Author Archives: nyamhistorymed

Take a Peck of Garden Snails

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By Rebecca Pou, Archivist

This Saturday, May 24, is Escargot Day. We are going to pass on the escargot and instead recognize the occasion by sharing a few medicinal receipts featuring our favorite gastropod. Fortunately for snails, we do not recommend trying the recipes.

Today, snails are most frequently consumed in upscale restaurants, but snails have historically been part of the medicine cabinet, so to speak. People most often used snails in preparations to treat consumption, but the shelled creatures were also thought to cure earaches, deformations, asthma, bronchitis, coughs, rickets, cold sores, swellings, and warts.1

In 2013, the Center completed a project cataloging our manuscript receipt books; we came across preparations for “snail water” many times as we worked through the books. The three receipts below come from one of these manuscripts, A Collection of Choise Receipts, a late 17th-century English manuscript with exquisite penmanship, perhaps written by a professional scribe. As you can see, “sharpness in [the] blood” and appetite loss, strangely, can be added to the list of ailments snails were alleged to treat.

From A Collection of Choise Receipts. Click to enlarge.

From A Collection of Choise Receipts. Click to enlarge.

From A Collection of Choise Receipts. Click to enlarge.

From A Collection of Choise Receipts. Click to enlarge.

From A Collection of Choise Receipts. Click to enlarge.

From A Collection of Choise Receipts. Click to enlarge.

You can look at additional receipts for snail water (and more) throughout the year by visiting us. Email history@nyam.org if you are interested in consulting the collections. As a little tease, I left out the receipt for snail water with goose dung and sheep dung.

Happy Escargot Day!

Reference
1. Hatfield, Gabrielle. (2004) Snail. In Encyclopedia of Folk Medicine: Old World and New World Traditions. Retrieved from http://books.google.com.

Angelique Marguerite Le Boursier du Coudray’s Abrégé de l’art des accouchements

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During the fall 2013 semester, Hunter College students in Professor Daniel Margocsy’s undergraduate seminar, Health and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800, visited NYAM several times to talk about rare anatomical books. Each student then studied one text in depth, learned about its bibliographical and historiographical context, and wrote a blog post about that item. We are pleased to feature two of the blog posts from the class, one last week and one today, both on books from our collections relating to midwifery.

By Rebecca Halff

The title page of Abrégé de l’art de l’accouchmens.

The title page of Abrégé de l’art des accouchements. Click to enlarge.

Simply put, the magnitude of Angelique Marguerite Le Boursier du Coudray’s 1769 Abrégé de l’art des accouchements does not slap the reader in the face. The Abrégé is a small, light, unobtrusive volume. It easily fits in one’s hands and could be squeezed into a woman’s large apron pocket. Although it contains color images—a marker of luxury in eighteenth-century France—they are few, and are used only when illustrations are absolutely necessary. If we were to liken the midwifery textbook to a woman, we would say that despite her superior intelligence and great beauty, the Abrégé is modest and self-effacing, preferring to stand discretely in a corner at parties rather than flaunt herself ostentatiously.

This trait may be the reason the academic world neglected the Abrégé for so long despite its important contributions—and the important contributions of its author—to the field of midwifery. Only in 1998 was the first scholarly biography of du Coudray written.1 It is surprising that her unique story did not attract the interest of feminist historians before then. Not only was du Coudray a high-achieving woman of the eighteenth-century, but she gained fame when men were taking over the field of midwifery. This makes her quite an anomaly: she was a powerful woman in a field in which women were steadily losing power.2

du Coudray, from the frontispiece of Abrégé de l’art de l’accouchmens.

Du Coudray, from the frontispiece of Abrégé de l’art des accouchements. Click to enlarge.

We know nothing about du Coudray’s first twenty years of life. She likely came from a middle-class background, but her only English-language biographer explains that “because we know nothing of her biological birth, her professional birth must serve as our beginning.”3We do know that at twenty-five years old, du Coudray had graduated from the College of Surgery in Paris and completed the three years of apprenticeship required to become an accredited midwife. Within the next few years, the school of surgery on the rue des Cordeliers, which had always welcomed midwives to its surgery lectures, decided to bar its doors to them. This was only one of many new developments that sought to exclude, reject, and ultimately eliminate female midwives. Du Coudray reacted by signing a petition pressing the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris to provide instruction to midwives and midwifery students.4

Surprisingly, University of Paris doctors conceded rapidly to the request. Their reasons for doing so have much to do with their age-old conflict with surgeons, a group of medical practitioners usually clustered into the same humiliating category as barbers. In 1743, however, the King had elevated the status of surgeons. Given their new prestige, surgeons sought to expand their territory to the field of midwifery, squeezing out female midwives by denying them instruction, as they had done at the school on the rue des Cordeliers. But Parisian midwives had challenged surgeons with their petition, arguing that their refusal to educate midwives amounted to neglect of their professional duties. Surgeons were accused of selfishly causing a dangerous reality: midwives were not being thoroughly trained, midwifery students were not becoming officially accredited, and as a result there was a shortage of midwives in the city. Doctors stepped in both to remedy the dilemma and to make their adversaries (surgeons) look worse than they already did.5

Plate III: A fetus in its natural position.

