C-Slide - The contributions of Sherrington and Le Gros Clark to our understanding of the brain and nervous system. (360G-Wellcome-097123_Z_11_Z)

Virtual microscopy has great potential for safeguarding and improving access to the historical slides and related documents which underpin modern neuroscience, but which are inaccessible and/or too fragile to use, and in constant danger of being discarded or lost in medical schools and bioscience departments across the UK and internationally. There is considerable research, teaching and general interest in these slides (and their associated research, documents and images) from academics, students and the public, in the history, medicine and wider science communities. This project aims to build a web-based community collection of important historical slides ? ?C-Slide?. The first stage is digitisation of two collections of nearly 1000 slides and associated notes from Sir Charles Sherrington (1932 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) and Sir Wilfred Le Gros Clark, FRS which also contain examples from contemporaries such as Ruffini and Fritsch. Ten other UK and international medical and bioscience departments will also be invited to submit their 20 most important historical slides and associated documents as a way of engaging the wider community and building the collection. Users will be able to research, contribute to, and learn from slides and related information and the project will create a new community of interest in the history of medicine across traditional boundaries. The project team will embed the slides in their historical context using the resources available both within the Department, the Bodleian library and elsewhere. Slides and associated original documentation with be preserved using appropriate methods.