Monthly Archives: December 2017

Looking back on 2017

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As 2017 draws to a close, it’s customary to look back at the year that was. For us at the Academy Library, that means reflecting on our many exciting events and achievements. As you enjoy this look back at the past year through the eyes of our staff, please consider supporting the Academy Library. 

Your generous donation will help ensure the ongoing vitality of the Library and its collections. Donations help underwrite the Library’s public programs and outreach activities; the acquisition, conservation, and cataloging of remarkable historical materials; and digitization of our key Library treasures.

 

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DrMiller_watermark_TwitterI will always be awed by the items that are discovered in our vast collections; it is almost as if they are waiting for the right opportunity to reveal themselves. My favorite example of this was when our volunteer, Dr. Sanford Miller, came across what he thinks is a picture of himself on the cover of The Story of Anesthesia by the American Society of Anesthesiologists. Dr. Miller, an Anesthesiologist, has been volunteering for the Academy Library for two and a half years and has helped in the processing of thousands of pamphlets. –Allison Piazza, Reference Services and Outreach Librarian

ketham_fasciculomedicina_4_1495_watermarkFor me, one of the highlights this year was my participation in the “Making the book” project (supported by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation). My job was to review catalog records for all Johannes de Ketham editions of Fasciculus medicine (an influential medical text) and make necessary changes for increased findability. The most interesting part of this process was a detailed examination of text and plates for each of our five editions and making copy-specific notes. As a result of this work, six original records were created: five for the Ketham’s (1495, 1500, 1509, 1513 and 1522) editions and one for Savonarola’s Practica medicinae (1497), which is bound with Fasciculus medicine, 1500. –Tatyana Pakhladzhyan, Rare Book Cataloger

 

ponds_bitters_watermark My favorite project this year was working with the library’s collections of 19th- and early 20th-century medical trade cards to select cards for a Valentine’s Day blog post. Our William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards is available via our new Library Digital Collections and Exhibits website, and we are working on describing and organizing the Bingham Patent Medicine Collection, a recent bequest of approximately 4,900 trade cards from the estate of Walker Bingham. The images in these cards are delightful, even if the medicines they advertise are of dubious efficacy. –Becky Filner, Head of Cataloging

NYAM_44_previewMy favorite event this year was Acquisitions Night on September 26. It was great on a number of levels: seeing the wonderful books that we had acquired in the course of the year, watching as Anne Garner (Curator, Rare Books and Manuscripts) and Arlene Shaner (Historical Collections Librarian) explained the finer points of the items, seeing the wonderful reaction that it evoked in our guests, and listening to Scott Devine (Head of Preservation) present on a book he had conserved, bringing out the physical aspect of the book that we often don’t pay enough attention. –Paul Theerman, Associate Director

I look forward every year to the evening class we host in the Rare Book Room for “The Pulse of Art,” a class on the intersection between art and medicine.  This class, co-taught by the dynamic duo of the Drs. Barry and Bobbi Coller (MD and PhD in Art History, respectively), meets one evening in the late Fall to talk visual representations of anatomy.  For an hour and a half, we pour over illustrations by the likes of Durer, Vesalius, Gautier d’Agoty and Bernard Albinus.  Arlene and I do this together, and inevitably we learn new things about our own collections from the Collers, whose deep knowledge of the history of medicine, illustration processes and art history always make it an unforgettable evening.  The energy in the room is electric!  –Anne Garner, Curator, Rare Books and Manuscripts

AABAfter nearly two years of hard work, we launched the Adopt-A-Book program this October. Preparing the adoption of our rare books, secondary sources, and the iconic card catalog gave me all kinds of insights into our collections. I am both thankful and ecstatic that we’ve already had some adoptions. These precious books have become so special to me; it’s great to know other people out there feel the same way. –Emily Miranker, Events and Projects Manager

 