Plate III: A fetus in its natural position. Click to enlarge.

Through her involvement in this political matter, du Coudray gained a measure of renown in Paris. This was compounded by the very small number of midwives who were allowed to practice in the city—the world of Parisian midwifery was insular and intimate. Through what we today refer to as networking, Du Coudray made acquaintance and friends and formed alliances with important and well-connected medical professionals.

In 1759, King Louis XV charged du Coudray with the responsibility of educating rural midwives. In the wake of the Seven Years War, concerns had arisen over a high death toll and a simultaneous decrease in the French birth rate. Healthy pregnancies, safe deliveries, and the survival of infants suddenly became nationalist causes: France needed all the subjects it could get. The practice of midwifery became a means to support the state, and du Coudray soon became a national sensation and international symbol of French medical advancement.5

Plate XXIII deals with the difficulty of delivering twins presenting together and feet first. Click to enlarge.

At the King’s request, du Coudray began touring the French countryside to deliver medical lectures to rural midwives whose perceived incompetence was causing the deaths of French women (baby-makers) and infants (future soldiers and baby-makers). The Abrégé compiles these lectures in the order in which du Coudray delivered them. Du Coudray begins by discussing the female reproductive organs and the process of reproduction. She follows this with the issue of proper prenatal care. Finally, she instructs readers on deliveries, including how to handle common obstetric problems, for example a baby coming out feet-first, knee-first, stomach-first, or arm-first, the delivery of twins, and the delivery of a stillborn. Du Coudray concludes the Abrégé with a list of what she terms “observations”—singular cases that she believes should be noted despite their rare occurrence. These “observations” include the tale of a woman who remained pregnant for twenty-two months, and the case of a woman who began excreting the bones of a fetus as a result of an intestinal pregnancy.

Du Coudray’s lecture series and the resulting Abrégé  were incredible feats for an eighteenth-century woman. But the King’s midwife’s most celebrated achievement was not the publication of her book, but rather the invention of her “machine,” to which she refers several times in the Abrégé. This “machine” was the first of its kind: a teaching model of the female reproductive system. It came with a leather and cloth fetus which could be placed in any number of different positions to simulate the complications of a real delivery.

Picture of Madame du Coudray’s “Machine,” from the website of Les Musees en Haute-Normandie.

Picture of Madame du Coudray’s “Machine,” from Les Musees en Haute-Normandie.

Du Coudray was a medical innovator—a forward-thinking, idealistic pioneer. She realized the need for outreach to and instruction of rural midwives, toured France’s smallest villages to deliver these lectures herself, converted her lectures into a book format, and invented an anatomically accurate “machine” to ensure the proper training of midwives before they provided medical care.

But du Coudray did not stop her discussion at prenatal care and delivery. She also denounced traditional midwifery practices that caused unnecessary deaths, offering new ideas that would result in healthier mothers and babies. For example, du Coudray criticized the common practice of removing near-dead infants from their mothers immediately, done in order to avoid distressing the already exhausted and weakened new mother. These babies—immediately seized up as lost causes—were placed as far away from their mothers as possible, often on the floor. Midwives would then take care of their adult patient, leaving the baby to slowly perish. As du Coudray tells it, midwives could prevent many of these deaths if they did not give up on feeble infants so quickly and casually. Once, she recounts, she noticed that a baby’s toe had been bitten off by the household dog without anybody even noticing. Du Coudray accuses midwives of causing needless and preventable deaths through their foolish and antiquated practices. She instructs them to immediately attempt to revive faltering babies rather than leave them to their death.

Plate VIII: The proper hand position to help the baby’s head emerge in a normal delivery. Click to enlarge.

Du Coudray was serious about her life’s work. She was simultaneously a medical innovator, concerned with advancing medical knowledge and developing new techniques, and a spokesperson for rural women who did not have access to competent midwives. But du Coudray does not present herself as either a medical innovator or a champion for ethical medicine in the Abrégé. Instead of proclaiming her passion for medicine, du Coudray downplays her agency, explaining again and again that she had no choice but to become involved in this work. Sometimes, she uses Christian rhetoric: how can we not, as good Christians, respond to the call of our brothers and sisters who need our help? Sometimes, she justifies her work by reframing it as nationalist—isn’t it a crime against France to deprive the nation of a subject? And sometimes, she cites the ineptitude of some midwives as the catalyst for her career: because of her intelligence, her natural duty is to find a way to transmit knowledge to someone with less knowledge. She even explains her greatest innovation in these terms, stating that she “perfected a machine which pity made [her] imagine.”

Like the Abrégé, du Coudray herself is self-effacing. A serious midwife who dedicated herself to her work, she cites religion, responsibility to the state, and pity for inspiring her career. Undoubtedly, she relied on this technique to get away with being a serious physician in a time when women were being pushed out of the medical sphere. She softened her persona and message to make it acceptable to male ears. But this technique did not die out with du Coudray. Women throughout history have used excuses to justify their pursuit of higher education and higher status, and will continue to do so until it is no longer necessary. Du Coudray provided the medical world with important resources, her book and her “machine.” She also left women with an example of how to achieve despite societal expectations, as she successfully gained a career she was passionate about, the mastery of her art, the esteem of her colleagues, students, and superiors, and a degree of fame and celebrity.

