When Galileo’s body was exhumed in 1737, three of his fingers were removed. One is encased in a glass egg in the Galileo Museum in Florence. Most people think of relics as religious objects. Yet, there are many “secular relics" related to science, medicine, and art. Can you think of some examples? - ThreadSky

drlindseyfitz.bsky.social • 3 days ago

When Galileo’s body was exhumed in 1737, three of his fingers were removed. One is encased in a glass egg in the Galileo Museum in Florence.

Most people think of relics as religious objects. Yet, there are many “secular relics" related to science, medicine, and art. Can you think of some examples?

Comments

microbingle.bsky.social•1 day ago

Pasteur's tomb
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/crypt-tomb-made-of-swedish-granite-in-which-louis-pasteur-was-laid-to-rest-charles-louis-girault-auguste-guilbert-martin-luc-olivier-merson/5gFqJXtpo0lJxg?hl=en

mrnagrom.bsky.social•1 day ago

is it kept at 63c at all times?

jimbolint.bsky.social•1 day ago

He's rolling over in it listening to RFKjr extoll the virtues of raw milk while dismissing germ theory

hecate527.bsky.social•2 days ago

Winston Churchill's lock of hair at Blenheim Palace.

drlindseyfitz.bsky.social•2 days ago

I forgot about that one!

mrgb63.bsky.social•2 days ago

Was that Galileo's middle finger, with the display carefully aligned to taunt the Vatican?

helloginnybatty.bsky.social•1 day ago

We have some items in the @bharchives.bsky.social collections relating to Edith Cavell which are relic-like. Like the handle of the car which transported her to the site of her execution, and a piece of stone from the execution block that she stood on

nattybowditch.bsky.social•3 days ago

GEN Dan Sickles’ leg is on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring MD.
Unless RFK Jr has done something inexplicable and bizarre to it

nattybowditch.bsky.social•3 days ago

Gen Dan Sickle’s leg

dayvehuse.bsky.social•3 days ago

Dan Donnelly's arm...https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Donnelly_(boxer)

martindavi.es•2 days ago

https://www.rigb.org/explore-science/explore/collection/michael-faradays-magnetic-laboratory

mrxexon.bsky.social•3 days ago

I believe Napolean's penis resides somewhere besides his body...

It became a collector's item and is widely traveled.

revnancyg.bsky.social•2 days ago

Einstein's Blackboard in Oxford.
https://www.hsm.ox.ac.uk/blackboard-used-by-albert-einstein

hugh-roper.bsky.social•3 days ago

The obvious one…

kirbytheawsum.bsky.social•3 days ago

And his head! Which is on display elsewhere.

hbsj.bsky.social•3 days ago

There's the Phillips Machine - a hydraulic simulator of the UK economy which used to be at LSE, now in the science museum

https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2016/12-December-2016-1/Phillips-Machine-finds-new-home-at-Londons-Science-Museum

hbsj.bsky.social•3 days ago

I worked at St George's, University of London, about 20 years ago, and a table in one of the meeting rooms was reputed to have been John Hunter's laying-out table. It was about the right age and size

And we definitely had Edward Jenner's couch, which had been refurbished and used in a waiting area

drlindseyfitz.bsky.social•3 days ago

That's incredible! I love this!

hbsj.bsky.social•3 days ago

It was, with hindsight, pretty cool

In the library was - and I'm sure still is - the hide of the cow from which Jenner extracted the cowpox to use to innoculate people

thatpandayouknow.bsky.social•2 days ago

Does Jerry Bentham's head count? I forget why it was kept

rosarymia.bsky.social•2 days ago

Part of his will and I think endowment to the college...it was once his whole taxidermied body.

wyvernchick.bsky.social•2 days ago

Half of Charles Babbage's brain in on display in the Science Museum in London.

jesswhitecroft.bsky.social•3 days ago

Whatever is still left of the original Jeremy Bentham probably counts.

matgb.uk•3 days ago

My head of department when I was an undergrad was a regular at the Bentham dinner, still freaks me out a little

jesswhitecroft.bsky.social•3 days ago

Bentham was a legend of rag week pranks when I was at KCL. I suspect most of them weren't true.

