Pathology as Spectacle: The Case of the Roca Museum

107 Pathology as spectacle: the case of the Roca museum Gitte Samoy Somewhere in Antwerp, a modern cabinet of curiosities is hidden from the public eye. In a street lined with ornate art nouveau town houses, the cellar of one private family home contains a strange collection of objects. Art pieces mixed with human and animal specimens in jars and gruesome wax and plaster models depict all kinds of deteriorating faces and body parts. The amalgamation of objects inside this private museum are simultaneously fascinating and repulsive. It is where I first encountered the story of the Roca museum, in the private collection of the Coolen family. The family has assembled an impressive collection throughout the years, consisting of paintings, sculptures, medical specimens, antique relics and objects that fall somewhere in between. One of the highlights from their collection are the medical models once belonging to the anatomical museum of the Roca family. When delving into the history of these objects from the Roca collection, there were more questions than answers. Throughout the years, the facts around the museum have been buried underneath the showman’s tales and repeated storytelling. The collector himself didn’t know much about this museum except that it once existed in Barcelona. An exhibition held at the Dr. Guislain museum in Ghent tried to offer some historical context to its visitors, where they filled in the gaps of the rare clues offered by the museum’s own promotional materials. It was said that the Roca collection had been displayed on funfairs, exhibitions and in theatres since 1860, and got a permanent spot on the Las Ramblas boulevard around 1900 (Allegaert and Couckhuyt 2008, 5). In fact, the museum was established by Francesc Roca, a Spanish showman who had toured Spain, Portugal, France, England, Switzerland and Italy with his sons. Together, they had put up shows filled with tricks, ventriloquist dummies and automata. Somewhere in the 1920s, Francesc added the museum to his business. Sources mention it as a barrack at Paral-lel in Barcelona first, later it pops up at Carrer Nou de la Rambla during the 1930s and, at least at one point, travelled to Girona as well. After this the museum seems to have disappeared again. Francesc Roca passed away in 1945 while his sons kept touring with their magic shows under the name “the Fak Hongs” (E. March 2014; E. H. March 2021). 108 The museum and its peculiar collection faded into oblivion only to reappear in the possession of antiquarian Francisco Arellano in the 1980s together with all the objects of Roca and his sons’ shows. Arellano divided the objects into a medical collection and a theatrical collection. Part of the latter was bought by the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona while other objects ended up in the private collection of Xevi, a magician, who now exhibits them at his private home1. Arellano attempted to sell the medical collection to the Museu d’Historia de la Medicine de Catalunya but was unsuccessful. Eventually, the Coolen family happened upon the collection and brought it to Antwerp. Since then, the story around the Roca museum has been reconstructed based on the way the antiquarian had framed it, without much support from historical sources (Zarzoso and Pardo-Tomas 2015). In recent years, the record has been set straight, as much as possible, by the research of Enric March, Alfons Zarzoso and José Pardo-Tomás. 1.- In Santa Cristina d’Aro with the name of El gran Museu de la Màgia. Museo Anatómico Roca. C. 1925. Biblioteca Nacional de España 109 Whereas these museums have become a topic of interest in recent decades, studies have focused mostly on American and English contexts in the early nineteenth century. However, while this kind of scientific entertainment had been pushed to the margins of society by the end of the nineteenth century in England, research for continental Europe suggests other conclusions (Pirson 2009; Claes and Pilz 2021). The Roca museum, although its exact timeline remains murky, also implies another story, as it was only established in the 1920s, long after the supposed heyday of these kinds of attractions. Starting from the objects themselves, I want to explore the questions raised by the Roca museum. How was the anatomical wax museum reinvented to speak to twentieth-century audiences? What messages were articulated through the museum? Anatomy displayed Spending a little over a month in the Coolen family’s basement and with the help of colleagues, I made an inventory of all wax models collected by the family, photographing each model, touching them, placing them and inspecting every corner. Handling these objects, it becomes apparent how they trigger different emotions. Whereas the collectors see something beautiful, aesthetically choreographed in their space, almost as an exercise in interior design, I saw a different range of reactions from visitors