References

1. Nina Rattner Gelbart, The King’s Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 8.

2. Lisa Forman Cody, “Sex, Civility, and the Self: Du Coudray, d’Eon, and Eighteenth-Century Conceptions of Gendered, National, and Psychological Identity,” French Historical Studies 24 no. 3 (2001): 379-407.

3. Nina Rattner Gelbart, The King’s Midwife, 25.

4. Ibid., 26-42.

5. Ibid., 42-46.

6. “News,” Middlesex Journal or Universal Evening Post (London, England), Sep. 12, 1772.

The Art of Midwifery Improv’d

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During the fall 2013 semester, Hunter College students in Professor Daniel Margocsy’s undergraduate seminar, Health and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800, visited NYAM several times to talk about rare anatomical books. Each student then studied one text in depth, learned about its bibliographical and historiographical context, and wrote a blog post about that item. We are pleased to feature two of the blog posts from the class, one this week and one next, both on books from our collections relating to midwifery.

By Sarah Hatoum

The Discovery

Title page to The Art of Midwifery, Improv'd.

Title page to The Art of Midwifery, Improv’d. Click to enlarge.

In the eighteenth century, the field of obstetrics enjoyed an influx of novel scientific observations about birth and innovations aiding the process of birth. Dutch physician Hendrik van Deventer, author of The Art of Midwifery Improv’d, was the first to give a thorough description of the pelvis and was the first to suggest that the shape and size of the pelvic bone could cause difficulty in birth (e.g. if the pelvis were too narrow, usually due to rickets—the softening and deformation of bones caused by malnutrition—a child could not be born).1 Van Deventer asserted that determining the shape and size of a pregnant woman’s pelvis and being familiar with the relationship of the fetus and pelvic bones were essential for a midwife to carry out a safe delivery. 2

In the preface of Van Deventer’s instructive, detailed, and “beautifully calf-bound octavo volume” The Art of Midwifery Improv’d,3 translated from Dutch and Latin into English in 1716, an “Eminent Physician” briefly praises the works of contemporary French physicians such as the skilled man-midwife Francois Mariceau but ultimately remarks that Van Deventer’s The Art of Midwifery Improv’d is “more perfect, more easy, better founded, and extend[s] to more Cases” than other physicians’ works.4

While this was a lofty claim, it was true that prior to Van Deventer there had been little attention paid to the structure of the pelvis. Dr. H. L. Houtzager suggests two reasons for this lack of attention prior to the eighteenth century. Since there was an accepted belief that fetuses were born “by their own strenuous efforts,” there was no reason to blame the bony structure of the pelvis for the death of a fetus. The second reason was that people did not often challenge the Hippocratic paradigm (named after the ancient Greek father of medicine, Hippocrates) that suggested that pelvic bones completely separated during birth. Van Deventer determined that the pelvis was essentially “rigid and had only one mobile part—the coccyx.” Again, following the Hippocratic idea, there would also be no cause to suggest that the pelvis could cause a malformed or fatal birth.5

The Journey

Van Deventer was born in the Netherlands in 1651, during a Dutch golden age. In his early adulthood, Van Deventer moved to Germany and joined an orthodox Protestant sect, the Labadists.6  Van Deventer was in good company, for two notable women, religious writer Anna Maria van Schurman and the natural-philosophical artist Maria Sibylla Merian, had also belonged to the sect.7 Van Deventer became a mentee to the parish’s medical assistant and eventually became the community’s private physician, surgeon, and man-midwife (he later wrote, five years before his death in 1724, “I have already been delivering babies for roughly forty years…”).8 Van Deventer’s time as the head physician of the Labadist community allowed him to gain hands-on experience in certain fields of medicine, most particularly, orthopedics. The Labadists maintained an ascetic diet often resulting in a vitamin D deficiency that led to bone deformation. Van Deventer thus became proficient in the field of orthopedics, invented instruments to correct bone deformities in adults as well as infants,9 and even treated the King of Denmark, Christian V, for rickets.10

In 1694, the central college of doctors in The Hague denied Van Deventer membership because he did not have the proper background (i.e. he had not studied classical Latin). As a result, he moved to Voorburg (where philosopher Baruch Spinoza lived in the 1660s and worked on his magnum opus Ethics), which was not under the Hague’s jurisdiction, allowing Van Deventer free reign; it is here that he began to educate midwives. Several years later, as a middle-aged man, Van Deventer was finally allowed to officially practice as a physician in The Hague.11

Words of Wisdom

Van Deventer applied his orthopedic knowledge to obstetrics and was the first to focus on physical structure of the pelvis and its importance in The Art of Midwifery Improv’d. The question of why Van Deventer decided to write this book as well as why he became interested in obstetrics could be because of his religious fervor. In The Art of Midwifery Improv’d, there is an emphasis on a safe, natural (i.e. without the use of forceps) deliveries because of his belief that a child is made in the image and likeness of God. Furthermore, the work concludes with an Amen. His handbook acts as a prayer for the preservation of the lives of God’s creations. Perhaps Van Deventer’s challenge of the widely accepted Hippocratic paradigm was a testament to Van Deventer’s religious conviction, and he saw himself as a martyr in the name of perfecting the art of the birth of a child made in God’s image.

