Announcing the March Madness Food Fight Club Winner

Posted on March 30, 2016 by nyamhistorymed

Drum roll please…

The winner of the 2016 March Madness Food Fight Club is…

Vegetable Curry!

Background image: Kirkland, The modern baker, confectioner, and caterer, c1907.

Thanks to all who voted throughout the competition. If you decide to make this winning recipe, please tell us about it and share some photos.

Vegetable Curry recipe in Blatch, 101 Practical Non-Flesh Recipes, 1917. Click to enlarge.

The four recipes in this competition—from a pamphlet, a manuscript receipt book, and two printed cookbooks—don’t begin to scratch the surface of what our cookery collection holds. We acquired our Margaret Barclay Wilson culinary collection in 1929, and it now contains about 10,000 items. The collection includes manuscripts, menus, and pamphlets that demonstrate the way cookery changed over time, and a large collection of printed books, beginning in the 16^th century. These include works by Scappi, Platina, and Carême, as well as many other milestones in culinary printing.

Our cookbooks offer aspirational recipes, practical recipes, and everything in between. Our collections hold a snapshot view of what daily cooking was like in a range of households across the world. These recipe books also reflect the changes that occur when people have access to new innovations—refrigeration, for example, or the gas range. We also have strong collections related to diet regimens and cooking for health, as well as cookbooks published during wartime when resources were scarce.

Interested in researching historic cookbooks? Our library is open to the public. To make an appointment, call 212-822-7315 or email library@nyam.org.

Mental Health in the Metropolis: The Midtown Manhattan Study

Posted on March 24, 2016 by nyamhistorymed

By Paul Theerman, Associate Director, Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health

How can we improve urban health? That is one of the missions of the New York Academy of Medicine, and a question public health professionals have been asking for decades. One of the landmark urban health studies, Mental Health in the Metropolis: The Midtown Manhattan Study, was published more than half a century ago.¹The study was intended to be a deep and exhaustive look into the mental health of residents in one of the most urban environments in the country, Midtown Manhattan. In many ways it was to be a model of the state of urban health throughout the country.² And it was shaped by the medical experience of World War II.

Title page of Mental Health in the Metropolis, 1962.

Many veterans developed mental illnesses over the course of the war. Dr. Thomas A. C. Rennie, associate professor of psychiatry at Cornell University Medical College, saw many cases directly. He organized rehabilitation services for veterans during the war, and in 1944 published When He Comes Back and If He Comes Back Nervous.³ This booklet was followed by Mental Health and Modern Society,⁴ a professional discussion of the effects of war on society. In his war and postwar experience, Rennie encountered many people suffering from mental difficulties, and concluded that the long and extended psychoanalytic approach would never treat them effectively, for lack of time and resources.

Dedication of Mental Health in the Metropolis to Thomas A. C. Rennie.

Instead, Rennie began to look at the relationship between mental health and the social community.⁵ In the process he created a new field—social psychiatry. In 1950, he was appointed the first professor of social psychiatry at Cornell, arguably holding the first position of this kind anywhere in the United States.⁶ He conceived the Midtown study this same year, and launched it in 1952. Upon Rennie’s sudden death from a cerebral hemorrhage in mid-1956, the program was continued by Dr. Alexander Leighton, a colleague, medical sociologist, and psychiatrist at Cornell. The study ended in 1960, with publication of its results in 1962.⁷ It was a large undertaking; overall, the project utilized the services of some 200 people.

What did the study look like? In the words of the lead author, sociologist Leo Srole of SUNY Medical Center Brooklyn (SUNY Downstate), “An investigation focused upon Midtown can, in a special sense, be likened to an intensive case study. Here a community, rather than an individual, is the case.”⁸ Mental health was investigated as an outcome of community function and dysfunction, as much as or even more so than of the individual. That community was studied along many lines: age, sex, marital status, socioeconomic status, “generation-in-the-U.S.,” and various frames of origination: rural or urban, nationality, and religious affiliation. Researchers also assessed access to and outcomes of mental health and psychiatric care by surveying community residents and treatment workers. Their work seemed to show that Midtown held large numbers of untreated ill individuals, most of whom still functioned at an acceptable level. But definitive results were difficult to come by, and more studies were called for.

