New to the MHL!

Our apologies for going unexpectedly AWOL last week — our trip to London was so absorbing, not at lot else got done! We’ll be talking more about our great day-long meeting with the Wellcome Trust in the weeks to come. For now, though, we’d like to point out some of the latest additions to our collection. Just click on the links below to read….

As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!

Digital Highlights: Coram and the Foundlings

b21686464_0006The Foundling Hospital, founded in 1739 by Captain Thomas Coram in London, is the subject of John Brownlow’s 1858 The history and design of the Foundling Hospital : with a memoir of the founderAt the time of the book’s publication, the Hospital was still on its original site in in Bloomsbury. The Hospital has since transitioned into a charitable foundation, named after the founder of the Hospital: Coram.

The Hospital itself has a fascinating history, starting from the very beginning with Coram’s lengthy struggle to get a Royal patent for the hospital and Parliamentary guarantees of funding to allow more children to be taken in. Approximately ninety-two children were taken in per year in the first fifteen years of the Hospital’s operations, the only restrictions in acceptance being a transmissible disease such as smallpox or syphilis. (9)

Brownlow’s is not the only history of the hospital and the London Metropolitan Archives and the Foundling Museum curate the Hospital’s records. Brownlow records that, as time went on and it became possible either that parents would want to reclaim their children or children track down their parents, those surrendering a child were requested to leave an identifying token: “A half-crown, of the reign of Queen Anne, with a hair. An old silk purse. A silver fourpence, and an ivory fish. A stone cross, set in silver.” (18) Many of these items, being quite durable, have survived and are held by one or the other of the above institutions.

Flip through the pages of Brownlow’s book below or follow this link to read The history and design of the Foundling Hospital : with a memoir of the founder.

As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!

New to the MHL!

Check out some of the latest additions to our collection!

As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!

Digital Highlights: CSI (circa 1905)

Police procedurals — such as the popular CSI series and its spin-offs and imitators — were not the cultural presence in turn of the century America that they are today. The development of the detective story and the crime novel are fascinating topics in and of themselves, but so is the development of “legal medicine” — what we might now call “forensic pathology.”

Frank W. Draper was one of the original practitioners of legal medicine in Massachusetts. He held positions at Harvard University, first in 1877 as a lecturer in legal medicine under Professor Walter Channing and then in 1884 as a professor of the same subject. When the Office of the Massachusetts Medical Examiner was created in 1877 to replace the officer of the coroner, Draper was appointed as the first ME for the Commonwealth.

Draper wrote one of the original North American texts on legal medicine, A text-book of legal medicine in 1905 — as with many professors since his appointment, he had to create the textbook for the classes he taught.

Flip through the pages below or visit A text-book of legal medicine to read Draper’s full text.

As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!

Celebrating Nurses

National Nursing Week closed formally yesterday but we figured we could stand another day of celebrating nursing professionals. Check out some of the titles we have on nurses and nursing below!

As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!

While We Were Out…

…new items were being added to our collection steadily! Here are a few:

As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!

Digital Highlights: Pain Explained

According to the posthumous biography written by Edith Ellis (wife of sexologist Havelock Ellis), James Hinton was born in 1822, in Reading, England, outside of London. During his career as a physician, Hinton wrote widely on a variety of subjects, medical, physiological, and ethical.

Among his many publications was The Mystery of Pain: A Book for the Sorrowful in 1880. Hinton made an appeal for learning from unavoidable pain that was firmly rooted in a Christian understanding of the utility of suffering.

As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!

Digital Highlights: Tour an “ultramodern” hospital in the year 1900

QuarterCwithFHW_picOnly_009A Quarter of a Century with the Free Hospital for Women is a small picture book published in 1900, not long after the hospital had finished construction of its grand, new facility by a pond in Brookline, Massachusetts. The volume, held in the rare books collection at Harvard Medical School, Center for the History of Medicine, was recently digitized by the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Archives and made available online via the Medical Heritage Library. It will be of special interest to students of the history of institutional architecture, and to those interested in the history of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The Free Hospital for Women is one of BWH’s organizational “grandmothers.”

QuarterCwithFHW_picOnly_002If you’ve ever wondered what a state-of-the-art hospital looked like a hundred plus years ago, flip through the photographs in this little book. See elegant arches and woodwork, gas lights, fireplaces, a grandfather clock, and Tiffany windows. There is a patient sitting room with a piano, a dining room with linen tablecloth and flowers, patient ward beds with gauzy white curtains, and a sitting porch with a view of Riverdale Park. All together the hospital seems more like a resort found in the Berkshires than anything resembling hospitals as we have come to know them in the 21st century.

 

QuarterCwithFHW_picOnly_011Amazingly, this beautiful facility was designed exclusively forpoor women. From 1875 to 1919 those without means were taken care of by the FHW at no charge. By 1919 the hospital had become so successful at its core mission of treating the diseases of women that patients of all economic levels were eager to be admitted there and the by-laws were amended to allow some who could pay.

In 1966 the Free Hospital for Women and the Boston Lying-in, a local maternity hospital, merged to form the Boston Hospital for Women. In 1975, the Boston Hospital for Women merged with the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and the Robert B. Brigham Hospital. By 1980, all three hospitals had centralized operations and moved to one location in the Longwood area of Boston. The original FHW building was sold to a luxury condominium development company, but the enduring medical legacy of the Free Hospital for Women was reflected in the new name chosen for the combined institutions, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School.

Digital Highlights: Bell’s Art

Sir Charles Bell (1774-1842) is probably best known for his work in the human nervous system. He was one of the first to work out the detailed ramifications of human nerves and their myriad connections and interconnections. His work proved to be foundational in the field of neuroscience and resulted in the naming of at least one condition after him, Bell’s Palsy, a form of temporary facial paralysis.

Bell also had interest in the arts and some practical experience as an artist. This gave him some advantage in terms of describing his anatomical dissections and presenting them both to other medical professionals and the public. He also wrote an early book on the application of knowledge learned from medical dissection to art: The anatomy and philosophy of expression as connected with the fine arts. This was first published in 1806 but republished at least once later in the century after Bell had achieved a position of prominence in Victorian London.

Flip through the pages of Bell’s work below or follow this link to read The anatomy and philosophy of expression as connected with the fine arts.

As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!

New to the MHL!

Last week we announced the official opening of over 3,000 digitized volumes of historical medical journals.

Here are some highlights of what else is new in our collection:

And as always for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!