Plate 4, with figures showing shows the relation of a certain position of the fetus to the pelvis. Click to enlarge.

Plate 4, with figures showing shows the relation of a certain position of the fetus to the pelvis. Click to enlarge.

Van Deventer held midwives in high esteem and was unlike some of his contemporaries who preferred “man-midwives” to female midwives. Man-midwives, from the seventeenth century onward, were fighting to gain supremacy over female midwives and believed that female midwives were “ignorant meddlers whose arrogance prevented them from calling for male assistance” and that they “lacked a theoretical comprehension of childbirth.” 12 Van Deventer was probably a supporter of female midwives because his wife was a midwife, practiced with him and may have contributed to innovative medical discoveries.13

Figure 5, Number 1 shows a placenta for a single infant. Number 2 shows a placenta for twins.

Figure 5, number 1 (bottom) shows a placenta for a single infant. Number 2 (top) shows a placenta for twins. Click to enlarge.

Many man-midwives such as Mauriceu were “confined within the horizon of traditional obstetric surgery” which Wilson ascribes to a focus on handling a dead child rather than a live one.14 Van Deventer instead focused on providing a safe delivery. He gave detailed advice that would allow midwives to perform a safe and efficient birth. First and foremost, he wrote, midwives should have knowledge of female anatomy. Thenceforth, Van Deventer wrote, midwives should know:

  • How to handle patient and child
  • How to deal with afterbirth (the placenta discharged after birth)
  • How to respond to infants positioned awkwardly in the womb during birth
  • General birth preparation
  • How to offer emotional support post-birth to mother and child15

Unlike many of his predecessors, Van Deventer’s work featured accurate illustrations of the pelvis, seen in Figure 1 below:

Figure 1: The pelvis.

Figure 1: The pelvis. Click to enlarge.

The Art of Midwifery Improv’d brought forth important ideas that had not been studied prior to its publication— particularly the importance of the pelvic bone in birth. Hendrik van Deventer laid the groundwork for a focus on orthopedics within the field of obstetrics. Safer deliveries of children and a better understanding of the process of birth came through his advice to midwives.

References

1. John Byers, “The Evolution of Obstetric Medicine,” The British Medical Journal 1, no. 2685, 15 June 1912, 1347.

2. H. L. Houtzager,“The Commemoration of the Birthday of H. Van Deventer,” Vesalius 7, 2001, 17.

3. Byers, 1347.

4. Hendrik van Deventer, The Art of Midwifery Improv’d, (London, 1716): 4.

5. Adrian Wilson, The Making of Man-midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660-1770, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995), 56 and Houtzager, 16-17.

6. L. J. Benedek-Jaszmann, “The Silversmith Who Became the Co-Founder of Modern Obstetrics,” 1980, 243.

7. Wilson, 80.

8. Qtd. in Peter M. Dunn, “Hendrik van Deventer (1651-1724) and the Pelvic Birth Canal,” Perinatal Lessons from the Past, 1998.

9. Byers, 1347.

10. Jaszmann, 243.

11. R. M. F. van der Weiden and W. J. Hoogsteder, “A New Light upon Hendrik van Deventer (1651-1724): Identification and Recovery of a Portrait,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 90, October 1997.

12. Lianne McTavish. Childbirth and the Display of Authority in Early Modern France, (International Ltd., 2005).

13. Wilson, 80.

14. Wilson, 56.

15. Van Deventer, 14.

Preservation Enclosures 101 (Items of the Month)

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By Christina Amato, Book Conservator, Gladys Brooks Book & Paper Conservation Laboratory

How simple is a box?

It is often overlooked, but creating appropriate enclosures, or housing, for collection materials is an important part of the work of a library conservation lab. A well made box can have a huge impact on the longevity of a book. Conservators have to weigh many factors when deciding what kind of enclosure is appropriate to use. When is a clamshell box the best choice, and when would a phase box be better? Scroll down to see some examples of typical enclosures made at the Gladys Brooks Book and Paper Conservation Laboratory.

First, the clamshell box. This type of enclosure is one of the most traditional you will find in a library. Each one is custom made for each book. They provide an enormous amount of protection to the book, and can be very attractive. However, they are quite time consuming to make, and add to the width of the book. For one or two books, this may not be significant, but for a large collection, and if you have limited shelf space, it can become an issue.

Enclosures1-2_merged_watermark

Three books in clamshell boxes, left. An open box, right.

Consider the pamphlets below, which are housed in brittle and crumbling old folders. They no longer provide adequate protection to the material inside, and in some cases are actively causing damage. Clearly, new enclosures are needed. However, there are thousands of these pamphlets in the collection, and it would be impractical to create clamshell boxes for each one.

Enclosures3-4_merged_watermark

Pamphlets in need of new housing.

Enter the phase box, or wrapper. These are constructed out of a thin cardstock and take up much less room on a shelf than a clamshell box. They also take a fraction of the time to complete, though each is also custom made for the material within.

Enclosures5-6_merged_watermark

Phase boxes.

Phase boxes are a good solution for this kind of collection. However . . . are there any downsides to having rows and rows of items that look like this?

