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Reproduction of papyrus page from "History of Medicine."

The University of Edinburgh has a long and distinguished history as a school of medicine. In 1900, they published a History of Medicine: Syllabus and Specimen Extracts, combining what we would think of now as a schedule of lectures with the primary source documents (in modern terms) to be used and discussed in the class.

The lectures included in this volume are for the winter session only and stop in about 200 A.D. with a discussion of Galen. Presumably lectures in other terms would cover more recent developments! The lectures cover biographical and historical topics as well as those related to the history of medicine, surgery, and disease, including the life and work of Hippocrates, quacks, the use of ligatures, and medicine among primitive peoples.

The primary source materials contained in the rest of the volume were presumably meant to supplement information given in lectures or, perhaps, to provide fodder for discussions, whether between students or in the classroom. Comrie, the lecturer credited with the creation of the volume, included some texts in their original languages, including the reproduction of the papyrus at right and the original Greek of Homer and Plato. (Translations are on the facing pages.)

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

Continue reading »]]> One of our partners, the National Library of Medicine, has recently added lots of new titles to the MHL. Here are a few highlights…

…These que sustenta em novembre de 1865 para obter o gráo de doutor em medicina pela Faculdade da Bahia (1865), a dissertation on tetanus.

…a biography of Dr. John Esten Cooke (1856).

…some Remarks on Croup and Its Treatment (1854) from Horace Green.

…a Treatise on the Disease called Milk-sickness, or Trembles by J.J. McIlhenny.

…the harmoniously titled Catechism on Chemistry (1839) by Isaac Haines, adapted to a course of lectures from the University of Pennsylvania.

…Description of a deformed, fragmentary human skull : found in an ancient quarry-cave at Jerusalem : with an attempt to determine, by its configuration alone, the ethnical type to which it belongs (1859) by James A. Meigs, part of the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.

…Considerações sobre os abscessos : these que foi apresentada á Faculdade de Medicina do Rio de Janeiro, e sustentada em 13 de dezembro de 1841 (1841), another dissertation, this time on abscesses.

…and the self-explanatory …surprising case of Rachel Baker : who prays and preaches in her sleep : with specimens of her extraordinary performances taken down accurately in short hand at the time : and showing the unparalleled powers she possesses to pray, exhort, and answer questions, during her unconscious state : the whole authenticated by the most respectable testimony of living witnesses (1814)!

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

Continue reading »]]> Do you blog about science, medicine, technology or their history? Have you submitted a post to the Giant’s Shoulders Blog Carnival?

This month it’s being hosted by this very blog and we’re eager to get contributions from as many folks as possible.

Have a look at the most recent carnival — hosted by Providentia – and see the page above or this post for submission information for the MHL-hosted round. Submissions close on May 15th!

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

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Title page from "Life in the Sick-Room." Click the image to go directly to the book!

For several years in the mid-nineteenth century starting in 1839, English social activist Harriet Martineau was a housebound invalid, suffering from the pain of a tumor. Before this period, she was an extremely active writer and traveller, moving around the United Kingdom and the United States to examine living conditions and current affairs in both countries.

Her Life in the Sick-Room was originally published anonymously, but according to 1844 introduction by E.L. Follen, “…every line of it so proclaimed its author, that the effort to be lost in her subject was in vain.” (12) Prior to publishing this volume, Martineau was already relatively well-known for Society in America and Illustrations of Political Economy.

Sick-Room is a long philosophical treatise on the difficulties and rewards of invalidism and such topics of interest as the importance of “[selecting] a proper place of abode.” (59) Martineau herself chose to endure her period of illness at a house in Tynemouth near Newcastle in north-east England. Martineau projects the period of invalid life as a time to reflect and, we might say today, “work on yourself.”

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

Continue reading »]]> Find us on Twitter at @MedicalHeritage. Here are some of the things we’ve been putting up recently…

• Planned Updates to the H-Net network: “H-Net 2.0 is the new platform for H-Net Networks, built on the Drupal content management system. The platform will enable H-Net’s editors and users to upload, discuss, create, edit, transform, and develop rich content in the humanities and social sciences.”
• The London Review of Books comments on the Wellcome Collection’s “Brains: The Mind as Matter” exhibit: “I once met an aristocratic woman who had trepanned herself.”
• News from Publisher’s Weekly of a library amicus brief in the Hathi Trust lawsuit: “Nevertheless, if a federal judge accepts the Authors Guild argument, Band argues, it would dramatically impact any library’s’ ability to provide the most basic services, “including lending books and providing Internet access to the public.””
• Notice of an On the Media episode dedicated to publishing and ebooks: “Publishers are trying to adapt as the book industry changes dramatically, and they’re doing so in the face of rapidly changing reading habits among consumers.”
• New updates to our Tools for Digital Research page.
• The Berkeley Digital Library Copyright Project’s latest white paper on orphan works: “But in recent years, at least four developments have exacerbated the problem: (1) the elimination of copyright formalities, (2) the progressive extension of copyright terms, (3) technological advances that allow authors to create and preserve more copyrightable works, and (4) technological changes in the way users access and consume copyrighted works, especially in the shift from print to digital.”
• And, from the Guardian and the Wellcome Trust, how the best science writers keep you in your seat and reading: “And a great science writer might start with something like this: “If not for a virus, none of us would ever be born.”"

And new additions to the MHL:

• Two Health-Seekers in Southern California.
• Texts on malaria in honor of World Malaria Day 2012.
• Curso Elemental de Partos.
• Ladies Physo Medical Companion.

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

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Title page of "The Misfortunes of Mary Roesly."

Mary Roesly, a young Massachusetts woman, was waiting for a train in 1864: “By a sudden start, as I had just mounted the car platform, I was instantly thrown under the car, and my arm was crushed at the elbow…” (6)

The crushed arm was amputated later that day, but Roesly’s sufferings continued through a series of operations and attempts to relieve pain from the original wound, none of which she found successful. In 1872, Roesly published an account of the events surrounding the injury and the subsequent medical interventions in a short booklet: The Misfortunes of Mary Roesly, or, the Lost Arm.

Presumably advised or thinking for herself that her story might easily be faked — given that the booklet includes no names of physicians (but she does mention being treated at Boston City Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital), photographs, or drawings to allow her story to be verified — Roesly asked her “guardian” to write a brief foreword to the volume: “The subject of this story is known to me personally. …I know Mary Roesly to be a truthful, good girl.” With this foreword, Roesly — and presumably any members of her family who were involved in the production of the story — attempt to disarm those who will say she has concocted a “sob story” for commercial reasons, trading on the actual injuries that took place on the railroad to gain public sympathy and whatever money she might gain from the publication. Henry Williams in the foreword mentions her parents as being “straitened in their means,” she only mentions her “desire to get some assistance, independent of my parents.” (10)

The Misfortunes is a brief volumes, not even two dozen pages long. It is interesting to speculate on who Roesly might have imagined buying her story or what audience she imagined herself talking to. Presumably not a medical one, or she would have included the names of her attending physicians, what institutions she had been treated at, or more details about the treatments she had undergone. Had she been written about by a physician from a case study point of view, the tone of the entire publication would be different. As it is, Roesly had, to a certain extent, taken charge of her story.

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

Continue reading »]]> You are invited to a cocktail hour to meet and chat with representatives of the Medical Heritage Library.

We will be meeting informally on April 26th at 5 pm at The Yards, the hotel bar at Baltimore’s Marriott Inner Harbor at Camden Yards, at the start of the annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM).

We hope to see you at 5 PM on April 26th at The Yard at the Baltimore Marriott!