drlindseyfitz.bsky.social•3 days ago

Definitely

jesswhitecroft.bsky.social•3 days ago

Also that weird obsession that 20th century communists had with pickling their leaders, like Lenin, Ho Chi Min, and Chairman Mao. Not sure there's anything left of the original Mao, though, because that embalming went spectacularly wrong.

octopusmask.bsky.social•3 days ago

The New York Academy of Medicine has George Washington's last natural tooth which he had gifted to his denture maker when it finally fell out, allowing him to get his final fitting for a full set of dentures.

actuarialeye.bsky.social•2 days ago

Lucrezia Borgia's hair ( and possibly her rings?) are in a museum in Milan

lizwadsworth65.bsky.social•2 days ago

Didn't she have a poison ring with a hollow well for the toxin and a little needle that could be extruded?

madamehardy.bsky.social•1 day ago

Contemporary slander. She seems to have been an ordinary noblewoman swept around by her male family's intrigues. She genuinely mourned a husband the Borgias murdered.

keencritic.bsky.social•3 days ago

Allegedly, John Dillinger's membrum virilum.

bassoosie.bsky.social•2 days ago

Oh, really? My grandmother had stories about being locked in the morgue with other nursing students and JD's body as a prank... They were definitely doing goofy things.

marsanges.bsky.social•3 days ago

The Teyler's museum in the town near me claims to have the original summit of Mt Blanc, in form of a piece of rock brought home by the first climber, as curiosity/proof.

jmarotta.bsky.social•2 days ago

Anybody brought up Jeremy Bentham yet?

drlindseyfitz.bsky.social•2 days ago

They have! A great example

rigolett0.bsky.social•3 days ago

So, Galileo is still giving the church the finger…

ungatru.bsky.social•3 days ago

Einstein’s brain.

michaelleroyoberg.bsky.social•2 days ago

In a safe at the Rochester Historical Society, we have some of Frederick Douglass’s hair. I think also of many death masks and other memento mori. So many examples housed at a tiny local history establishments across the US.

1pfitz3.bsky.social•3 days ago

2 out of 5 Indiana Jones adventures feature non-religious relics. I wouldn't necessarily call them scientific relics though.

debf56.bsky.social•3 days ago

Would dinosaur bones count?

robcruickshank.bsky.social•3 days ago

Phineas Gage's skull and rod at the Warren Anatomical Museum at Harvard!

drlindseyfitz.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes! That's a crazy one

athornton.bsky.social•3 days ago

Best classroom theatrics ever: Albert Van Helden, after riling up the class with Galileo vs. the Church, talking about the finger. "Thought to be his index finger in the museum in Florence. Turns out it's not. It's this one." Displays middle finger. "Class dismissed. Have a good weekend."

thestevec.bsky.social•3 days ago

The pistol used by Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914 to assassinate Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria.

elle-yung.bsky.social•3 days ago

That’s my choice here. It’s one of the - if not THE - single most consequential object of the last thousand years. More than either atomic bomb dropped on Japan (which I feel awful for saying), more than any prototype (sorry Wilbur & Orville, Bell, etc).

thestevec.bsky.social•3 days ago

I know what you mean. I've seen plenty of objects in plenty of different of museums and galleries. But I think if I ever saw this in person I'd probably feel the huge weight of history attached to it.

michaelleroyoberg.bsky.social•2 days ago

Where is this?

thestevec.bsky.social•2 days ago

I think it's on display in the Vienna Museum of Military History. I think.

hillsidepoppy.bsky.social•3 days ago

That looks like a pretty serious gun for 1914.

thestevec.bsky.social•3 days ago

https://www.historynet.com/ww1-archduke-ferdinand-assassination-browning-m1910/

thestevec.bsky.social•3 days ago

Not sure if it counts, but the pocketbook made from the skin of body snatcher William Hare springs to mind. I think it’s housed in the Surgeon’s Hall Museum. More a macabre curiosity than a relic, I’d say.

thestevec.bsky.social•3 days ago

Or the preserved skeleton of Jeremy Bentham currently housed at UCL (I think).

drlindseyfitz.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes! Here I am holding it a few years back. It's housed at @surgeonshall.bsky.social

thestevec.bsky.social•3 days ago

It’s smaller than I thought it would be. For something so gruesome.

