Author Archives: losnyam

Innovation in Digital Publishing

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By Lisa O’Sullivan, Director, Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health

Here on the blog we normally write stories based on the content in our collections, upcoming events, and other issues related to the history of medicine and health. However, we are also deeply interested in the issues facing libraries and the people who use their services.

By now it’s axiomatic that the digital world poses new opportunities and challenges for researchers, libraries, educational institutions, and publishers, which must be engaged with digital formats in a sustained and thoughtful way. The realities of this landscape encompass challenges to traditional models of publication and new expectations around access to both historic collections and new research literature. Open Access (OA) publishing and archiving is a central one of these challenges. In December 2013, we hosted an informal meeting around questions of OA at The New York Academy of Medicine.

Why is OA such a critical concern for libraries, researchers and publishers? (And why should you as a reader care?). As participants in our 2013 event discussed, issues of access to information have, ironically, been exacerbated by the growth of digital journals and electronic resources. Access to new research, whether in the sciences or humanities, is often prohibitively expensive for individuals and institutions. Authors struggle to make their work accessible to the broadest possible readership. Jill Cirasella at CUNY has produced an excellent summary of what’s at stake in discussions of OA.

The Wellcome Trust has been at the forefront in supporting open access to the research it funds in biomedical science and medical humanities, from its support of the open-access eLife journal to ensuring that all research funded by the Trust is made freely available to users. As such, we’re delighted to be working with the Trust to coordinate a panel called Innovation in Digital Publishing in the Humanities at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting taking place in New York in January.

Our panel will examine OA from a number of perspectives. However the potentials (and associated challenges) of digital publishing go beyond OA to broader opportunities for readers, publishers, and writers in the digital world, whether relating to new ways of presenting archival material online, new ways of doing and sharing research, or new ways to engage larger audiences, and we will explore some of these as well.

The panel will be chaired by Stephen Robertson, professor and director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History & New Media at George Mason, whose Digital Harlem project has won multiple awards for innovation in digital history. We’ve asked our speakers to start the conversation early by giving their thoughts on the biggest challenge or opportunity facing digital publishing.

This week, we’ll start with two perspectives on Open Access and its implications, from Cecy Marden (Wellcome Trust) and Lisa Norberg (Barnard College Library). We will publish thoughts from Martin Eve (University of Lincoln and Open Library of Humanities), Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Modern Language Association), and Matthew K. Gold (New York City College of Technology and City University of New York, Graduate Center) over the next few weeks. Visit our Innovation in Digital Publishing section to read them all as they go live.

Feel free to pose questions to the participants individually or as a group; they will respond here and take your thoughts into consideration for the panel itself.

Global Celebrations of Vesalius’s 500th Birthday

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By Lisa O’Sullivan, Director, Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health

From the frontispiece of Vesalius’ Fabrica.

Not in New York? Plan a trip and attend our “Art, Anatomy, and the Body: Vesalius 500” Festival on October 18! You can read our guest curator Riva Lehrer’s thoughts on the Festival here, and get a sneak peak of a virtual dissection demonstration by Kriota Willberg; and Brandy Schillace on Naissance Macabre; as well as more information about Vesalius and his Fabrica. Keep an eye out for more Vesalius 500 guest posts to come.

But, much as we’d like to see you here on October 18, you don’t have to be in New York to celebrate Vesalius’ 500th birthday.

We always welcome visitors to make an appointment to visit our rare book reading room and examine our copies of the Fabrica and its companion volume, the Epitome (in addition to the rest of our collection). Those elsewhere can find beautiful colored digital versions of the Fabrica from the University of Basel Library and the Epitome at University of Cambridge Library’s digital library. The publishers of the new English language edition of the Fabrica also have some wonderful material online.

