Digital Highlights: Addison Key Bell

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: A Fungous Nose

Arise Evans had a fungous nose, and said it was revealed to him that the King’s hand would cure him: and at the first coming of King Charles II. into St. James’s Park, he kissed the King’s hand and rubbed his nose with it; which disturbed the King, but cured him [Evans].

It does seem a little forward on a first acquaintance without even an “excuse me,” but the legend of the curative powers of the royal touch was a strong one and no doubt Charles felt a certain amount of need to propitiate his new subjects.

John Corry’s The detector of quackery : or, Analyser of medical, philosophical, political, dramatic, and literary imposture is a lighthearted examination of the faux in medicine. Corry was already the author of A satirical view of London at the commencement of the nineteenth century, a humorous look at the capital at the beginning of a new century.

Corry cites Samuel Johnson in his “Advertisement” before the text: “Cheats can seldom last long against laughter” and Corry’s text is still amusing, although at this point it may be just as much for what he gets wrong — making jokes about oxygen being the “philosopher’s stone” — as what he gets right — debunking Mesmer.

Click through the pages below or follow this link to read Corry’s The detector of quackery.

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

Digital Highlights: The Form of the Face

The physiognomical manual of John Caspar Lavater provides rules for judging by the phsyiognomy: is someone’s nose a little to the left? perhaps their eyebrows are not quite symmetrical? or their ears are set far back on their head? These are all guides to their inner character, how they are likely to behave in almost any situation.

Lavater’s handbook provides not only visual illustrations so you can match the face against the characteristic, it also promises “One Hundred Physiognomonical [sic] Rules” to help you detect obstinacy, worthless insignificance, hypocrisy, and voluptuaries among others.

Flip through the pages of Lavater’s guidebook below or follow this link to read Essays on physiognomy (1853).

New to the MHL!

Check out these items recently uploaded to the MHL:

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

Images from the Library

Full page color illustration of four flowering plants

From Nicholas Culpeper’s Culpeper’s complete herbal with nearly four hundred medicines, made from English herbs, physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to man; with rules for compuounding them: also, directions for making syrups, ointments, &c (1852).

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

Digital Highlights: Culpeper’s Complete Herbal

This week, have a close look at one of the lovely herbals that are part of our collection:

You can turn the pages above or follow the link below to flip through the volume.

Nicholas Culpeper, author of Culpeper’s complete herbal: with nearly four hundred medicines, made from English herbs, physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to man; with rules for compuounding them: also, directions for making syrups, ointments, &c was a seventeenth century English apothecary and herbalist.

He went against the express desire of Royal College of Physicians to popularize herbal medicine and medicine in general, preparing his own texts on astrology and midwifery as well as herbalism. Culpeper believed that the contemporary Dissenter trend towards making religious discourse available to all should be taken seriously by other fields of expertise, too.

The Royal College didn’t take this kindly and tried several times to discredit Culpeper and his works. It probably didn’t help Culpeper’s case that, without the College’s permission, he translated their Pharmacopoeia Londonesis into English.

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

Images from the Library

Frontispiece to a reprint of Nicholas Culpeper's herbal

From Nicholas Culpeper’s Culpeper’s complete herbal: with nearly four hundred medicines, made from English herbs, physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to man; with rules for compuounding them: also, directions for making syrups, ointments, &c. (1852).

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