PROJECT REPORT
In accordance with the original plan, the primary focus of this research project has been to investigate how human and animal bodies and body parts were used in anatomical science (normal, pathological, and histological anatomy) at the Karolinska Institute (KI) from its inauguration in 1810 until it moved to a new campus in the 1940's. The aim was to explore how specimens and models were produced, reproduced, collected, preserved, and displayed at the KI, and how such practices related to the historical change and expansion of medical science at the time.

THE THREE MOST IMPORTANT FINDINGS
1) Anders Retzius, central actor.
In the course of my work on this project Anders Retzius emerged as a particularly important and interesting actor. Retzius started as an adjunct professor of anatomy at the KI in 1824, and served as chair of anatomy as well as director if the institute between 1830 and 1860. During his long tenure Retzius had a profound impact on the institute, and especially on its anatomy curriculum. He was a member of several scientific societies and academies, attended numerous national and international scientific meetings, traveled on extensive study trips in Europe, and maintained a large network of colleagues through correspondence and exchange of literature and specimens. His research spanned wide domains and focused on the examination of specimens. He also articulated ideas about the crucial role of dissection, preparations, and the study of specimens to the production and communication of scientific knowledge, as well as medical education. Retzius's work is a manifestation of his epistemology: anatomy is a fundamentally visual practice and its objective is to visualize corporeal structures; specimens are simultaneously the source of new knowledge and demonstrations of this knowledge; scientific communication needs visual evidence, not just verbal presentations; specimens on display in museums are scientific proofs and illustrations function as their proxies.

2) The role of medical museums in processes of professionalization and institutionalization.
When the KI opened in 1810 one room was set up as a museum, containing a heterogeneous collection of objects. In the century that followed, medical practice, education, and science became increasingly specialized. The KI expanded and established specialized departments at its campus in central Stockholm, and every new department set up a museum of its own. A museum, then, was a marker of the professionalization of a medical specialty, alongside other markers, such as a department with a chair, a textbook, a periodical, and a professional society with recurring meetings. Historians of medicine often claim that museum collections of models, specimens, and instruments at medical schools were created for educational purposes. My research demonstrates other important roles of such museums: they were as closely tied to knowledge production as to professionalization, institutionalization, and specialization in scientific medicine.

3) The development in pathological anatomy and its dependence on specimen collections.
The KI's department of pathological anatomy opened in a new building in 1866, and included a museum. Pathological specimens from the anatomy museum were moved to this new exhibition space. Anatomy professor Gustaf von Düben argued in a speech a few years earlier that the pathology collection was not there to display sensational malformations, but to bring together series of diseased or abnormal variations of diverse organs, systems, and tissues. The museum thus functioned as a reference collection for students, scientists, and clinicians, where they could get access to more disease forms than they would come across during a lifetime in medical practice. Already in the 1820's Anders Retzius maintained that such series of pathological specimens were of crucial importance to the development of the discipline. These (and more) examples from the history of the KI point to a flaw in the existing historiography of pathological anatomy. Michel Foucault and others have shown how the Paris school of pathological anatomy changed the discipline by systematically comparing the results of clinical autopsies with the case histories of hospital patients. Access to large hospital wards, cadavers to dissect, and better microscopes are commonly regarded as the vital conditions for the strong development of the discipline in the nineteenth century. But I can show that pathologists at this time valued access to rich collections of pathological specimens just as highly, and I argue that historians have neglected this fact.

NEW RESEARCH QUESTIONS GENERATED BY THE PROJECT
I have hitherto mainly focused on KI scientists as actors, but I'd like to do more research on their relations to other actors, such as assistants, students, nurses, instrument makers, photographers, and caretakers. I'm especially interested in investigating the collaborations between KI's anatomists and artists, for example Anders Retzius's work with Wilhelm von Wright, draughtsman of the Royal Academy of Sciences, and Gustaf Retzius's aesthetic struggles with artist N. O. Björkman. Correspondence and notes may illuminate why certain types of visualizations were preferred over others, and how mediation technologies were applied. How did visualizations, mediations, and relations between artists and scientists change over time? What influenced these changes: access to new technologies and cheaper reproduction costs; changing views on aesthetics and epistemology; or both?

If possible, I would also want to find out more about the patients who contributed their body parts to the specimen collections, and who are often mentioned by name in articles and case studies. Who were they? Did they (and their relatives) have any agency in relation to the scientists and doctors? Can historical research resurrect them from the status of research subjects by treating them as persons in their own right?

