Dolls and High-Fidelity Devices: Patient Simulators in 20th Century United States Health Professional Education

Time: 12:00 PM to 1:30 PM

Location:Claire Fagin Hall, Room 2019, Floor 2U, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Abstract: This paper explores continuities and breaks in the use of simulation as a tool in health education across the twentieth century by examining the careers of two medical mannequins: Mrs. Chase, a hospital doll used predominantly by nursing students beginning in 1911; and Harvey, a cardiac patient simulator initially exhibited in 1968 that was targeted at medical students. I show how an object with roots as a domestic toy became articulated as a complex professional device and argue that the doll continued to have echoes in the device as Harvey as well as Mrs. Chase became embedded within ritualized forms of role-play. As a consequence, they were similarly humanized and functioned as embodied technologies of moral instruction despite significant disjuncture in the timelines of their adoption and the gendered norms that authorized their use.

Bio: Maxwell Rogoski is a doctoral student in History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania who is concurrently pursuing a medical degree in the School of Medicine. In addition to working on the history of patient simulators, he has presented research on physician advice manuals and the history of race and genetics. Rogoski has received research support from a Tecee Research Fellowship, the Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, and the Social Sciences Research Council, among others, and has been awarded for his teaching. His dissertation examines the history of skin in the twentieth century, exploring a shift in the conceptualization of skin from an external boundary organ to a mirror of internal health and traces how skin was enmeshed in the state regulation of industrial production, military planning, and scientifically-oriented consumer culture.