dental Journal and honourary curator of the British Dental Association Museum for many years. He was well known in the history of medicine circles, both in the United Kingdom and abroad. His papers on the historical use of gold and electricity in the surgery are highly thought of, as is his definitive history of the National Dental Hospital.

Harmful health effects of pesticides used on museum textile artifacts - overview.

The paper discusses the types of fibers contained in the museum textile artifacts and the types of pests and pesticides. Also, the main health problems associated with pesticide exposure are presented. Textile fibers represent an excellent source of food for microbes and insects. The key to the long-term preservation of textiles is by implementing an integrated management program for pest and environmental conditions control. The main types of pesticides are insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides, acaricides, and fumigants and a way for classification can be made according to the LD50 (lethal dose) value which evaluates the toxicity of a pesticide. Depending on the LD50 values, pesticides can be very toxic, moderately toxic, slightly toxic, and relatively non-toxic. Exposure to pesticides can occur through 4 four routes: oral, dermal, respiratory, and eye exposure. The main diseases that can be associated with exposure to pesticides are discussed in the paper. In the end, a basic set of precautionary recommendations when handling museum objects that may contain hazardous materials was presented.

Optimizing immunostaining of archival fish samples to enhance museum collection potential.

Immunohistochemistry (IHC) is a powerful biochemical technique that uses antibodies to specifically label and visualize proteins of interests within biological samples. However, fluid-preserved specimens within natural history collection often use fixatives and protocols that induce high background signal (autofluorescence), which hampers IHC as it produces low signal-to-noise ratio. Here, we explored techniques to reduce autofluorescence using sodium borohydride (SBH), citrate buffer, and their combination on fish tissue preserved with paraformaldehyde, formaldehyde, ethanol, and glutaraldehyde. We found SBH was the most effective quenching technique, and applied this pretreatment to the gill or skin of 10 different archival fishes - including specimens that had been preserved in formaldehyde or ethanol for up to 65 and 37 years, respectively. The enzyme Na+/K+-ATPase (NKA) was successfully immunostained and imaged using confocal fluorescence microscopy, allowing for the identification and characterization of NKA-rich ionocytes essential for fish ionic and acid-base homeostasis. Altogether, our SBH-based method facilitates the use of IHC on archival samples, and unlocks the historical record on fish biological responses to environmental factors (such as climate change) using specimens from natural history collections that were preserved decades to centuries ago.