Correspondence between sick-well ratios for 12 socioeconomic status strata, reported in 4 groups, with highest SES marked “1” and lowest “12”. The “sick-well” ratio is found by comparing the numbers of “impaired” persons in a particular grouping, with the number of “well” persons. Two other rankings lie between these designations: “mild symptom formation” and “moderate symptom formation.” Mental Health in the Metropolis, Figure 5, p. 231. Click to enlarge.

Mental Health in the Metropolis was the report of a large and complex analysis, marrying the different disciplines of psychiatry and sociology to understand and address medical problems using social means. As such it was a child of the war—the war that created mass problems, and suggested ways towards solving them. And it was the harbinger of studies to come.

References

1. Authored by Leo Srole, Thomas S. Langner, Stanley T. Michael, Marvin K. Opler, and Thomas A. C. Rennie, volume 1 in the Thomas A. C. Rennie Series in Social Psychiatry (New York: Blakiston Division, McGraw-Hill, [1962]).

2. Mental Health in the Metropolis, p. 338. The precise boundaries of the study area were not disclosed for reasons of confidentiality; it was described as “more or less midway up the length of Manhattan Island,” bounded by the business district, two major thoroughfares, and a river, and “almost wholly residential in character,” with 175,000 inhabitants (p. 72, and fn 14). Using the name “Midtown” to describe this community was surely inspired by the famous “Middletown” studies of Muncie, Indiana, done by Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, and published in 1929 and 1935.

3. With Luther E. Woodward: New York: The National Committee for Mental Hygiene, [c1944].

4. Also with Luther E. Woodward: New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1948.

5. He was not the first to explore this connection, of course, and he profited from his work with Adolf Meyer of The Johns Hopkins Medical School from 1931 to 1941, Oskar Diethelm, “Thomas A. C. Rennie, February 28, 1904 — May 21, 1956,” Cornell University Faculty Memorial Statement, https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/17813, accessed March 18, 2016.

6. Mental Health in the Metropolis, pp. viii.

7. Mental Health in the Metropolis, pp. 336–37.

8. Mental Health in the Metropolis, p. 28.

Food Fight Club Final: Snail Water v. Vegetable Curry

Posted on March 23, 2016 by nyamhistorymed

It’s the Food Fight Club final! Snail Water won round 1 and Vegetable Curry won round 2. Now it’s time for these two tough competitors to duke it out once and for all.

Background image: Kirkland, The modern baker, confectioner, and caterer, c1907.

This final bout pits a recipe from a manuscript recipe collection against one found in a printed cookbook.

From A Collection of Choise Receipts. Click to enlarge.

The recipe for Snail Water comes from A Collection of Choise Receipts, one of 36 manuscript receipt books in our collection. These collections of recipes, dating from the late 17th through the 19th century, tell stories about the ways food was prepared in a range of households. In many cases, they incorporate source material from contemporary cookbooks in print, showing us the kinds of recipes households valued and relied on. These manuscripts often include personal information about the families who kept them. One noteworthy case in our collections is a recipe for “How to make coffy of dry swet aple snits (slices),” found in a recipe book kept by a German-American family in Pennsylvania-Dutch country between 1835 and 1850. Manuscript cookbooks can also show us the kinds of cooking technologies used by families. Repeated references to coals and the Dutch oven indicate that Pennsylvania-Dutch cookbook’s author was cooking at the open hearth.

Vegetable Curry recipe in Blatch, 101 Practical Non-Flesh Recipes, 1917. Click to enlarge.

Publishers of printed cookbooks responded to demand from readers. These books—and the number of editions that were published—can tell us a great deal about cooking trends. Our 1917 copy of 101 Practical Non-Flesh Recipes, for example, is the book’s second edition, the first published just a year before. Cookbooks could be aspirational, practical, or a combination of both. A 19th-century cookbook published in Milwaukee in German in multiple editions tell us that there was a demand for cookbooks written in the mother tongue for newly-arrived German immigrants. The mixture of German and American recipes in these books indicate a need for familiar recipes from the Old World, as well as instruction on how to prepare foods that were more typical of the New. A number of printed cookbooks in our collection have emended recipes or manuscript recipes laid-in to their pages, offering clues to how readers modified published recipes for personal use.

Which recipe should be crowned the 2016 Food Fight Club Champion? Vote for your favorite—be it the most appealing, least appealing, or one that just tickles your fancy more—before 5 pm EST on Monday, March 28.

Food Fight Club Round 2: Vegetable Curry v. Ragout of Squirrel

Posted on March 16, 2016 by nyamhistorymed

It’s time for match two of our March Madness Food Fight Club.