Rows of phase boxes.

Rows of phase boxes.

What if your collection looks like this?

A shelf with visible spines.

A shelf of books with visible spines.

Conservators at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, developed a “visible spine phase box” similar to a traditional phase box, but which incorporates a clear piece of Mylar. This way, you can see what is inside the enclosure. Not only can this be more appealing visually than a row of undifferentiated cardstock, but it can be useful in monitoring the condition of a book. And, of course, it is immediately obvious if the box’s tenant has gone missing!

Books in visible spine phase boxes.

Books in visible spine phase boxes.

Occasionally, an item will enter the lab that doesn’t fit into any of the usual categories. Below is a Sinhalese “Ola,” or a palm-leaf manuscript, written in 1720. The mailer bag it arrived in doesn’t quite meet the standards for an adequate enclosure.

An ola in a mailer bag.

An Ola in a mailer bag.

Our solution was to make a modified clamshell box; the sides are cut away so that it is easy to reach in and safely remove the item; the cover is built up to provide room for the protruding button and string on the cover; and the sides are covered with a smooth Tyvek to protect the fragile palm leaf edges.

An Ola in a modified clamshell box.

An Ola in a modified clamshell box.

If you have an entire box full of Olas that require re-housing, however, like the unfortunate ones below, that may prove to be too time consuming.

Many unfortunate Olas in need of rehousing.

Many unfortunate Olas in need of rehousing.

The solution here was to modify a commercially made enclosure with separate compartments made out of Valera foam. Each piece is protected, and using a pre-made, standard sized box saved time.

Olas in a modified commercially made enclosure.

Olas in a modified commercially made enclosure.

These are just a few of the typical sorts of enclosures you will encounter in a library. Labs will often make their own modifications and improvements. Whether it be simple or very complex, the box plays a crucial role in preserving fragile materials.

The LaGuardia Report: Exploration of a Chronic Issue in American Drug Policy

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On May 1 and 2, The New York Academy of Medicine and the Drug Policy Alliance co-hosted a conference, The LaGuardia Report at 70. Featuring more than 25 speakers, including historians, policy experts, political figures, and community organizers, the conference provided a forum to understand the state of marijuana regulation and enforcement in New York and to see the current debates in the context of over a hundred years of public policy fights around drugs and drug regulation in the United States.

For the conference, we created a small exhibit featuring facsimiles of materials from the New York Academy of Medicine’s Committee on Public Health Relations archive, as well as the original 1944 report. We are pleased to share the images with you on our blog.

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In 1938, at the request of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, The New York Academy of Medicine’s Committee on Public Health Relations formed a subcommittee to study marijuana use in New York City. As you can see in this letter to Mayor LaGuardia from the Academy’s president, James Alexander Miller, M.D., the subcommittee determined a more extensive study was necessary. They recommended two approaches, a sociological study of marijuana use in the city and a clinical investigation of its physiological and psychological effects. (Click to enlarge.)

In the sociological study, six police officers acted as social investigators. They ventured into places where marijuana might be available and socialized with people in order to find out who was using marijuana and how it was being distributed. Olive J. Cregan was one of the investigators. This page from her report describes some of her interactions, including one in a speakeasy that she called “the worst dive I have ever seen.” While they learned a great deal about marijuana use in the city, one of the study’s conclusions was that “the publicity concerning the catastrophic effects of marihuana smoking in New York City is unfounded.”

In the sociological study, six police officers acted as social investigators. They ventured into places where marijuana might be available and socialized with people in order to find out who was using marijuana and how it was being distributed. Olive J. Cregan was one of the investigators. This page from her report describes some of her interactions, including one in a speakeasy that she called “the worst dive I have ever seen.” While they learned a great deal about marijuana use in the city, one of the study’s conclusions was that “the publicity concerning the catastrophic effects of marihuana smoking in New York City is unfounded.”

This report from the clinical team gives a sense of the reputation marijuana had at the time of the study, a view that the study eventually countered. There was great concern about marijuana’s potential for addiction and its role in crime. The study found little basis for its bad reputation. (Click to enlarge.)

This report from the clinical team gives a sense of the reputation marijuana had at the time of the study, a view that the study eventually countered. There was great concern about marijuana’s potential for addiction and its role in crime. The study found little basis for its bad reputation. (Click to enlarge.)

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The LaGuardia report, formally titled The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York, was published in 1944.

On Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s 162nd Birthday

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Benjamin Ehrlich, today’s guest blogger, studies the life and work of Santiago Ramón y Cajal. His translations from Charlas de café have appeared in New England Review.

The study of the brain is receiving more attention than ever from the general public, and yet “the father of modern neuroscience” remains largely under-recognized. We owe our basic knowledge of what many consider the most complex object in the known universe to a man named Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934), born on this date in 1852.

Ramón y Cajal spent his life investigating nearly every part of the nervous system in numerous species, using old-fashioned microscopes and a series of chemical staining techniques. Contrary to the paradigmatic belief at the time, the Spanish histologist found that the nervous system (including the brain) is composed of distinctly individual cells (later termed neurons) that must communicate across nearly imperceptible gaps (later termed synapses). This became the basis for the neuron theory, disproving the reticular theory, which claimed the existence inside the brain of a continuous network formed by the fibers fused together.

