Visual memory of the profession – a gaze at the photo albums of the otorhinolaryngology clinic preserved in the Croatian Museum of Medicine and Pharmacy of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Abstract

Among the donations for the Croatian Museum of Medicine and Pharmacy, the most outstanding is the one which came from the legacy of the ORL clinic from the period when it was managed by Ante Šercer. It was donated to the Museum by the Zagreb School of Medicine in 2016. While pointing out the importance of representing non-verbal sources in medical historiography, in this paper we shall present the collection of the ORL clinic photographs compiled in two albums, which preserve the visual memory of the institution, as it was dislocated from its previous address. We shall compare those albums following the shifts in visual representations of the Clinic in different periods (before and after the WWII) and under different management. The albums shall be the starting point in focusing attention on the heritage of clinical disciplines, their documentary, historiographical and other values and possibilities for their interpretation and musealization