AMA VICDOC Autumn 2024 - Magazine - Page 15
The items in Tools of Trade are from the much
larger AMA Collection, which was amassed and
retained by AMA Victoria and then loaned to the
University in 1994 when its museum closed and
bequeathed to the University of Melbourne in 2011.
It contains more than 5,000 artefacts, including
instruments, photographs and correspondence, and is
still be catalogued by Jacky, students and colleagues.
The exhibition and the AMA Collection are
also reflective of wider histories – those of western
medicine, colonisation, the AMA and the University
of Melbourne.
Port Phillip District was a district of the Colony of
New South Wales from 1836 until 1851. It achieved
independence from New South Wales in 1851 and
became the Colony of Victoria.
The very next year, in 1852, AMA Victoria
(then the Victorian Medical Association) was
founded by former members of the Port Phillip
Medical Association. Just a decade later in 1862,
the Melbourne Medical School at the University
of Melbourne was founded.
It’s no coincidence that the AMA Collection was
gifted to the University of Melbourne the year before
its 150th anniversary, which fell in 2012.
AMA Victoria has a longstanding and very positive
relationship with the University of Melbourne. AMA
members were founders of Melbourne Medical School,
and we are thrilled the university appreciates and can
protect the Collection,” says Chair of AMA Victoria’s
Heritage and Archive Committee, Dr Gerald Segal.
Gerald points out that “history never stops” and says
an important part of his role is to document significant
items, documents and occurrences for future posterity.
The AMA Collection is now part of the
University’s Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and
Health Sciences’ larger collection, which comprises
more than 17,000 items that encompass Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander healing practices and the
history of teaching, learning and research at the
University of Melbourne, and health sciences in
Australia and internationally.
Jacky and her colleagues spent several months
curating and setting up the exhibition and bringing
some of the collection to life.
“The AMA Victoria collection has greatly
enhanced the Medical History Museum’s historical
material,” says Jacky. “We’re cataloguing it thematically,
and when we want to explore a particular topic it’s the
first place we look.”
––
The exhibition opened
on 8 November 2022
and will be open to
state council members
at AMA Victoria’s next
State Council meeting
in March 2023. All
members will be able
to view the artefacts
on at least one other
occasion in the
intervening period
(to be announced)
—
Click here to view the
Medical History collections,
including parts of the
AMA Collection
VI CD O C SU M M ER 2022
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