who were mostly surprised, disgusted and horrified, or uncomfortable. As for myself, I felt a strong feeling of fascination and a sense of excitement from a historian’s point of view, along with a drive to get some kind of grasp on these objects. Throughout their history, medical models have elicited different reactions. From the introduction of wax models in medicine in the late eighteenth century – when they inspired wonder and marvel, to the twentieth century – where they hovered between repulsion and incomprehension. All these tensions are best captured by the anatomical Venus. These were life-sized models of women, that could sometimes be taken apart and often showed part of the reproductive system. Quickly after their introductions as medical teaching aids, they also garnered significant attention from lay audiences, turning them into prized objects for travelling showmen to exhibit to the public (Maerker 2013). Positioned at the front of the fairground anatomy museum, they lured in passers-by (Hoffman 2006). By the twentieth century, however, the golden days of science and spectacle that had entertained nineteenth-century audiences, were over. As a scientific field and profession that took itself seriously, the medical community had wanted to create a distinguishable authoritative identity that decided who was in and who was out. So, by the time Roca established his 110 museum, there were only two ways in which popular anatomical museums were able to operate. Either they tried to abide by the idea of a museum that distanced itself from quackery and sensation, or they went the other way and leant into the growing perception of these attractions as a sort of house of horrors (Samoy 2023). Francesc Roca was a master of combining these two. Roca continued certain trends: for instance, the prominent place given to obstetrics and embryology in popular anatomical museums. The focus on women and pregnancy was a recurrent aspect of popular anatomical museums, as illustrated by the fact that almost all anatomical Venus models contained a foetus (Stephens 2010). Roca did not have just one but two anatomical Venus models. While one is made of wax and is more similar to the typical Venus models as they were made from the late eighteenth century onwards, the second model, made from a papier-mâché mixture, is of a wholly different aesthetic and quality, completely abandoning the attempt at medical realism. The model represents a type of caesarean section where a doctor stands next to the woman with a scalpel in hand. The woman’s abdomen is opened up and two babies can be seen in the womb. The female body was almost always exclusively shown in relation to procreation, whereas “normal” anatomy was represented through male bodies, a discourse that was replicated again in Roca’s collection. Deviant bodies were another prominent topic within the exhibition. The museum displayed various specimens of humans and animals born with physical deformities, so-called “monsters”: deformed skulls, shrunken heads, a goat skull with two pairs of horns, etc. One of the bigger piece is a mounted calf with two heads, reminiscent of the many deformed bovines shown at the fairground by farmers. With these specimens, the popular genre of the freak show was imported into the museum setting. In the collection, the fascination with the deviant body was mostly visible Private Collection. Coolen Family 111 through a series of illustrations. While some illustrations seem to have been drawn (partly) from imagination, others were likely copied from photographs. They show the individual posing naked with their back and front to the spectator. They are quite different from typical freak portraits that were spread to promote certain freak celebrities. No frills or optical deceptions were added to exaggerate the deformity (Bogdan 1988). Instead, they strongly mirror the medicalized gaze present in medical photography. In this way, Roca framed the fascination for the extra-ordinary body both in medical and popular ways. “Los estragos del barrio chino” Roca also continued another trend seen in popular anatomical museums: the shift from anatomy to pathology. Looking at the Roca collection as a whole, pathological models form the majority of objects. Whereas popular anatomical exhibitions initially presented their collections as a look into the tremendous variety of God’s creation, towards the end of the nineteenth century, there was an increasing focus on disease, as museums took on a moralizing, educational discourse (Claes and Deblon 2015). In the early stages of this shift, this educational mission was expressed in general, broad terms, but towards the turn of the century it was geared more explicitly towards the working classes and the diseases associated with them. Similar to the Spitzner museum in Belgium, Roca advertised his museum as an important tool to educate the masses (Pirson 2009). In advertisements and posters, the museum claimed to collaborate with