Dangerous Diaries: Octagon Gallery

'Dangerous Diaries’ brings together artefacts as varied as a taxidermied woolly monkey, a jaw with carcinoma and Sir William Ramsay’s mildly radioactive laboratory notebooks to reflect on changing perceptions of the risks involved in scientific and artistic production over time.

1. Woolly Monkey (Lagothrix sp.)

Due to the protein content of mounted animal specimens, natural history collections provide a ready source of food for insects. Historically the most common insecticides used for taxidermy were arsenic oxides and mercury salts, both toxic materials that cause poisoning in animals and humans via inhalation or skin absorption. Although taxidermy itself often appears innocuous to humans, the use of these invisible insecticides demonstrates the importance of understanding how an object was fabricated.

2. Jaw With Carcinoma

At one time thought to be medicinal, the dangers of radium paint became public in the 1920s during a lawsuit filed by the Radium Girls. Painting the luminous dials, these women achieved an extremely fine point on their brush by drawing it through pursed lips. This technique, known as ‘lippointing’, resulted in a large number of deaths due to head and bone cancers, infections of the jawbone and anaemia.

3. Sir William Ramsay’s Dangerous Diary

An extract from Ramsay’s laboratory notebook, Chair of Chemistry at UCL 1887-1913, describes the process of generating rare gases from radium bromide. Ramsay and others believed that helium was evolved from the radioactive decay of radium. It was later demonstrated that the elements with high atomic weight undergo spontaneous transformation through the emission of high energy particles, ultimately forming smaller more stable elements.

These and many other ‘Dangerous Diaries’ exhibits can be viewed at the UCL Octagon Gallery until the end of March 2016.