science communication
2023.03.21
Diagnosis and Classification in Biomedicine & the History of Medicine in the Tybjerg Group
The Tybjerg Group investigates how disease concepts develop by following how classifications and diagnoses are used in practice in biomedical research, in the clinic and through history.
Diagnoses are central to medicine and lie at the intersection between knowing about disease and doing something about it. Combining history and philosophy of medicine with museum practice, the group pursues three main lines of research:
First locally it collaborates with biomedical scientists, to study classifications and disease categories in cardiometabolic research e.g. the creation of cell atlases and the use of the concept of actionability in research and in the clinic.
A more historical line of research investigates how different aspects of the concept of diagnosis – symptoms, causes, lesions, imbalances – developed in historical contexts.
Last, the historical and conceptual work merge exhibition projects. Measure Me (2025) will show how diagnostic measurements shape disease and patients, and will act as a pilot for a major exhibition on precision medicine Let’s Get Personal (2027).
History of medicine can be conceived through the scales of the bodily material investigated from whole bodies, over organs and tissues, to DNA and biomarkers.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039368121001394
Medicine is a collection science that draws on historical material to understand diseases. In the same way that a doctor takes a history or anamnesis on a patient, the medical profession draws on collections of past patients in biobanks and case notes
https://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/10.1484/J.CNT.5.135348?mobileUi=0
Doctors use pragmatic tools for diagnosing in the messy reality of the clinic. These can be compared to tacit methods employed in the lab.