Among many enclosures I have made so far this year, the boxes for our collection of 17th-century anatomical manikins are the most memorable. I cut and built up Ethafoams and Volara foams so that the trays of manikins would fit perfectly in the boxes. It was challenging, but there was a lot of learning and discussion with other conservation and library staff in the process. Check out our blog post about the manikins and the rehousing! –Yungjin Shin, Collections Care Assistant

 

indianmedicinalp00krti_0380_watermarkThis year I am excited about exploring the three- volume set of Indian Medicinal Plants by Kānhobā Raṇachoḍadāsa Kīrtikara (1849-1917). The plates caught my attention, propelling my desire to digitize it.  As part of our collaboration with the Biodiversity Heritage Library, we digitized all three volumes and made them available to the public. Digitization can take time, but taking an object off the shelf, digitizing it and making it available to the public is always amazing! –Robin Naughton, Head of Digitial

 

 

 

From all of us at the Academy Library, Happy New Year!


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Embroidering Medicine, Re-imagining Embroidery

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Today’s guest post is written by Kriota Willberg, New York Academy of Medicine’s Artist-in-Residence researching the history of sutures and ligatures.  Through graphic narratives, teaching, and needlework, Kriota explores the intersection between body sciences and creative practice. This past September, Kriota taught a four-week workshop entitled “Embroidering Medicine,” which explored the relationships between medicine, needlework, and gender.

Historically, needlework has been used to enforce stereotypes of women as docile, obedient, and incapable of creative or original thought.  Embroidery as a skill and a decorative medium was a required part of a woman’s education for centuries.  Across different periods of time, embroidery techniques (stump work, black work, etc.) and themes (religious, botany, etc.) in vogue provided only very narrow focus for creative outlets for women.  From the 16th century onwards, embroidery publications encouraged the use of pre-drawn patterns.  Images generally included geometric stitch motifs, flowers, plants, and animals. Many women, including Mary Queen of Scots translated images from books such as the Icones Animalium (1560) and La Nature et Diversité des Poissoins (1555).[1]

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Workshop participants discuss their work.

The cultural pressure to recreate existing patterns and images has been the basis of the argument that a craft such as embroidery is inherently unoriginal. In the 16th century and later, many people considered women incapable of original creative thought, proved by the adherence of women to unimaginative media such as embroidery.

As the Academy’s Artist-in-Residence, I wanted to facilitate an embroidery workshop that connected the histories of women, medicine, and embroidery. In my own work I have done this by looking at the broad scope of health and medical literature available at the Academy Library, exploring feminist histories of medicine and of needlework, and using drawing and needlework to identify and describe intersections of medical and textile arts. In the workshop I encouraged participants to re-imagine the tradition of embroidery pattern translation by using historical medical imagery mostly created by male artists.

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Dental anatomy after an image by John Hunter by Stephanie Russell.

The workshop was a great way to explore history on one’s own terms. Cultural forces limiting women’s economic and artistic independence have been at work for centuries in Europe and the United States. The establishment and regulation of craft and medical guilds in Medieval Europe began the limitation of women from the professional practices of medicine and needlework.[2] While working with materials from the historical collection, the status of women as medical professionals during different periods was a topic of conversation as we stitched our embroidery.

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An embroidery in progress by Abby Tannenbaum, stitched from an image in the Hortus Sanitatis.

Our group (coincidentally all women) explored the library images, learned about the history of medicine, examined books about home economics and sciences, found images to work with that were interesting or personally relevant, explored historical descriptions of medical needlework (i.e. suturing the body), and practiced embroidery stitches. The products of this workshop embody the stitcher’s process and creative experimentation combining the history of medicine with the histories of feminism and the decorative art of embroidery.

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Kriota Willberg (third from left) and embroidery participants in the Drs. Barry and Bobbi Coller Rare Book Reading Room.

There is a lot of creativity that can go in to re-imagining a pre-existing image. In addition to working with line, filling, and color, embroidery can add texture and depth through its use of various types of threads and yarns. The embroiderer studies the image she is recreating. Is it educational? Entertaining? Are certain anatomical structures or pathological states emphasized? The embroiderer interprets the original artist’s intentions, determines her own interests in the image, and re-works the image using color, texture, stitch variety, and fabric, to create a new work. To practice basic stitches, an embroiderer might choose to follow an original pattern closely or experiment and make “mistakes,” as one might when drawing in a sketchbook.