"A neuron with a short axon in the cerebral cortex. Golgi Method." Figure 10 from Ramon y Cajal's Histologie du système nerveux de l'homme & des vertébrés. Copyright is owned by the family of Santiago Ramón y Cajal.

“A neuron with a short axon in the cerebral cortex. Golgi Method.” Figure 10 from Ramon y Cajal’s Histologie du système nerveux de l’homme & des vertébrés (1909–1911). Copyright is owned by the family of Santiago Ramón y Cajal.

In 1888, his “pinnacle year,” the first evidence of the existence of cells in the nervous system came from the cerebellum of a baby chicken (raised in the garden behind the laboratory in his home), in which he observed some infinitely small bodies that did not physically touch each other. Ramón y Cajal started his own scientific journal, the Revista trimestral de histología normal y patológica, in which he published his new papers. The first issue was released on his birthday.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal was born in Petilla de Aragón, a poor rural village in the mountains of northern Spain, with dirt roads and fewer than a hundred stone houses.1 His autobiography (Recollections of My Life, 1917) is in the collection of the New York Academy of Medicine Library, along with editions of his scientific masterpiece (Histology of the Nervous System of Man and Vertebrates, 1904), his final testament to the neuron theory (Neuron Theory or Reticular Theory?, 1933, translated in 1954) and his guidebook for biological researchers (Advice for a Young Investigator, 1987). Spanish titles include a collection of aphorisms and meditations (Charlas de café, or Café Chats, 1921) and a detailed account of old age (El mundo visto a los ochenta años, or The World as Seen By an Eighty-Year-Old, 1932). Ramón y Cajal describes the brain as a living scene, as he watched neurons develop throughout their dramatic course. Let us celebrate his life and work, which humanize the study of the brain.

Reference
1. Calvo Roy, Antonio. Cajal: Triunfar a toda costa. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1999.

Celebrate Preservation Week, April 26–May 3, 2014

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PreservationWeekIn 2010, the American Library Association (ALA) created Preservation Week to bring attention to the millions of items in collecting institutions that require care. Sponsored by the ALA’s Association of Library Collections and Services and partner organizations, it was designed to inspire the preservation of personal, family, and community collections of all kinds, as well as library, museum, and archive collections. The goal is also to raise awareness of the role libraries and other cultural institutions can play in providing ongoing preservation information.

What will you do to celebrate Preservation Week? Here are a few ideas.

1. Write a disaster plan for your institution, if it doesn’t have one already. If it doesn’t, you are not alone. According to a 2004 study, 78% of public libraries and 73% of academic libraries do not have an emergency plan or staff to carry it out. (Read more about it here.)

Get ahead of the game—here are some places to start:

2. Learn more about caring for your private collection materials.

Facsimile denture in custom-made clamshell box

Custom-made box for a facsimile of George’s Washington’s lower denture.

3. Make sure your collection materials are correctly housed. 

  • There are several posts about creating enclosures in our blog that you can peruse:

o Creating a box for a facsimile of George Washington’s lower denture.

o On re-housing our diploma collection.

o And be sure to check out our Item of the Month blog for May 2014, which features an introduction to enclosure basics.

  • A variety of custom enclosures are available from the following vendors:

o Archival Products (of particular note is the Academy folder, named after the New York Academy of Medicine)

o Talas

o Hollinger Metal Edge

4. Find a conservator. Of course, we don’t recommend undertaking conservation treatments unless you are a trained conservator. AIC (The American Institute for Conservation for Historic and Artistic Works) provides a searchable listing of conservation professionals working in specialties ranging from books and paper to objects and textiles. You can search by specialty or by zip code.

5. Attend a Preservation Week event. Click here for an event map and list of speakers.

Preservation week happens only once a year, but collections need constant care. We hope the above can help you get started, or serve as a reminder of the importance of preservation.

Read more about Preservation Week.

Marijuana Regulation: The LaGuardia Report at 70 (Item of the Month)

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

Medical and recreational marijuana regulation is undergoing a sea change right now, the reworking of a drug regulation regime that goes back at least 75 years. Debates about the drug are not new, however; the New York Academy of Medicine found itself in the middle of the political discussion back in the 1930s and 40s and is now taking a look at this history.

For a hundred years, from the published attestation of the medical use of Cannabis by William Brooke O’Shaughnessy in 1839, medical marijuana use increased and came more and more under medical regulation.  Discussions around regulation usually sounded two concerns: first, that the material be unadulterated and eventually physician-prescribed, and second, that potential benefits could be seen to outweigh harms. For from the beginning, many demonized marijuana use; early on, some went so far as to lump it in with opiates and their abuse.

By 1930, the United States established the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, with increased central control as the goal and Harry J. Anslinger as the willing head. In 1937, over the objections of the American Medical Association, he had pushed through the Marihuana Tax Act. An indirect means of control—as the state governments had most authority to control medicine and drugs directly—it was in fact very effective in criminalizing marijuana. Imposing annual licensing fees on producers and prescribers, it also called for a transfer fee of $1.00 per ounce to registered users, such as physicians, but $100.00 per ounce to unregistered ones—the vast majority. This tax structure was laid down in an era when average American incomes were about $2,000 a year. And indeed, $2,000 was the amount of the fine that could be imposed, along with up to five years in jail, with seizure of the drug as well. The first dealer convicted under the act received a sentence of four years in Leavenworth Penitentiary!