First, the reveal of last week’s smackdown: Snail Water triumphed over Pear and Tomato Chutney. Whichever recipe wins this week has a tough competitor for next Wednesday’s final match.

March Madness Food Fight Club_Round1winner

Background image: Kirkland, The modern baker, confectioner, and caterer, c1907.

This week, we pit Vegetable Curry against Ragout of Squirrel.

Vegetable Curry recipe in Blatch, 101 Practical Non-Flesh Recipes, 1917. Click to enlarge.

The innocuous-sounding vegetable curry comes from Margaret Blatch’s 101 Practical Non-flesh Recipes, a nice little vegetarian cookbook from 1917. The title might sound a bit odd to modern readers and is an interesting choice, considering the term vegetarian was well-established by the 1840s.¹ A 1908 physical education article sheds some light on the terminology of the time, saying the word vegetarian “usually suggests a person who abstains not on hygienic but on religious, ethical, or theological grounds,” preferring instead “flesh-abstainer.”² It appears “non-flesh” was less provocative than “vegetarian.”

Ragout of Squirrel recipe in Recipes for the Jewett Chafing Dish, 1896. Click to enlarge.

Our next contestant features two items not commonly seen on today’s dinner tables: Chafing dishes and squirrels. In the 1890s, chafing dishes experienced a surge in popularity in America, and Recipes for the Jewett Chafing Dish was just one of many cookbooks published featuring recipes specifically for the dish. The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel offered “chafing dish suppers” to top socialites, and stores sold table linens to match the cookware.³ Squirrel, too, was a common sight at the American dinner table due to its availability. One can track its rise and fall by looking at editions of The Joy of Cooking over time, where the numerous squirrel recipes of the 1930s gave way to recipes for chicken.⁴

Which recipe should face Snail Water in the final round? Vote for your favorite—be it the most appealing, least appealing, or one that just tickles your fancy more—before 5 pm EST on Monday, March 21.

References
1. Spencer C. The Heretic’s Feast: A History of Vegetarianism. UPNE; 1996. Available at: https://books.google.com/books?id=rIjZo-cvifAC&pgis=1. Accessed March 15, 2016.

2. Fisher I. The Influence of Flesh-eating on Endurance. Modern Medicine Publishing; 1908. Available at: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=gW8yAQAAMAAJ&pgis=1. Accessed March 15, 2016.

3. Lovegren S, Smith AF. Chafing Dish. Oxford Companion to Am Food Drink. 2007:103. Available at: https://books.google.com/books?id=AoWlCmNDA3QC&pgis=1. Accessed March 10, 2016.

4. Smith H. Al rodente: Could squirrel meat come back into vogue? Grist. 2012. Available at: http://grist.org/animals/al-rodente-could-squirrel-meat-come-back-into-vogue/. Accessed March 10, 2016.

Surviving the Great Blizzard of 1888

Posted on March 11, 2016 by nyamhistorymed

By Johanna Goldberg, Information Services Librarian

After the snowstorm on January 22–23, 2016 dropped 26.8 inches of snow on New York City, lists circulated of the worst snowstorms in the city’s history dating back to 1869. Of the top ten storms, only one occurred in the 19^th century: the blizzard of 1888, which resulted in 21 inches of snow falling on the city from March 12–14 of that year.

“Entrance to the Astor House facing Broadway between Barclay and Vesey Streets. Taken in March 1888 during the Great Blizzard.” From Strong, The Great Blizzard of 1888.

The blizzard arrived unexpectedly. The forecast for Sunday, March 11 called for slight wind and evening rain. But late that night, a storm from the south altered its course at the same time that the wind changed direction. Rain turned to sleet, hail, and finally snow. New Yorkers woke up on Monday to 10 inches of snow and bitter cold.

“Looking north on Madison Avenue during the March 1888 Blizzard.” From Strong, The Great Blizzard of 1888.

Not realizing that the worst was yet to come—11 more inches of wind-swept snow fell before the storm ended—many ended up stranded on their way to work or school. Eighty mile an hour wind gusts blew snow into drifts as high as second story windows and, along with the snow and ice, stopped elevated trains and toppled phone, electric, and telegraph poles. After the suspension of ferry service, people attempted to cross the frozen East River on foot (many were rescued by tugboats). More than 200 New Yorkers died as a result of the storm.^1,2

“45th Street and Grand Central Depot, New York, Blizzard, March 1888.” From Strong, The Great Blizzard of 1888.