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Anatomized genitalia from an anatomy book by Adriaan van de Spiegel (aka Spiegalius) and Giulio Cesare Casseri (aka Casserius) published in the 17th century. Stitched by Susan Shaw.

Embroidery is becoming a popular medium again and still provokes associations with hominess and winsome imagery. I was delighted to see workshop embroiderers re-imaging pictures of dental anatomy and dissected genitalia into images that are simultaneously comforting and disturbing. The embroiderers in this workshop are taking needlework in new and exciting directions!

Endnotes:
[1] Swain, Margaret. The Needlework or Mary Queen of Scots. New York, London: Man Nostrand Reinhold Company, Inc., 1973.
[2] I recommend reading The Subversive Stitch by Rozsika Parker and Women and the Practice of Medical Care in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1800 by Leigh Ann Whaley. Reading these books simultaneously has been a revelatory experience!

Winter/Spring 2018 Upcoming Events

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As 2017 winds down, we turn our attention to 2018 and the rich programming we have in store this winter and spring. As always, we look forward to seeing you at many of our events as we explore the cultural, historical, and political context of health and medicine.

chin-jou-2017.jpgWe kick off our winter/spring programming on January 24 with “The Obesity Epidemic and Fast Food Marketing to African Americans” with speaker, Chin Jou. This sure-to-be-fascinating talk will look at how fast food companies have aggressively marketed to African Americans since the early 1970s.

Mike Kelly

How can a book-historical approach to the history of race in America help us to navigate the fraught landscape of race in the early 21st century? Join us on January 27 for “The Moon, Indian Medicine, and Scientific Racism” with speaker Michael Kelly, as he examines how nineteenth-century publications can help us explore the bibliography of race in America.

james-delbourgo-headshot.jpgLondon’s British Museum was the first free national public museum in the world. How did it come into being? Find out on January 31 when our speaker, James Delbourgo, discusses “The Origins of Public Museums: Hans Sloane’s Collections and the Creation of the British Museum.” The little-known life of the British Museum founder, Sir Hans Sloane, provides a new story about the beginnings of public museums through their origins in imperialism and slavery.

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February 5-9 is Color Our Collections Week! Begun by the Academy Library in 2016, Color Our Collections Week brings you free coloring sheets based on materials in our Library as well as other cultural institutions from around the world. Users are invited to download and print the coloring sheets via the website www.colorourcollections.org and share their filled-in images with hashtag #ColorOurCollections.

Nina Berman headshotJoin author and documentary photographer, Nina Berman, on February 21 for Navigating Care for the Most Vulnerable. Berman will take us through the healthcare system’s cracks through the photographic story of one woman’s travails with drug abuse, homelessness, and mental illness for thirty years, revealing an intimate encounter with health care in the U.K. and the U.S.

paul-braff-e1512763884522.jpgDuring the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many white people believed that African Americans were inherently ill. To challenge this, Booker T. Washington launched a public health campaign in 1915: National Negro Health Week. On March 6, speaker Paul Braff will give the Iago Galdston Lecture on “Who Needs a Doctor?: The Challenge of National Negro Health Week to the Medical Establishment,” which will examine the changes in, and challenges to, medical authority and public health in African American communities the Week caused.

Daniel Margocsy headshotIn the past five hundred years, copies of Andreas Vesalius’ Fabrica travelled across the globe, and readers studied, annotated and critiqued its contents in different ways from its publication in 1543 to 2017. On April 24, Daniel Margócsy will give the Annual Friends of the Rare Book Room Lecture, “Reading Vesalius Across the Ages,” which will discuss the book’s complex reception history, show how physicians, artists, theologians and collectors filled its pages with copious annotations, and offer an interpretation of how this atlas of anatomy became one of the most coveted rare books for 21st-century collectors.     