The title page of The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York.

The title page of The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York.

New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was skeptical of the reasons behind this stringent control. In 1938, he commissioned a report from the New York Academy of Medicine on marijuana use. With the study supported by the Commonwealth Fund, the Friedsam Foundation, and the New York Foundation, an expert panel of researchers considered “The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York” (as their report was ultimately titled) from the viewpoint of sociology, psychology, medicine, and pharmacology. Their work continued for six years.

The report ran 220 pages, and La Guardia’s own foreword summarized the results:

I am glad that the sociological, psychological, and medical ills commonly attributed to marihuana have been found to be exaggerated insofar as the City of New York is concerned. I hasten to point out, however, that the findings are to be interpreted only as a reassuring report of progress and not as encouragement to indulgence[!]

Anslinger was furious and denounced the report, and, as painstaking and factual as it was, it had little effect on marijuana decriminalization. Eventually, the Supreme Court found the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 unconstitutional on grounds of self-incrimination, in a suit raised by Timothy Leary in 1969. The next year, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act, which placed marijuana in Schedule I, the most highly controlled category, used for drugs that have no currently accepted medical use and are considered liable for abuse even under medical supervision. It remains there today.

On May 1 and 2, the New York Academy of Medicine, partnering with the Drug Policy Alliance, is mounting a day-and-a-half-long conference, “Marijuana & Drug Policy Reform in New York—the LaGuardia Report at 70.” Historians and drug policy experts will gather to consider the report and its effects, look at the “drug wars” over the last century, and survey the policy landscape of the near future. Please join us; the conference is free. View the full schedule and participant information. Register here.

Lessons from the Good Doctor

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, we are sharing poems from our collection throughout April.

By Rebecca Pou, Archivist

Cover of Der Gute Doktor. Click to enlarge.

Cover of Der gute Doktor. Click to enlarge.

This week, we’re celebrating national poetry month with some medical children’s verse. Der Gute Doktor:ein Nützlich Bilderbuch für Kinder und Eltern (The Good Doctor: a Useful Picture Book for Children and Parents) is a colorful children’s book written by Max Nassauer, a German gynecologist and writer.1  The first edition was published in 1905; our copy is the 9th edition, probably printed in 1926.

The book contains fourteen cautionary tales with medical morals. While the stories, and especially the illustrations, are amusing, they certainly aren’t lighthearted. The consequences of poor health habits are unpleasant. One boy falls ill after walking through the rain and snow. Another gives himself a painful stomachache because he is too embarrassed to use the bathroom at school. Sometimes the repercussions for ignoring the doctor’s orders are far more tragic. In one tale, a stubborn young man refuses the doctor’s medicine and dies the next day.

I found little information on the history of medically-themed children’s tales, but Der Gute Doktor falls into the larger tradition of didacticism in children’s literature. Grimm’s Fairy Tales, translated from oral stories between 1812 and 1857, include cautionary tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood.2 Der Gute Doktor especially brings to mind another children’s book written by a German doctor, Struwwelpeter by Dr. Heinrich Hoffman, published 60 years earlier.2 Struwwelpeter includes similar tales of unruly children suffering for their bad behavior. The tale of Augustus, a boy who refuses to eat his soup and starves to death, would easily fit among the tales of Der Gute Doktor.3 Struwwelpeter was hugely popular and is one of the most well-known German children’s books.2 Undoubtedly, Nassauer was familiar with and influenced by this iconic book.

Here are a few more lessons from the good doctor (translating credit and my thanks go to Mascha Artz):

Franz, the pip swallower

The original German text. Click to enlarge.

The original German text. Click to enlarge.

On the tree
Grows the plum.
In the arcade
hangs the grape,
Apples, pears of all kinds,
cherries grow in the garden.
Oh, how fruit is healthy!
Makes the cheeks red and round.

But there has been Franz,
Who has picked up all,
That was unripe and green.
Well, how bellyache catches him!
Plums, grapes he must snack on,
Without rinsing them.
Dirt and dust he partakes,
Until of cramps he suffered.
But what was the worst:
He cursed the pips in fact!

One time there was a big bawling,
That the mother comes running.
There laid Franz on the ground
And was like dead.

The doctor came, took a tube,
Sticks it into Franz’s tummy
And takes like this, horror of horrors,
Twelve cherry pips out.
If the doctor was not there,
Franz would be living nevermore.
The belly would have burst,
his disobedient tongue

Franz, the Pip Swallower. Click to enlarge.

Franz, the Pip Swallower. Click to enlarge.

Hans, who teased the animals

The original text. Click to enlarge.

The original text. Click to enlarge.

