The Philadelphia Diaries: Where Art Thou?

 

                                                                                                                                        October 17, 2021

Dear Diary

 

I have so much to tell you…I have visited so many places, met some wonderful people and tried many more cuisines. I spent an entire day in the Philadelphia Museum of Arts and honestly it was not enough. But all that is for another day, today I want to write about the art in my neighbourhood. 

The City Centre is beautiful, convenient and comfortable in all respects. I love walking around on a clear, bright day and being surprised by something new! A look at the Health window of my phone tells me that I have walked over 400 km in the last 2 months…and I feel good and alive! I look out the window of my room and I find Mr. Skelman staring back as usual. He is a friend, and I would be disturbed if I didn’t find him there. I wave back with a chuckle, he is a human skeleton standing at one of the windows of the Scott Memorial Library that my window faces! The streets around my room host several fascinating artworks, which I believe Mr. Skelman would have seen being erected over the years. 

Right outside my residence is a stenciled cylindrical structure which can have a contrasting effect on people. It can be overlooked by the many eyes and feet that walk past it daily as a piece of metal or it can bewitch the minds of others with its effortless air of mystery. I belong to the latter group and have never failed to stop for a while and look at it from a different angle. At first glance, it has words in different languages encircling it. During the day, it is almost like a non-human form of Mr. Skelman, but it comes alive under the cover of the stars when it is lit up from within and the words start glowing against the black of the night. That is when you realise that these are not merely random words but an omnibus of medical terms in different scripts from around the world. It is called the Ars Medendi, Latin for Medical Arts. And what a perfect place for it to be, in the campus of Thomas Jefferson University Medical College, right outside the Scott Memorial Library. The library walls that are bare during the day, in fact, bear the text from the perforations like an invisible ink that can be read only by a select few under the moonlight.

It is copper and granite structure, established in the year 2009 by Jim Sanborn, with lines from Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Japanese and Chinese historic medical texts. He erected a second Ars Medendi within the campus at a different location; this one is trapezoid in shape, and it is easy to spot Gray’s Anatomy in this. Jim Sanborn, a student of history and sociology, and an American sculptor, is known for his cryptic public works of art including the Comma, Rippawarm and Lux, across America, Japan and Taiwan. His most famous work is Kryptos at the CIA headquarters, the hidden message still waiting to be solved completely by codebreakers around the world. Apart from its definitive reference in The Lost Symbol, those who have the hard-cover edition of the Da Vinci Code would recognize a part of the Kryptos code on its cover. 

Is Medicine science or art? I believe it is a sublime medley of the two, the brutal fact, the cold logic and the sharp proof of science and the soft touch, creative angle and cathartic expression of art. And it brings me joy and comfort each time I look up to find the DNA sequence at the top of the cylinder, the helical spiral unfolding on it. 

A few steps ahead is a pillar with a rather unusual sculpture on top. Coming from the land of the Garuda, fascinated with winged mythological creatures like the Griffin, Pegasus, Thestrals and Hippogriffs and having marvelled at the Winged Lion of Venice, I was pleasantly surprised to find a Winged Ox, with a calm temper and in a state of motion. Naturally, I was intrigued and looked it up. The Winged Ox is the symbol of Saint Luke, the Evangelist, author of the Third Gospel and the Patron Saint of physicians, surgeons and artists. The ox represents sacrifice and strength. The sculptor, Henry Weber Mitchell, erected the sculpture on November 24, 1975, as an ode to great healers, inscribing the names of 50 famous doctors on the pillar beginning with Hippocrates at the bottom. I went round the sculpture, reading the names as they went spiraling up: Celsus, Galen, Vesalius, Marcello Malpighi, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, Giovanni Morgagni, John Hunter, Edward Jenner, Robert Graves, Claude Bernard, Florence Nightingale, Rudolph Virchow, Louis Pasteur, Jean Martin Charcot, Joseph Lister, Robert Koch, William Osler, Sigmund Freud, Madame Curie, Harvey Cushing and John Gibbon Jr. The spiral configuration is believed to represent Caduceus, the staff of Hermes in Greek mythology and Mercury in Roman mythology, with two snakes entwined around it and wings on top. It is associated with merchants and messengers. It is always confused with the Rod of Asclepius represented by a staff with a single snake and no wings, belonging to Aesculapius, the Greek God of Healing. The serpent sheds its skin and represents transition from sickness to health. All medical associations around the world, including the World Health Organisation uses the symbol of the Rod of Asclepius. But the US Army Medical Corps, Public Health Service and US Marine Hospital uses the Caduceus as a symbol of administrative emblem and noncombatant role. 

An ox, a snake, a staff and a group of brilliant minds and hands, all symbolism culminates in this sculpture and is a fitting tribute to healers of the past, present and future.

The Winged Ox is not the only installation by Henry Mitchell here. Exactly opposite the sombre ode to the physicians is a more lively and frolicky scene. Otters, a fountain built in the memory of William Bodine Jr, President of the Jefferson Medical College from 1959-1967 and Chairman of the Thomas Jefferson University from 1970-1977, was established in 1979. The otters are enchantingly real, having a good time in the water. The one sitting on top of the rock is a frequent photo/video bomber of my Sunday Facetime chats. I call him Otto von Mitch and like his company as I soak in the fading autumn sun. Mr. Skelman prefers to steer clear of him and has thus taken his position at the window farthest from Otto, much to my amusement. 

At the centre of the Lubert Plaza, stands the 9-foot proud, bronze statue of Dr. Samuel D. Gross, an alumnus and the Chair of Surgery of Jefferson Medical College. The sculpture was commissioned by the Jefferson Alumni Association in conjunction with the American Surgical Association for display near the Army Medical Museum on the Smithsonian Park at Washington D.C. in 1897. It was later moved to Philadelphia in 1970 for the Centennial Celebration of the Jefferson Alumni Association. A missing scalpel was replaced later in his right hand, where it naturally belonged. The sculptor was Alexander Stirling Calder. He was the son of the man who built William Penn’s statue atop the City Hall. The Gross Clinic is perhaps a more famous artwork honouring one of the greatest surgeons, but I am still to see it and will possibly write about it at a later date. This statue, placed strategically, continues to preside over the University and the generations of medical students to come.

Otto is asleep, I am back in my room, and folded my white coat with Ascelpius’ Rod on the breast pocket. I go to the window, darkness has set, I catch a glimpse of the rays from the Ars Medindi from the corner of my eye,  and bid a silent good night to Mr Skelman…until tomorrow…

 

Love

Philo in Philly

MS