Randi Esptein headshotFinally, on June 28, Academy Fellow and author Randi Hutter Epstein will give the talk AROUSED: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything. Hormones have a fascinating history replete with medical sleuths, desperate patients, and swindlers. Dr. Epstein will separate the hype from the hope in hormonal discoveries and mishaps, past and present.

Check back here for special guest posts by some of our speakers in the coming months!

Red Medicine: The West Looks at the Soviet Experiment in the 1930s

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

Last month marked the 100th anniversary of the Great October Revolution, whereby the Bolsheviks in Petrograd overthrew the Russian government and took power.[1] Immediately after, the Revolution’s leader, Vladimir Lenin, consolidated his rule by suppressing competing political parties; withdrawing Russia from World War I; and fighting a bitter Civil War. By the early 1920s, the country had obtained a modicum of peace, albeit isolated from the rest of the world. Through wars and purges, technological advance and political suppression, the Bolsheviks, renamed the Communist Party, held control in Russia for almost 75 years.

In a Hospital Waiting Room, Moscow

Margaret Bourke White, “In a Hospital Waiting Room, Moscow,” 1932. Red Medicine, endpaper.

Lenin was aware of Russia’s backwardness compared with the West. He saw Communist rule as a way to make up for that deficiency. His oft-cited definition of communism made this belief explicit: “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.” Soviet power meant political rule that flowed from ostensibly democratic workers’ councils (the Russian word for “council” is “soviet”), with the aim of basing governance in the working class; electrification meant providing the latest means of technological development. Soviet rule and technological development, together, would enable the country to leap-frog its capitalist neighbors and become the vanguard for humanity’s future development, both social and economic.

The socialist left hoped this vision would be realized. Early accounts were enthusiastic—sympathetic American journalist Lincoln Steffens gushed in 1919: “I have seen the future, and it works!”

By the 1930s, as the United States and Europe slid into the Great Depression, Soviet Russia was held out as a more workable and more equitable society than those in the West. In the field of medicine and public health, two observers set out to see if that were true. Sir Arthur Newsholme (1857–1943), and John Adams Kingsbury (1876–1956), a Briton and an American, traveled through the Soviet Union in August and September 1932.[2] Their account was published the following year as Red Medicine: Socialized Health in Soviet Russia.[3]

Itinerary of the authors

“Itinerary of the authors, who traveled 9,000 miles within Soviet Russia.” Red Medicine, p. 19.

Newsholme and Kingsbury travelled over 9,000 miles throughout the Soviet Union. Entering Russia from Poland, the two traveled to Moscow, took a trip up to Leningrad and back, and then headed east to Kazan, south to Samara and Stalingrad, and jogged back to Rostov-on-Don before journeying to Tiflis (Tbilisi) in Soviet Georgia. They traveled back to Moscow by way of Sochi, Sevastopol (in Crimea), and Kharkov in Ukraine, and from Moscow, they returned to Poland. Their book chronicled their trip with an overlay of commentary. It was in part a look at Soviet institutions, such as residential and non-residential treatment, physician training, maternity care, and tuberculosis sanitaria. Beyond this, the authors provided social and political observations on life in the Soviet Union, with chapters on “The Background of Russian Life,” “Stages in the Introduction of Communism,” “Women in Soviet Russia,” and “Religious and Civil Liberty and Law.”

Though clear-eyed about the authoritarian nature of the Soviet government, Newsholme (the acknowledged author of most of the work) nonetheless focused on one question:

Does the Soviet organization—including all that is implied in the unification of financial responsibilities and control of the entire resources of the country—assist to an exceptional extent a complete medical and hygienic service for the entire community? To this question we can at once give a definitely affirmative answer. [4]

Though the “civilized countries” had variously tended toward socialized medicine, he thought that the U.S.S.R. had surpassed them all, both in delivery of health care and in prevention, in social services as well as medicine more narrowly defined. As one reviewer of Red Medicine understood Newsholme’s claim:

“[In the] organization and practice of medicine . . . the present government has made truly great progress, and seems to have only fairly gotten under way. The authors clearly perceive that Russia has laid a more adequate basis for up-to-date public health than any western nation; also, that we have arrived at a stage of cultural development when medical services must be provided on a sound basis for all, regardless of ability to pay.”[5]

Traveling dental station

Soviet Photo Agency, “Traveling dental station in rural district near Moscow,” [1932]. Red Medicine, p. 223.

