The award-winning international medical humanities project Typhoidland has launched a new interactive portal allowing members of the public to explore its work in Typhoid, Cockles, and Terrorism: How a disease shaped modern Dublin, based on a UKRI-Irish Research Council-funded digital humanities collaboration between University College Dublin and Oxford University, on the turbulent history of typhoid in Dublin.
The portal was launched on 16 June in tandem with a series of major exhibitions (digital and physical), developed in partnership with Dublin City Library and Archive (DCLA), the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI), and UCD Archives. The exhibits bring to life the everyday experiences of living and dying with typhoid in Edwardian Dublin, as well as the broader histories of Dublin’s sanitary infrastructure and bioweapons planning during the Irish War of Independence (learn more below).
The project used a mix of historical and digital humanities methods to analyse and digitise a broad range of data, with the aim of making significant contributions to research and engaging audiences from all age groups on the importance of equitable access to effective sanitary infrastructure and vaccines.
To see the exhibitions and more, visit the portal at https://typhoidland.org/exhibitions/dublin-2024/
The project team were inspired to focus on Dublin as a historical case-study highlighting the dangers of one-size fits all thinking in public health. Typhoidland seeks to challenge the myth of typhoid as a disease of the past, engage global audiences about the importance of typhoid control, and use critical historical research on past public health interventions to inform ongoing control campaigns.
Funding by the Irish Research Council (IRC) and UK Arts and Humanities Council (AHRC) Digital Humanities scheme has allowed Typhoidland to publish research for scientific audiences, present insights to public health decision-makers, and design three exciting exhibitions on typhoid research.
The Typhoid, Cockles, and Terrorism project is jointly based at UCD (PI, Dr Claas Kirchhelle) and the University of Oxford (PI, Dr Samantha Vanderslott). Postdocs on the project were Dr Emily Webster (now at Durham University) and Dr Carly Collier (UCD). You can follow Typhoidland on X: @typhoidland.
Learn more about the exhibitions
Fear & Fever: Living and Dying with Typhoid in Dublin
Royal College of Physicians of Ireland
A physical exhibition which explores the history of living and dying with typhoid in Edwardian Dublin. Fear & Fever draws on RCPI's rich medical history collections and includes multimedia content and a newly-commissioned artwork relating to the 1900 trial of a typhoid vaccine during an outbreak of the disease at Dublin's Richmond Lunatic Asylum. Objects ranging from a decorative leech jar to an envelope with fumigation slits, a feeding cup for invalids, and a milk bottle stamped 'tuberculin tested' introduce visitors to the evolving science behind typhoid control. Together with patient case histories and personal documents, they also drive home the lived experience of chronic illness and mass mortality that seemed to belong to a past age prior to COVID-19. The exhibition recounts how Dublin gradually managed to control typhoid threats with sanitation, vaccines, and behavioural interventions and ends with animations and an expert interview on how climate change, mass migration, crumbling infrastructure, and the rising threat of AMR are posing renewed challenges for Irish public health.
The exhibition can also be viewed as a virtual 3D tour for international audiences on https://typhoidland.org/exhibitions/dublin-2024/
Stones & Bones: Containing Typhoid in Dear Dirty Dublin
This digital exhibition explores the history of disease control efforts in Dublin from the 1870s to the 21st century with a strong focus on typhoid. Drawing on Dublin City Council's important historic records of the city and incorporating new artwork and multimedia content, it shows how authorities struggled to tackle typhoid during a time of surging urban growth and crass inequality – as well as the limits of educational interventions. Importantly, Stones & Bones also explores the problematic infrastructural and ecological legacies of adopting one-size-fits-all imperial sanitary solutions that were maladapted to local environments: constructed between 1870 and 1906, Dublin’s London-inspired sewer system ended up impeding navigation in Dublin Bay and spreading typhoid amongst Dublin’s mostly Catholic working classes by polluting local shellfish beds. The exhibition holds important insights for the present by highlighting the public health dangers posed by Dublin’s contemporary housing crisis, the vulnerability of Victorian-era sewage solutions during a time of rising sea levels and climate change, and the need to adapt public health strategies to local contexts.
The exhibition is hosted on Dublin City Library and Archive's Google Arts & Culture page, as well as at dland.org/exhibitions/dublin-2024/
Contours of a Taboo: Bioweapons and the 1920 ‘Sinn Féin Typhoid Plot’
An interactive virtual exhibition engages with one of the darkest and least explored sides of microbiological progress – the ability to weaponise microbes as bioagents. Starting in the 1870s and ending in 2023, it shows how the microbiologists’ art of making microbes abundant created a new dilemma: was it ethical to use these microbes to attack animals or humans? Visitors learn that answers to this deceptively simple question varied. While iconic Edwardian science fiction writers such as H.G. Wells or Jack London agreed that bioweapons were a frightening new development, they disagreed on whether they could be used against non-white populations. During the First World War, German agents thought it was legitimate to infect Allied animal supplies – but not humans. Meanwhile, 1920s Irish Republican Army (IRA) planners thought that bioagents such as typhoid or glanders could be effective in overcoming the formidable defences of the British Army in Ireland– but ultimately abandoned plans due to the severe reputational fallouts of using bioweapons. The exhibition ends by reflecting on the evolution and ongoing gaps of legal bans on bioweapons such as the 1925 Geneva Protocol and the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention – and the role that cultural taboos play in preventing certain forms of violence.
The exhibition is hosted on UCD Archives website as well as on https://typhoidland.org/exhibitions/dublin-2024/contours-of-a-taboo/