Professor Nigel W. John FEG FLSW

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The Virtual Pelvis Museum (1999/2000)

⊕ St Mary’s Hospital at the University of Manchester is the home of The Radford Collection, a unique set of over 40 female human pelves bequeathed to the university by the eminent 19th century Manchester obstetrician Thomas Radford (1793 - 1881). Radford was an advocate of Caesarean Section as an appropriate intervention in women with distorted pelves, and thus contributed to the eventual universal acceptance of this procedure, thereby making a major contribution to women’s health. The pelves exhibit many interesting and unique anomalies and features (like rickets for example) that are often associated with malnutrition, poverty and general poor health. Although these conditions are no longer common, rickets and the subsequent pelvic bone deformations that ensure a collection could never again be assembled.

The aim of this project was to publish the “Virtual Pelvis Museum” over the World Wide Web, and so encourage access and widen participation in the study and use of these unique human pathological specimens. Various techniques were used to digitise a sample of the pelves in the collection. The latest version of the site with embedded 3D models is now available here.