This level of public support was seen as the inevitable goal of social development, so much so that, as Newsholme put it, “Even if the Communist experiment fails, Russian government cannot be expected to revert entirely to capitalist conditions.”

Did the Soviet experiment work? The new system of medicine and public health was initially very successful in dealing with infectious disease and extending care more widely through the country. Nonetheless, as Newsholme had envisioned, the initial impetus could not be sustained. Fifty years after Red Medicine, the system was broken; while citizens could usually get access to health care, quality lagged. After the collapse of the Soviet system in 1989–91, the new Russian government attempted reform and adopted a mixed public-private economic model, mandating compulsory health insurance while continuing a guaranteed right to free care. Fifteen years on, though, an OECD report concluded that “Russia continues to struggle with a health and mortality crisis.”[6] One could fairly state that our country faces such as crisis today as well, and in both cases, the resolution is yet to come.

A note: Red Medicine includes several photographs by noted photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White, taken during her own 1932 trip to the Soviet Union, and provided freely to the authors for their use.[7]

Endnotes:
[1] Yes, it took place in November! In 1917, Russia still used the Julian calendar, according to which the day of the Bolshevik coup was October 25. The rest of the West, using the Gregorian calendar, called that day November 7. Most of Catholic Europe had switched to the Gregorian calendar in 1582, with the Protestant countries adopting it in the 17th century and the British domains in 1752. Russia made the change in early 1918, one of the last countries in Europe to do so.

[2] Newsholme was an eminent British public servant and advocate of state intervention in public health, while Kingsbury, a Fellow of The New York Academy of Medicine, was formerly Commissioner of Public Charities for New York City, and at that time, Executive Director of the Milbank Fund, a foundation supporting research in health policy.

See “Sir Arthur Newsholme, K.C.B., M.D. (LOND.), F.R.C.P.,” American Journal of Public Health 33(8) (August 1943): 992–94; John M. Eyler, Sir Arthur Newsholme and State Medicine, 1885–1935, Cambridge History of Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Arnold S. Rosenberg, “The Rise of John Adams Kingsbury,” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 63(2) (April 1972): 55–62; “Biographical Note,” The John Adams Kingsbury Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, accessed November 7, 2017.

[3] Sir Arthur Newsholme and John Adams Kingsbury, Red Medicine: Socialized Health in Soviet Russia (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1933). Note that, despite the title, the work was about more than Soviet Russia. The two men’s travels took them to the Georgian and Ukrainian Soviet Republics as well.

This work was conceived as in some ways completing Newsholme’s previous three-volume survey of medical practice in Europe, which he undertook with the support of the Milbank Foundation: Medicine and the State: The Relation between the Private and Official Practice of Medicine, with Special Reference to Public Health. London, Baltimore: George Allen and Unwin, Williams and Wilkins; 1932. The Academy Library holds the third volume.

[4] Newsholme and Kingsbury, Red Medicine, “Concluding Observations” (for this and subsequent statements).

[5] Frank H. Hankins, “[Review of] Red Medicine: Socialized Health in Soviet Russia. By Sir Arthur Newsholme and John Adams Kingsbury,” Social Forces 14 (1) (1 October 1935), 155–56, accessed November 7, 2017. Hankins (1877–1970) was a prominent American sociologist.

[6] William Tompson, “Healthcare Reform in Russia: Problems and Prospects,” Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Economics Department Working Papers, No. 538 (Paris, January 15, 2007), 5.

[7] Gary D. Saretzky, catalog for “Margaret Bourke-White in Print: An Exhibition at Archibald S. Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, January–June 2006,” item 23, Red Medicine, accessed November 7, 2017.