kingofthenerds.bsky.social•2 days ago

Thomas Edison’s supposed last breath in a sealed test tube at the Henry Ford Museum https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/225212/

mrrazzledazzle.bsky.social•2 days ago

I wonder who drew that short straw.

rhiggitt.bsky.social•1 day ago

I did a post on this (9 years ago, apparently!) https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2015/oct/31/babbages-brain-and-galileos-finger-six-macabre-scientific-relics?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

drlindseyfitz.bsky.social•1 day ago

Love it! Thanks for sharing!

singabrokenlullaby.bsky.social•3 days ago

Would the portion of Lemmy's ashes kept at the Rainbow in LA count as a relic?

sableindustries.org•3 days ago

I can think of one…

tigerinpearls.bsky.social•2 days ago

🤣🤣🤣

lucyjanesantos.bsky.social•1 day ago

I have been doing a lot of work on gangster related objects - Bonnie & Clyde’s Death car and she St Valentines Day Massacre wall both of which were in various travelling exhibitions before finding more permanent homes.

amfisher.bsky.social•2 days ago

Moon rock, National Air and Space Museum.

https://airandspace.si.edu/multimedia-gallery/nasm2019-07643jpg

teachingthevoid.bsky.social•3 days ago

When I worked briefly at the Royal Society, they had chunks of Newton's apple tree (yep, that one) in their collections.

knut.dundasmora.no•3 days ago

moon rocks and meteorites come to mind!

ozalba.bsky.social•1 day ago

There used to be a cast of Newton's death mask in the Crawford Collection, in Edinburgh. Is it still there, @astroroyalscot.bsky.social ?

astroroyalscot.bsky.social•1 day ago

💯! The original is at the Royal Society, but this is one of a handful of copies.

Google Map tour: https://maps.app.goo.gl/jSQeyr8xitpgghsf6

ozalba.bsky.social•1 day ago

I'm fairly sure that door had to be open, when you were in that hallowed space. Special dispensation?

astroroyalscot.bsky.social•1 day ago

New air filtration and climate controls in the room these days - so the door is always shut.

ozalba.bsky.social•1 day ago

Still a 10-second delay on the CO2 deluge, in event of fire?

laminda.bsky.social•3 days ago

This is more of a "local lore relic," but there's a Yukon bar called the Sourdough Saloon that serves a shot containing the preserved toe of a locally infamous 1920s-era bootlegger (allegedly). There's one rule: "You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but your lips must touch the toe"

robcruickshank.bsky.social•3 days ago

And the current toe is not the original, which was swallowed some time back. As was at least one other of the replacements.

djharvey81.bsky.social•3 days ago

Nope nope nope nope nope nope

mystickush.bsky.social•3 days ago

It’s something I’d see in Harry Potter it’s kinda clever 😂

mxnectarine.bsky.social•3 days ago

There’s an original Fahrenheit thermometer in Gdansk, in a glass case in the centre of town – because that’s where he came from

eatingooberpeas.bsky.social•1 day ago

Various legs and arms have been mentioned but don't forget about the famous Santy Annie leg! Mexican General Santa Ana's prosthetic leg is on display at the Illinois State Military Museum. They are as proud of it as Cotton Hill is.

carolynwright.bsky.social•3 days ago

Phar Lap’s heart preserved separately from his stuffed hide in two separate museums. He was a racehorse.

lynngr.bsky.social•2 days ago

Roy Rogers had his horse, Trigger, stuffed and mounted.

drandrewthaler.bsky.social•3 days ago

Much lower key, but when our university library was clearing out old books, I realized that almost all of them were biofouling pioneer John Sutherland's personal textbooks, full of margin notes, so now I have the Sutherland Collection on my bookshelf.

https://esa.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/94/2022/02/Sutherland_JP.pdf

dcmorr.bsky.social•3 days ago

The Marie Curie notebooks. Still so radioactive that they cannot be touched unless using lead gloves

drlindseyfitz.bsky.social•3 days ago

That's a great example

katyavdgk.bsky.social•3 days ago

Sorry I can't post under the 'cursed Kinder Surprise egg' but the only two I can think of are

The Fragonard Museum, France

Günther von Hagen's Körperwelten

dcmorr.bsky.social•3 days ago

and a little bit spooky! I dont know if Foucault's Pendulum in the Pantheon in Paris fits the criteria.