“149 Broadway, now the site of the Singer Building, March 1888.” From Strong, The Great Blizzard of 1888.

In 1938, fifty years after the blizzard, Samuel Meredith Strong, M.D., “Former President of ‘The Blizzard Men of 1888,’” published The Great Blizzard of 1888, a collection of oral histories and printed articles from those who survived the storm. Below are some selections from the book:²

Excerpt from an article by Julian Ralph in the New York Sun, September 2, 1933:

“Few of the women who worked for a living could get to their work places. Never, perhaps, in the history of petticoats was the imbecility of their design better illustrated. ‘To get here I had to take my skirts up and clamber through the snowdrifts,’ said a washerwoman when she came to the house of the reporter who writes this. She was the only messenger from the world at large that reached that house up to half-past 10 o’clock. ‘With my dress down I could not move half a block.’ It was so with many thousands of women; the thousand few who did not turn back when they had started out.”²

11th Street, New York, looking west.” From Strong, The Great Blizzard of 1888.

From Wm. Chamberlain, Maspeth, New York:

“Mount Olivet Cemetery at Maspeth, New York, had two orders for burials to take place that day, and the Superintendent had men with a small plow drawn by horses work to keep the roads in the cemetery open. Along about ten o’clock he got me on the job shoveling, and after dinner sent me for men in the neighborhood. I think I got two or three and with others and the plows we worked until about 4:30 in the afternoon, but it was no use as the wind blew the snow back faster than we could handle it. We quit, licked to a frazzle, cold and tired and hungry. The funerals, according to the records in the cemetery, did not take place until two or three days later.”

“Copy of photograph taken in Flushing, Long Island, by Mr. William James in March 1888. Mr. Frederick Morris at the left, Dan Beard standing in the center.” From Strong, The Great Blizzard of 1888.

Dr. Charles Gilmore Kerley, published in Medical Clinic of North America, November 1935:

“I was a resident physician at the New York Infant Asylum in Westchester County, N.Y. At this institution there were a few over 400 children and about 200 mothers. The age of the child population ranged from infants of a few weeks to children five or six years of age. Among those under one year were perhaps 100 who were partly or entirely dependent on cow’s milk feeding. Eight cans of loose milk a day were supplied by a dairy eight miles distant, the milk being delivered in a horse-drawn truck—then came the big blizzard completely blocking traffic of every nature—in our case for seven days. I well remember the consternation and alarm at the thought of being cut off from all food supplies with over 600 people to be cared for. A few days before the historic storm, through error a large consignment of Borden’s condensed milk arrived at the institution. Twelve dozen cans had been ordered and 12 gross (1728) cans were received. Our greatest anxiety naturally centered on the bottle fed; the condensed product was at once brought in to use and a blizzard feeding plan was inaugurated through dilution with barley water. Greatly to our surprise the marasmic and difficult feeders, struggling along on diluted sterilized milk, took on new life, began to smile and gain in weight.”

Baxter Street, New York, Blizzard, March 1888.” From Strong, The Great Blizzard of 1888.

John Potter of Lowville, New York:

At that time I had a room on West 24^th Street. I was employed as bookkeeper by a firm on Beach Street and started for work at 8:00 o’clock on that morning, taking the 6^th Avenue elevated railroad from West 23^rd Street. The train proceeded slowly until we reached the curve at Bleeker and 8^th Streets when we came to a standstill and remained there until 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon without any heat in the car. About that time a man appeared on the street from a corner saloon with a long ladder which he placed against the elevated railing. The railing being coated with ice it was a difficult matter to climb over and reach the ladder. I recall carrying a young woman and, missing my footing partly down, we both landed in a snow bank. The man charged us fifty cents for the privilege of using his ladder.”

Hotel Martin 17-19 University Place, corner of 9th Street during the March 1888 Blizzard. Abandoned horse-car.” From Strong, The Great Blizzard of 1888.

Caroline Kleindienst, from Cranbury, New Jersey:

“Through the long lone hours of that night we were blessed with our eleven pound boy, without nurse or doctor.… Next morning we found we were completely snowed in. My husband started to shovel his way out, through snow as deep as he was tall….It was three weeks before the roads were cleared and the Doctor then made his first visit to our home and congratulated me on the fine new baby who came into this world unaided and alone in the Big Blizzard of 1888 and twenty-six years and six months later left this world in the Wright chemical explosion [an accident at a factory in Elizabeth, NJ that killed three workers³].”

