Late last year the RCOG lent a few items to the Royal College of Nursing for their temporary exhibition ‘The Wandering Womb’. The exhibition is still on until 22nd March 2019, after which part of the exhibition will travel to Edinburgh. Items lent by the RCOG include specula, pessaries, a coloscope and 19th century texts on cancer.
On Thursday 7th February the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) held an event entitled ‘Fertility Treatment: How far should we go?’. The talk was chaired by Jane Denton, Director of the Multiple Births Foundation and explored the introduction of IVF and concerns arising from it.
In support of this event the RCOG Heritage team went along to showcase some of the important items from our collections related to the history of IVF. July 2018 marked the 40th anniversary of the birth of the first ‘test-tube baby’, Louise Brown and last summer we had this material on display in the RCOG library.
This included a selection of newspaper cuttings from the time reporting the successful birth of the first IVF baby, a photograph of Steptoe and Edwards at an RCOG conference in January 1979 and a laparoscope, as shown in the images below.
Please see the following links for further information on the RCN exhibition and associated events:
https://www.rcn.org.uk/library-exhibitions/womens-health-wandering-womb
https://www.rcn.org.uk/library/exhibitions-and-events/library-events
https://www.rcn.org.uk/library/about-us/library-and-heritage-centre
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Heritage Blog 