At uncle’s place there is a parrot;
who sings and talks and screeches.
It eats the fruit along with the pip.
Hans liked to watch this.
The uncle said: “Dear Hans,
Don’t touch the parrot by its tail!
Don’t go to close to the cage,
because the parrot can bite you!”
But Hans laughs and says:
“This cannot be that dangerous.”
His hand he put into the cage
and teased the parrot,
tried to grab it by the tail…
The parrot wants to hack him,
catches the finger… what crying!…
Hans’ finger is in pieces!
Blood runs down from his hand.
Hans’ limbs are shaking. –
The doctor put around his hand
Quickly a wound dressing
And gives Hans a severe look,
Nods his head and says:
“One mustn’t tease the animals!
In their fear they easily get frightened
And bite, with shock…
And crack, then the finger is gone.”

Hans, who teased the animals. Click to enlarge.

Hans, who teased the animals. Click to enlarge.

Anna who wouldn’t brush her teeth

The original text. Click to enlarge.

The original text. Click to enlarge.

Anna was perfectly healthy.
But she did not like rinsing her mouth
and she did not want to brush her teeth,
especially not using a tooth brush.
And soon she was not healthy any longer.
She smelled awful from her mouth.
The teeth rot and fell out…
How horrible Anna looked!
And all girls moved away from her
And sat down at the other corner.

And when she was older at a ball
all of her girl friends were dancing.
And nobody looked at Anna,
She did not have a single tooth left!
So she cried all day,
because nobody wanted to dance with her,
And sobs, although it doesn’t help now:
“Had I only brushed my teeth!”

Anna who wouldn’t brush her teeth. Click to enlarge.

Anna who wouldn’t brush her teeth. Click to enlarge.

 References

1. Gerabek, Werner E. (1997). Nassauer, Max.  New German Biography. Retrieved April 5, 2014 from http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd116884150.html.

2. Chalou, Barbara Smith. (2006). Struwwelpeter: Humor or Horror? Lanham: Lexington Books. Retrieved April 5, 2014 from http://books.google.com/books?id=2UE2AAAAQBAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s.

3. Hoffman, Heinrich. (n.d.)  Struwwelpeter: Merry Tales and Funny Pictures. New York: Frederick Warne & Co. Retrieved April 5, 2014 from http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12116.

The Origins of “Sweat”

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Guest blogger Bill Hayes, author of The Anatomist and the forthcoming Sweat: A History of Exercise, will present our 2014 Friends of the Rare Book Room Lecture, “Writing the Body,” on April 23 at 6pm. Register here.

Most of my writing has dealt in one way or the other with medical history and the human body. I don’t exactly know why or how to explain this. I don’t come from a family of doctors or scientists, for instance. But from an early age, I had a keen interest in the body. This has not changed. Sometimes I think I’m still in that stage you see babies in where they are endlessly fascinated with their own limbs. I am over 50 now, so I don’t see myself growing out of it. I look at the human body as an amazing machine and try to figure out how things work.

From the book Medico-Mechanical Gymnastics by Gustaf Zander, 1892

From the book Medico-Mechanical Gymnastics by Gustaf Zander, 1892

If I had excelled in the sciences in school, I might have gone on to become a doctor. But frankly, I didn’t even do well—I barely passed high school biology—whereas writing came easily. I followed that path instead. My interest in the body has led me to write about the science of sleep (my first book, Sleep Demons); the history of human blood (Five Quarts); and, in my last book, The Anatomist, the story behind the classic 19th-century anatomy text Gray’s Anatomy. For this, I spent a year studying anatomy alongside first-year medical students. I went from never having seen a cadaver to doing full cadaver dissection, trying to get a feel for what the original Henry Gray had done.

After finishing the book, I had time on my hands and spent hours working out at a gym. I began running again; I went to yoga classes; I swam. I got into the best shape I’d ever been in. Exercise and I had had a long history by this point, yet the notion that exercise itself might have a history—that there could be such a thing—never occurred to me until one afternoon at the gym.

I don’t recall the exact date but do know it was a cardio day, a cardiovascular workout, about six years ago. At the gym, I tend to go old school; the original StairMaster has long been my cardio machine of choice, both because it makes you sweat like nothing else and it gives you a certain psychological lift. Standing atop a StairMaster, one is a good four feet taller, allowing the illusion that you are Lord and Master of the Gym—like Sigourney Weaver when she mans the robotic killing machine in the second Aliens. You feel like you could conquer anything.

Santorius weighing himself for a metabolism experiment after eating a meal. From Medicina statica: being the aphorisms of Sanctorius, 1720. Click to enlarge.

I climbed up and punched in my usual program—Fat Burner, Level 15, 25 minutes. I arranged my towel and bottle of water, and thumbed in my iPod earphones. My finger found the machine’s START button, that small green circle, so powerfully endowed; each time you press it is a chance to wipe the slate clean and absolve yourself of somatic sins. Yet for some reason, I hesitated a moment on this particular day. I took in the scene before me—men and women of all ages and races, lifting weights, back-bending over giant rubber balls, fitting themselves into torturous-looking apparatuses, pulling themselves up on chin-up bars, dutifully doing sit-ups—and a thought popped into in my head: How did we all end up here? If one were to trace a line backward in time, where would one land?

I stood there and thought about this for a long while then pressed clear, took up my towel and water and climbed back down. What I did next was pure reflex: I went to the library. Little did I know at the time: the journey to write my next book, a history of exercise titled Sweat, had started.