“Wreck at Coleman’s Station, New York & Harlem R. R., March 13, 1888.” From Strong, The Great Blizzard of 1888.

The blizzard contributed to slow but successful city efforts to move power lines underground and replace elevated trains with the underground subway. It also spurred a more organized response to future weather events from the Department of Street Cleaning, now called the Department of Sanitation.¹

Park Place, Brooklyn, N. Y., March 14, 1888.” From Strong, The Great Blizzard of 1888.

The next time a blizzard comes to New York, be grateful for modern weather forecasting technology and heated subway cars. And don’t try to cross the East River by foot!

References

1. Virtual New York. Blizzard of 1888. Available at: http://www.virtualny.cuny.edu/blizzard/bliz_hp.html.

2. Strong SM, Overton M. The great blizzard of 1888. [New York]; 1938.

3. GUNCOTTON KILLS THREE. Explosion Wrecks Factory and Shakes a New Jersey County. New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D00EEDB1438EF32A2575AC1A96F9C946596D6CF. Published September 19, 1914. Accessed March 4, 2016.

Food Fight Club Round 1: Snail Water v. Pear and Tomato Chutney

Posted on March 9, 2016 by nyamhistorymed

Today we begin our March Madness competition, Food Fight Club.

This week and next, two recipes will go head to head, vying for your votes. The following week, the winners of the first two rounds will duke it out for the honor of being named the champion of our first Food Fight Club.

Background image: Kirkland, The modern baker, confectioner, and caterer, c1907.

The smackdown begins with Snail Water versus Pear and Tomato Chutney.

This lovely snail water recipe comes from A Collection of Choise Receipts, a late 17^th-century English manuscript written in exquisite penmanship, perhaps written by a professional scribe. Snail water was thought to treat ailments including “sharpness in [the] blood” and appetite loss. Learn more about snail water in our blog archives.

From A Collection of Choise Receipts. Click to enlarge.

It takes a bold competitor to go up against this beauty. But we have one: Pear and Tomato Chutney from the American Can Company’s undated Relishes from Canned Food pamphlet. As early as the 1850s, commercially canned goods—especially sardines, tomatoes, condensed milk, and fruits and vegetables—found an eager consumer audience in the Western United States. Their popularity only increased over time; by the 1930s, foods from supermarkets were increasingly prepackaged (learn more in our 2015 April Fool’s blog—the food history facts are true!).

Pear and Tomato Chutney from American Can Company, Relishes from Canned Foods, no date. Click to enlarge.

Which recipe should move on to the next round? Vote for your favorite—be it the most appealing, least appealing, or one that just tickles your fancy more—before 5 pm EST on Monday, March 14.

“Solving Woman’s Oldest Hygienic Problem in a New Way”: A History of Period Products

Posted on March 4, 2016 by nyamhistorymed

By Johanna Goldberg, Information Services Librarian

This is part of an intermittent series of blogs featuring advertisements from medical journals. You can find the entire series here.

For the past few weeks, subway-riding New Yorkers have been surrounded by advertisements for absorbent underwear, the latest in a long history of products designed for use during menstruation.

But what did people use before the era of special undies, tampons, pads, and cups? Very little is known about pre-20^th century methods, but historians believe (and oral history interviews confirm) that many relied on homemade cloth or paper pads or diapers pinned to belts and strings. Some women reused these items, while others disposed of them after one use.^1,2 Other women—even going back to ancient Rome—fashioned their own tampons from absorbent wool, fibers, paper, sponges, and other materials.³

Things began to change in the mid-1800s. Between 1854 and 1921 (the year the Kotex was first marketed), the U.S. Patent Office granted 185 patents for menstrual (or catamenial) devices.¹ In her 1994 doctoral dissertation, Laura Klosterman Kidd breaks these patents into six interconnected categories:

(1) Belts or supporters, from which were suspended (2) a catamenial sack, pouch, shield, menstrual receiver, or napkin-holder, into which was placed (3) an absorbent, consisting of cloths, pads, napkins, sponges, or raw waste fibers. Ancillary categories of menstrual patents were (4) attaching devices used to secure or connect the catamenial sack to the supporter, (5) catamenial garments or appliances that aided in protecting the wearer’s clothing, and (6) vaginally inserted menstrual retentive cups.¹

One of these patented products is advertised in the 1884 American Druggist. Despite claims that it is “the grandest invention for the convenience and cleanliness of ladies,” it certainly gives the modern audience pause. A soft rubber cup gets inserted into the vagina, and fluid flows into a “receptacle” attached to a belt. “At night, before retiring, the fluid can and should be removed [from the receptacle], simply by removing a cap, without removing the instrument.”

