Category: Digital Highlights

Digital Highlights: Medical Education for Women

  By

This seemed like an appropriate highlight for a Friday in Women’s History Month: An appeal on behalf of the medical education of women from 1856.

The pamphlet — under 20 pages long — is a succinct summing up of the history of women as medical professionals. It only takes a few pages to do this because Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman admitted to a medical college in the United States, had received her degree less than a decade before this publication. The pamphlet appeals not only for a wider admittance of women to medical schools, but for the establishment of a hospital for women within New York City.

The proposed hospital — based on the New York Infirmary and Dispensary for women and children which had been opened in 1854 — was to be a teaching hospital as well as a straightforward place of treatment.

Flip through the pages below or follow this link to read An appeal.

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

New to the MHL: Hiram Corson Diaries

  By ,

Dr. Hiram Corson, an 1828 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, made his first diary entry March 31, 1827, while he was still a medical student.  His last entry was dated January 31, 1896.  He died March 4, 1896.  He was well-known nationally and was highly respected by such illuminati as Sir William Osler.

The diaries of Dr. Hiram Corson give many insights into the man, the society and times in which he lived, the Civil War, and most especially into medical education and the medical profession of the nineteenth century.  More than any other man in America, Hiram Corson was responsible for women physicians gaining recognition and being accepted into the medical profession.

Undaunted by reprisals or scorn, Hiram Corson was an outspoken abolitionist.  His sense of justice caused him to respond to many issues.  His public awareness throughout his long life is reflected in his diaries, which contain a treasure of information.

For more than thirty years he worked for the better care for the mentally ill.  In 1877 Pennsylvania Governor John F. Hartranft appointed Dr. Hiram Corson to the Board of Trustees of the State Lunatic Asylum at Harrisburg “in recognition of his life-long interest and zealous efforts in behalf of the insane.”

Flip through the pages below or follow this link to read any one of the three volumes of Hiram Corson’s diaries.

Digital Highlights: Addison Key Bell

  By

It joined our collection last year but you may have missed it: our first manuscript item, the diary of Doctor Addison Key Bell*. Key Bell was born in 1861 in Georgia, son to Doctor Addison Atterbury Bell and his wife, Ida, and he died in 1909 in Madison, Georgia, where he had spent most of his active years of medical practice.

He took his medical degrees at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and at New York Medical University in New York and returned to his native Georgia to practice. Key Bell took part in the Civil War as a surgeon in the Confederate hospital in Augusta, Georgia. Key Bell was an organizing member of the Morgan County Medical Society as well as being a member of the Georgia State Medical Association and the American Medical Association.

His diary includes accounts of payments for medical services rendered, notes of addresses, and diary-like entries, including a lengthy retailing of a trip he took in 1883, leaving Madison, Georgia, “on a fast train.”

Flip through the pages of Key Bell’s diary above or follow this link to read the Diary.

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

* I would like to acknowledge the help of Bonita R. Bryan, Head of Collections Services and Matt Miller, Senior Resources Management Specialist at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library in writing this post.

Digital Highlights: The Clue of Handwriting

  By
"The Standard Forms of Executives" from French's "The psychology of handwriting."

“The Standard Forms of Executives” from French’s “The psychology of handwriting.”

Got a spare half hour this weekend? Want to know more about yourself? Then have a look at William L. French’s 1922 The psychology of handwriting — complete with illustrations!

Are you a tea drunkard? French can tell from the downstroke of your cursive hand. Could you be a good salesman? If your handwriting is firm, confident, and rather small, French thinks yes. And don’t hope to escape if you take pleasure in deceiving others: French can tell from the height of your letters.

Flip through the pages of French’s book below or follow this link to read The psychology of handwriting. As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!

Digital Highlights: Every day, in every way…

  By

If you’re still working on those New Year’s resolutions, perhaps today’s title can help! Emile Coué’s “formula” might be considered one of the originals in the ‘self-help’ genre. His theory worked along the lines of auto-suggestion: you could talk yourself — or someone else — into the desired result by sheer repetition. The classic example was “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” If nothing else, this phrase has a gentle rhyme to it that makes it a genuine 1920s earworm!

Flip through the pages below to get some inspiration for your self-transformation or follow this link to read The practice of autosuggestion by the method of Emile Coué (1922).

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

Digital Highlights: Hygiene and Home Nursing

  By

It is interesting to note that Louisa C. Lippitt’s 1919 Personal hygiene and home nursing is specifically directed in the subtitle to girls and women. In modern parlance this would be described as a ‘gendered’ assumption: why would a man not find it useful to know how to give a bedbound invalid a sponge bath? why should women be the only ones to know about tuberculosis, chicken pox, or even constipation? Lippitt herself was a nursing instructor and a “head reconstruction aide” in the Medical Department of the United States Army and she acknowledges and dedicates her book to both her parents.

Lippitt’s text is mostly generalist in tone, giving information and directions that would be useful to anyone caring for the sick or  interested in the health aspects of running an up-to-date 1920s home. She starts from the basics — even including visual instructions on how to shake down a thermometer!

Flip through the pages below or follow this link to read Louisa Lippitt’s Personal hygiene and home nursing: a practical text for girls and women for home and school use.

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

Digital Highlights: A Clinic Reports

  By

After Lisa Mix’s post on hospital reports, the series of annual reports from the Payne-Whitney psychiatric clinic caught my eye this week.

The report for 1935 is the third annual for the department and is a detailed write-up of clinic activities. As of the end of December 1935, for example, they had 70 in-patients, male and female. The statistics for the year described discharged patients as ‘Recovered,’ ‘Much Improved,’ ‘Improved,’ and ‘Unimproved’ — most patients fell into the latter two categories. In terms of patients admitted, the table of diagnoses shows the largest number of cases (53) under ‘schizophrenia.’ Not all patients were either admitted to the clinic for long-term stays or even accepted by the clinic for treatment; the out-patient department statistics show 49 cases rejected.

The report goes on to detail the kind and number of treatments given to patients, the staff training offered at the clinic, and a brief financial health report.

Flip through the pages of the report below or follow this link to read Annual Report of New York Hospital Department of Psychiatry-Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic for 1935.

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

New to the MHL!

  By

Here in the US, we’ve just come back from two weeks of much-needed and refreshing vacation — but that doesn’t mean we don’t have new titles for you!

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