Our Hidden Medical "Museum"

Menacing Masks • Clunky Cellphones • Scary Syringes

Our Hidden Medical “Museum”

BY PIETA WOOLLEY | pieta@prliving.ca

Back in 2009 when Jeremy Brockington started work at Powell River General, his curiosity was piqued by what he found in some of the hospital’s darkest corners. As part of his work distributing supplies, he poked into cupboards, closets and drawers. Sometimes, they contained what seemed, to him, like treasure: old medical supplies. They went on a cart (above). It has since become his “museum.”

“Now it’s a whole collaboration,” said Jeremy, who says some are intrigued by the contents of the cart, and others think it’s a load of junk. “All the departments – medical records, nursing, maintenance, pharmacy, biomed, Xray, and lab – if they find something cool, they’ll donate it to the museum. It’s like a hospital-wide scavenger hunt.”

some of the scarier-looking finds, including a very large metal syringe.

Some of Jeremy’s favourite finds include the old paper mask boxes (“The graphics appeal to me. The nurses on them look like they’re coming at you with lethal injections”); the hand-typed glass bottles of hydrogen peroxide and bromide solution; the heavy c-clip rotary phone shoulder-holder; a sleeve of disposable cups from EXPO ‘86; and the triangular reflex-testers, which he’s holding in the photo above.

He had his eye on the whale-shaped tape dispenser at medical records, circa the 1940s. “One Christmas they wrapped it up and gave it to me,” he said.

the heavy cast-iron whale Scotch tape dispenser from the 1940s, found by the medical records department and gifted to Jeremy one Christmas.

Beyond getting a kick out of the old implements and packaging – one young woman found a roll of electric typewriter tape and had no idea what it was – there is value in reflecting on the material culture of medicine’s past. For example, his department won the hospital’s holiday door decoration contest several years back for the theme of “Merry Christmask,” which featured, of course, medical masks.

“That was the year the employer was implementing the policy that if you didn’t get a flu shot you had to wear a mask. At the time it seemed heavy-handed,” Jeremy said, noting that our ideas about wearing masks have changed dramatically since then.

vintage disposable masks, featuring stern-looking nurses.

There has been talk, Jeremy said, of finding a more permanent, more public home for the “museum.” But so far, he’s content to curate in place, in the bowels of the stores warehouse.

aged office equipment: a radio, old cell phone, and more