“Farr’s Patent Ladies’ Menstrual Receptacle,” advertised in American Druggist, January 1884. Click to enlarge.

There’s a reason these never caught on. But they aren’t such a far cry from today’s (much less cumbersome) menstrual cups.

The real shift in feminine hygiene products came in the 1920s and 1930s. During World War I, nurses at the front lines used absorbent Cellucotton, a Kimberly-Clark product made from wood pulp, both to bandage soldiers (as intended) and to absorb menstrual blood. After the war, Kimberly-Clark developed Cellucotton into Kotex, introducing the product in 1920.⁴ These napkins were held in place using belts; adhesive napkins only became available in the late 20^th century.²

This was not the first commercial sanitary napkin; earlier brands appeared for sale through mail-order catalogs. But it was the first to get a hard-won advertising campaign, which began in 1921. As Lara Freidenfelds relates in her book The Modern Period, advertisements for Kotex appeared in Ladies Home Journal once its editor’s secretary “declared the ads to be in good taste and of great benefit to women.” After Ladies Home Journal agreed to run the ads, other magazines, including the American Medical Association’s Hygeia, followed.²

Below are two early advertisements for Kotex, which appeared in Hygeia in 1924 and are both geared to nurses. We love that the coupon from the September 1924 ad has been clipped and, presumably, mailed in for a free sample.

Kotex ad in Hygeia Magazine, September 1924. Click to enlarge.

Kotex ad in Hygeia Magazine, November 1924. Click to enlarge.

While Hygeia does not appear to have run ads for Kotex prior to 1924, it did advertise an absorbent cotton on the back cover of its volumes in 1923. Bauer & Black Absorbent Cotton touted its many uses in these advertisements, noting that “Women use it to meet personal emergencies.” Even after the advent of commercially available sanitary napkins, some women preferred a more do-it-yourself approach.

Bauer & Black Absorbent Cotton ad in Hygeia Magazine, August 1923. Click to enlarge.

Kotex wasn’t alone in the marketplace for long: Gauzets and other, often cheaper, brands came along soon after, and also advertised heavily.

Gauzets ads from Hygeia Magazine, published in January and November 1933. Click to enlarge.

The first widespread commercial tampon arrived in the 1930s: Physician Earle Cleveland Haas received a patent for his applicator tampon in 1933, which he named Tampax. He distributed his product beginning in 1936.^2,3 Prior to Tampax, tampons had widespread use as medical devices dating as far back as the 18^th century.^2,3 Soon after the development of Tampax, other commercial tampon brands, like Wix and B-ettes, became available and also advertised widely.

These early ads show the hurdles Tampax had to overcome to win wide acceptance from consumers and doctors. In fact, Tampax spent $100,000 on advertising in its first nine months alone; by 1941, the company was “one of the one hundred largest advertisers in the United States.”² The ads worked: a 1944 survey showed that one quarter of women in the United States used tampons, even as doctors debated their safety.^2,3 These ads, spanning the first 10 years of commercial tampon availability, emphasize the safety, comfort, convenience, and invisibility of the products.

Click on an image to view the gallery:

Tampax ad in the Journal of the American Medical, volume 106, number 1, January 4, 1936. Click to enlarge. Association, vol. 106, number 15, April 11, 1936. Click to enlarge.

Wix ad in the Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 106, number 12, March 21, 1936. Click to enlarge.

B-ettes ad in Hygeia Magazine, November 1938. Click to enlarge.

Tampax ad in Hygeia Magazine, July 1943. Click to enlarge.

Tampax ad in Hygeia Magazine, November 1943. Click to enlarge.

Tampax as in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, volume 48, number 6, December 1944. Click to enlarge.

Tampax ad in Hygeia Magazine, March 1946. Click to enlarge.

Tampax ad in Hygeia Magazine, September 1946. Click to enlarge.