janetanderson.bsky.social•2 days ago

Has anybody mentioned Robert E Lee‘s horse, traveller? Stuffed and on display at Washington and Lee College.

alejoec.bsky.social•1 day ago

Traveller was never stuffed, but its skeleton was on display at Washington and Lee University at various times until it was buried in the 1970s, outside the Chapel where Lee and his family are buried. You might be thinking of Stonewall Jackson's horse Little Sorrel at next-door VMI.

janetanderson.bsky.social•1 day ago

Interesting. Because I have actually seen what claimed to be traveller.

alejoec.bsky.social•1 day ago

Traveller has been all bones for a while. https://www.civilwarprofiles.com/traveller-and-little-sorrel-the-war-horses-of-lee-and-jackson/

grigorylukin.bsky.social•2 days ago

Lenin's tomb.

erinacean.bsky.social•3 days ago

I've catalogued one as part of an archive: 'Dod' was George Scott Williamson, founder of the Pioneer Heath Centre, 'the Peckham Experiment': https://wellcomecollection.org/works/zej55x9d/items

erinacean.bsky.social•3 days ago

I would consider the lock of eminent psychoanalyst's baby hair cut off by his mother and kept among personalia to be in a different class of relic?

madamehardy.bsky.social•1 day ago

My children are extremely creeped out by my keeping the Tooth Fairy's haul of teeth. Enjoy the pre-nursing-home cleanup!

erinacean.bsky.social•1 day ago

I remember a children's story about a brother and sister who save up their teeth as they lose them in order to turn them into a lovely necklace for Mummy, and o the trauma at the dentist when he throws away one he's extracted, that they needed to make up the design....

asteread.bsky.social•2 days ago

There are John Dalton's eyes https://www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/john-dalton-atoms-eyesight-and-auroras

lindsayduff.bsky.social•3 days ago

The National Army Museum has the complete skeleton of Napoleon's horse, Marengo: https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=1963-09-89-1

lindsayduff.bsky.social•3 days ago

The Royal London Hospital has Joseph Merrick's skeleton in their pathology collection.

timothyhelmuth.com•3 days ago

lenin's corpse has gotta be the ne plus ultra

dak513.bsky.social•3 days ago

My cat’s ashes are in a box on my fridge. Does that count?

vieventar.bsky.social•3 days ago

There's a couple of Rasputin's penises floating around.

They usually turn out to be pickled sea cucumbers.

Come to think of it, would the Hollywood Stars pavement count as a giant public reliquary?

madamehardy.bsky.social•3 days ago

Second-degree relics, with photo proof!

thestevec.bsky.social•3 days ago

I mean, it's a bit sciency I guess - but if you can make it to Saturn you might be able to confirm whether the planet's rings really are Jesus' foreskin, as many once believed. That would pretty much be the ultimate scientific relic kind of...

morgenjahnke.bsky.social•3 days ago

Plaster cast of Chopin’s hand at the Musée de la Vie Romantique in Paris

cjamcmahon.bsky.social•3 days ago

Dan Donnelly's arm https://www.leinsterleader.ie/gallery/south-kildare/474284/pictures-dan-donnelly-s-arm-back-on-display-in-kildare.html

ciaogirl9.bsky.social•3 days ago

Mankind is as absurd, as they are barbaric

amblingaboutagain.bsky.social•2 days ago

I believe there are several in my youngest daughters bedroom, but I'm not brave enough to find out for sure

amblingaboutagain.bsky.social•2 days ago

But in a museum in Ilfracombe (UK), there is a box of drawers full of various slices of 100 year wedding cake...

preger.bsky.social•3 days ago

einsteins brain, I think.

oispooky.bsky.social•3 days ago

John Bellingham's 💀

A sinister reminder that...

simonearth.bsky.social•3 days ago

zens.bsky.social•1 day ago

Just came across this post with a new(!) Stalin memorial in a Metro station

https://bsky.app/profile/ilkokowalczuk.bsky.social/post/3lqcj44ion226

richterscale.bsky.social•2 days ago

my partner gets to take out and show off the syringe that Salk used in the first polio vaccine trials

rozoruminations.bsky.social•2 days ago

I have a piece of the Berlin Wall from when it came down. With a certificate of authenticity. Yes, I bought it in 1990, soon after it fell. Might be real, might not.

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