Anders Retzius met the German physiologist Johannes Müller, who was later to become world famous, at a conference in Berlin 1828. They stayed close friends and collaborators over many years. How did they influence each other in terms of research and thinking? How important was Müller's publication of Anders Retzius's articles in the journal "Archiv für Anatomie und Physiologie" for the international dissemination of Swedish anatomical science? Very little has been written about the relationship between Müller and Retzius, even if it's mentioned briefly by some Swedish and international historians.

THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT PUBLICATIONS TO COME OUT OF THE PROJECT
I collaborated with a number of Swedish historians of science and ideas on the volume Medicinen blir till vetenskap: Karolinska Institutet under två århundraden [Developing Medical Science: The Karolinska Institute Over Two Centuries], which was published at the KI's bicentennial in 2010. My contribution to the book is a 45-page chapter, "Museerna: Vetenskapshistoria i tre dimensioner" [The Museums: Science in Three Dimensions], which is a broad discussion of the shifting scientific roles of the museum collections from 1810 to the early twentieth century. While working on the article I collected and analyzed a complex and wide ranging archival material. I realized I had more than enough primary sources to write a monograph, but that I would not be able to finish it during the time I had allocated for this project. Each of the subheadings of the article could be expanded into a book chapter, and my hope is to receive grants, which will enable me to write the book in a near future.

In lieu of a monograph, I have focused on writing a series of articles in English. The most important one of these, "Figuring it Out: Visualizations in Nineteenth-Century Anatomy at the Karolinska Institute", will be published in the leading journal Bulletin for the History of Medicine. The article will be featured in a special issue on objects and visual practices in the history of anatomy ("Artifacts, Aesthetics, and Authority: Visual Practices in the History of Anatomy and Medicine"), which I am a guest editor for together with American historian Carin Berkowitz. We are also contributing an introductory article in which we discuss the significance of visual studies to the development of theory and methodology in the history of medicine and science.

TALKS AND COLLOQUIA
I have presented parts of my study in several Swedish and international contexts. I am pleased by the surprisingly great interest in my work among international scholars, and I have become part of a global network of historians working on related topics. I have presented papers at conferences in Tokyo, Brisbane, Philadelphia, and New York. And I have been invited to give talks colloquia at the following institutions: University of Sydney; Johns Hopkins University; National Institutes of Health; University of Maryland; Clark Art Institute; Uppsala University; and The Royal Institute of Technology. For a detailed list, see http://nih.academia.edu/EvaÅhrén/CurriculumVitae.

Publikationer

“ ‘Making space for specimens’: The Karolinska Institute’s museums, 1810-1940”, Medical Museums: Past, Present, Future, eds. Samuel Alberti & Elizabeth Hallam [under utgivning, 2012/2013].

“Figuring it Out: Visualizations in Nineteenth-Century Anatomy at the Karolinska Institute”, “Artifacts, Aesthetics, and Authority: Visual Practices in the History of Anatomy and Medicine”, eds. Eva Åhrén and Carin Berkowitz, temanummer av Bulletin for the History of Medicine [under utgivning, 2012/13].

“Introduction”, med Carin Berkowitz, “Artifacts, Aesthetics, and Authority: Visual Practices in the History of Anatomy and Medicine”, eds. Eva Åhrén and Carin Berkowitz, temanummer av Bulletin for the History of Medicine [under utgivning, 2012/13].

“Seeing, Knowing, Showing: Nineteenth-Century Collaborations between Anatomists and Artists at the Karolinska Institute”, temanummer “Virtual Anatomies: The Cultural Impact of New Medical Imaging Technologies”, ed. Elisabeth Stephens, Somatechnics [under utgivning 2012].

“The Culture of the Copy: Clorion’s First: Science—Anatomy (1829-30)”, med Michael Sappol, Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine, ed. Michael Sappol, New York: Blast Books, 2012.

“Beautiful Brains: Axel Key and Gustav Retzius's Studies in the Anatomy of the Nervous System and Connective Tissue (1875-76)”, Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine, ed. Michael Sappol, New York: Blast Books, 2012.

“Museerna: Vetenskapshistoria i tre dimensioner”, Medicinen blir till vetenskap: Karolinska Institutet under två århundraden, eds. Karin Johannisson, Ingemar Nilsson & Roger Qvarsell, Stockholm: Karolinska Institutet University Press, 2010.

 “The Strange Space of the Body: Two Dialogues”, med Michael Sappol, Strange Spaces: Explorations into Mediated Obscurity, eds. Amanda Lagerkvist & André Jansson, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009.

WORKS IN PROGRESS
”Chief White Fox and Professor von Düben: Anatomy and Racial Science in late 19th and Early 20th Century Sweden”

” ’No More Monsters’: The Role of Specimen Collections in the Formation of Pathological Anatomy in Nineteenth-Century Europe”