Despite the worries of physicians, early tampons were safe. In fact, our main concern with tampon use today, Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS), was only linked to tampon use about 40 years after their debut. In 1978, Procter & Gamble released Rely, a super-absorbent tampon made from synthetic fibers. This new kind of tampon led to 55 cases of TSS from October 1979 through May 1980. But non-synthetic, less absorbent tampons pose little threat, and the bacteria that causes TSS is present and active in only a small percentage of people.^3,5

Other options entered the marketplace in the 1930s: several menstrual cups received patents, including the first commercially available cup in the United States, patented by actress Leona Chalmers as a “catamenial appliance” in 1937.⁶ This cup’s design looks much the same as those on the market today.

Image from Leona Chalmers’ 1937 patent for a “catamenial appliance.” Source: https://www.google.com/patents/US2089113

In less than 100 years, menstrual supplies have moved from mostly homemade affairs to mass-market items available in stores, from products hidden away at the back of mail-order catalogs to some of the most commonly advertised goods in the United States. The advances of the 1920s and 1930s still impact our lives, as sanitary napkins, tampons, and cups remain go-to products, improved upon over time but not abandoned.

References

1.Kidd LK. Menstrual technology in the United States, 1854 to 1921. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Department of Textiles and Clothing; 1994.

2. Freidenfelds L. The modern period: Menstruation in twentieth-century America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; 2009.

3. Fetters A. The tampon: A history. The Atlantic. June 1, 2015. Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/history-of-the-tampon/394334/. Accessed March 1, 2016.

4. World War I centenary: Sanitary products. Available at: http://online.wsj.com/ww1/sanitary-products. Accessed March 1, 2016.

5. Vostral SL. Rely and Toxic Shock Syndrome: a technological health crisis. Yale J Biol Med. 2011;84(4):447–59. Available at: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=3238331&tool=pmcentrez&rendertype=abstract. Accessed March 1, 2016.

6. North BB, Oldham MJ. Preclinical, clinical, and over-the-counter postmarketing experience with a new vaginal cup: menstrual collection. J Womens Health (Larchmt). 2011;20(2):303–11. doi:10.1089/jwh.2009.1929.

Presentations for History of Medicine Night: Intersections of Medicine, Health, and Ethnicity

Posted on March 1, 2016 by nyamhistorymed

The New York Academy of Medicine’s Section on the History of Medicine and Public Health invites you to join us for “Intersections of Medicine, Health, and Ethnicity” on March 9, 2016 from 6:00pm–7:30 pm at the Academy, 1216 Fifth Avenue at the corner of 103rd Street. Admission is free but advanced registration is required. Register online.

The evening’s presenters will be:

A wooden caduceus symbol shown in NYAM rare book reading room

A caduceus symbol donated to our rare book reading room

HARRIET A. WASHINGTON
Independent scholar
“The 1788 New York Doctors’ Riot: A Signal Event in the Dissection of Anatomical Ethics”

KATE BAILEY
Graduate Student, M.A. Health Advocacy Program, Expected May 2017
Sarah Lawrence College
“From Motherhood to Sisterhood: How Underground Abortion Referral Networks Worked Towards Advocacy and Solidarity”

KIRK JOHNSON
Doctoral candidate in the Medical Humanities program at Drew University
“Heart Illness: Developments of Racial Discourse”

MARLENE A. GEORGE
Graduate Student, Health Advocacy Program, Sarah Lawrence College
“Social Service Sterilization – Eugenics Of The 1950’s-1970’s”

BOB VIETROGOSKI
Head of Special Collections
George F. Smith Library of the Health Sciences
Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences
“‘Agitation of the Question’: James McCune Smith’s Nomination for Fellowship to the New York Academy of Medicine, 1847”

A second evening of presentations, History of Medicine Night Part II, will take place on Wednesday, May 4, and we hope that you will be able to join us for that one as well.

Books, Health and History

The New York Academy of Medicine

Monthly Archives: March 2016

Announcing the March Madness Food Fight Club Winner

Food Fight Club Final: Snail Water v. Vegetable Curry

Food Fight Club Round 2: Vegetable Curry v. Ragout of Squirrel

Surviving the Great Blizzard of 1888

Food Fight Club Round 1: Snail Water v. Pear and Tomato Chutney

“Solving Woman’s Oldest Hygienic Problem in a New Way”: A History of Period Products

Presentations for History of Medicine Night: Intersections of Medicine, Health, and Ethnicity