Dupuytren’s: Anatomy of a Package

In the 19th century, a new type of disease museum opened in Paris around Dr. Dupuytren’s anatomical-pathological collection. Today we tell his story.

The collection, along with other items of casts and models by Guillaume Dupuytren, is located on the porous border between art and science, between a cabinet of curiosities and an educational space. And the whole history of medical knowledge, sometimes raw, lies with it. Often reduced to the crude status of a “museum of horrors,” the Dupuytren collection is more than a fascinating object. It confronts the evolution of medicine head-on and ultimately asks us a broader question: How has our imagination of disease evolved over the past few centuries?

CQFD Science Glad to receive Julie SeminaduLecturer in Philosophy at the Sorbonne University and Claire Grignon, Professor of History and Philosophy of Medical Science at the University of Lorraine in the Poincaré Archives Laboratory.

Study of the Dupuydren Collection in the Underground Passages of the Sorbonne University

Reporting by Celine Luzon.

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Lois Quetel, Head of the Dupuytren Collection, together with Remy Gaillard, Deputy Director of the Sorbonne Library, revealed on the shelves of this rich collection of 15,000 items: ments, waxes, organs, joints or fluids, as well as archives and medical instruments. The voluminous collection traces the development of anatomical pathology in the 19th century, thanks to Eloise Quetel’s unprecedented expertise in conservation-reconstruction and beyond its traditional value, it appears as a resource for biomedical research.