the Red Cross and to be under the supervision of the Dirección general de Sanidad. Located in Barcelona’s fifth district, the Barrio Chino, the exhibition found itself right at the frontlines of social hygienist campaigns. By the 1920s, modern reformers had criticized the Catholic church’s strict attitude towards sexuality. Instead, they argued that a lack of sexual education and taboo sphere had hindered efforts to curtail the spread of syphilis and other venereal diseases (Aresti 2010). The fifth district had become symptomatic of the urban perils of modernity and was feared for its “degenerated populace”. Poverty was all too common among its inhabitants and it had become the place to be for a night of fun, music, sex and entertainment (Zarzoso and Pardo-Tomás 2016). As a showman, Roca knew how to stand out among the abundance of entertainment continuously competing for spectators’ attention. He achieved this by both heightening expectations for the spectacle as well as using the language of hygienist reform, foregrounding his “cruzada antivenérea” as the common thread. Combining different media, such as medical models, lantern slides and film, he was able to create curiosity and hype while staying within the lines of what was considered 112 decent. The medical models on display clearly show the priority of sensation over scientific accuracy. A series of heads showcasing different infections are more reminiscent of caricatures and the ventriloquist dolls used in his magic shows than of dermatological moulages. The same can be said of the extensive series of genitalia on display at a certain point. Only a limited amount of medical lantern slides remain, but the duplication of one particular image as both a lantern slide and a drawing hint at the fact that Roca also employed the magic lantern in his museum, as he did in his magic shows. A list made by Mr. Arellano also indicates the use of stereographic and three-dimensional images (Zarzoso and Pardo-Tomás 2015, 165). Although the films themselves don’t seem to have survived, the Roca collection also contains various flyers promoting screenings of the films “Los Averiados” and “Como Venimos al Mundo”. In the first one, viewers were confronted with images of genitalia showing the damage of syphilis. In the promotional leaflet “Verdades”, Roca playfully combines (fictionalized?) comments from doctors and viewers, heightening expectations without making explicit what the audience would exactly see. The film reached almost a half a million spectators in just a week’s time (Rebollo and Deogracias 2010, 732). Similar tactics were used for the second film, using a medical topic to create a hype among the audience for sexual content on the screen Private Collection. Coolen Family 113 (E. H. March 2021). Roca justified his enterprise by claiming sexual education was a way out of the misery that syphilis had wrought in society. Secrecy and abstinence were not the answer, but medicine knew a way out of the vicious cycle of infection – for which he happened to sell handbooks and drugs. The medical models served a similar purpose: seeing was knowing, and through the shock effect of the horrible images, the public would be directed to a better life. In this way, Roca could use the social hygienist discourse to legitimize his operations, while finding an overt way to talk about sex and make visible the most intimate aspects of people’s lives. Conclusion Although part of its history will remain out of our reach, we are able to construct another perspective on the ways of how medicine and spectacle merged in twentiethcentury Barcelona through the material collection of the Roca museum. As Elizabeth Stephens has remarked on popular anatomical museums, these sites demonstrate how dominant discourses seep into the popular realm, but also provide a space for new and volatile interpretations of the bodies on display (2013, 22). Guided by the objects, this paper tries to raise some questions, but not yet provide definitive answers, about the ways these dynamics are constituted in Roca’s museum. As a showman, Roca knew how to tread between social hygienist discourses, popular fascination and his own commercial interests. Through the combination of media, he reignited the medical spectacle of wax museums into the twentieth century. 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Aquest article intenta aprofundir en com el museu va reunir nous i vells mitjans i com Roca va aconseguir que la medicina es pugués revitalitzar com a espectacle davant el públic d’inicis del segle XX. 115 La patología como espectáculo: el caso del museo Roca En el distrito quinto de Barcelona, Francesc Roca abrió en los años veinte un popular museo anatómico. Aunque el museo en sí ha sido olvidado, sus colecciones se conservan ahora en Amberes. Este artículo intenta profundizar en cómo el museo reunió nuevos y viejos medios y cómo Roca pudo revitalizar la medicina como espectáculo ante el público del siglo XX.