In addition, there are multiple birthday celebrations for Vesalius across the globe this year. Travelers can visit Leuven for the Unravelling the Body. The Theatre of Anatomy at the Leuven Museum, or the international conference Towards the Authority of Vesalius: Representations of the Human Body in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Dec 3–5); join the Vesalius Continuum Conference on Zakynthos, the Ionian Island on which Vesalius died (Sept 4–8 ); visit Down to the Bones: Celebrating 500 Years of Innovation (Jul 11–Oct 9) at the University of Utah libraries; see Discovering the Human Body at Anatomical Museum in Basel, as well as the only existing skeleton known to have been dissected by Vesalius (Sept 12–Mar 2015) and explore Vesalius and His Worlds: Medical Illustration during the Renaissance at the Huntington library (Dec 12–13). Vesalius was born on Dec 31, 1514; if the events of 2014 were not enough, keep an eye out for the St. Louis meeting celebrating Vesalius in 2015 (Feb 26-28). (Apologies to anyone whose event we’ve missed! The Karger Fabrica site has a great, and constantly updated list of Vesalius 500 events.)

“The Pest at the Gate”: Typhoid, Sanitation, and Fear in NYC

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By Lisa O’Sullivan, Director, Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health

The relationship between medicine and public health could be a complex one at the turn of the last century. In particular, the question of how to deal with infectious disease epidemics demanded that medical professionals and city officials grapple with sanitation and cleanliness, city infrastructure, water supplies, and garbage and sewage. Epidemics also raised questions of individual autonomy and the proper role of government. In response to these issues, Boards of Health emerged in many American cities in the second half of the 19th century. The New York Metropolitan Board of Health was the first, founded in 1866 after a campaign by Dr. Stephen Smith and The New York Academy of Medicine.

Poultney Bigelow, The Pest at Our Gates, ([New York] : Merchants’ Association of New York, [1908])

Bigelow Poultney, The Pest at Our Gates, (New York: Merchants’ Association of New York, 1908)

Relations were often fraught between the different groups responsible for the city’s health. Many physicians resented the interference of city-nominated health officials (many of whom they considered corrupt and/or incompetent) into the medical domain; health officials blamed doctors for failing to report cases of infectious diseases; and families regarded hospitals with suspicion and did their best to keep their ill relatives out of them.

The diseases most feared by New Yorkers included cholera, typhus, and typhoid fever. Between 1898 and 1907, at least 635 New Yorkers died from typhoid, with cases of the disease in the thousands.1 Typhoid spreads through water supplies contaminated with infected fecal matter. It can be transmitted via contaminated food or water, and more rarely, through direct contact with someone infected with the disease. As such, sources of the illness in late 19th-century New York were many and largely invisible, as the investigative journalist and author Poultney Bigelow described in 1908 in “The Pest at Our Gates”: typhoid sources ranged from the “placid, perilous Potomac” to “the deadly house fly,” “the fish and oyster menace” and the “perils that lurk in ice.”2 Fear of typhoid pushed public health initiatives and legislation to ensure safe water and food, adequate plumbing, and proper sewage control.

The specters of cholera, yellow fever, and smallpox recoil in fear as their way through the Port of New York is blocked by a barrier on which is written "quarantine" and by an angel holding a sword and shield on which is written "cleanliness." Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.

Cholera, yellow fever, and smallpox recoil in fear as a quarantine barrier and an angel holding bearing a shield of cleanliness blocks their way through the Port of New York. Image courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.

Fear of infectious disease often overlapped with fears about the changing face of the city and nation. As Alan M. Kraut explores in Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes and the Immigrant Menace, the relationship between immigration and public health in the United States has historically been informed by nativist debates about the identity of the nation and its ethnic makeup, fears about the potential limitations of scientific medicine, and the public health impact of immigration.3 As the gateway to America for hundreds of thousands of new immigrants, New York City became a focus for questions of quarantine and infectious disease. Epidemics, particularly of cholera, prompted many public health reforms in the city, especially increased scrutiny of immigrant arrivals at quarantine stations, including Ellis Island, where officials assessed arriving immigrants for their physical and mental health between 1892 and 1924.

In the case of typhoid, the specter of the foreigner as the reservoir of disease came to be personified by the Irish-born Mary Mallon, so-called “Typhoid Mary.” Mallon was a cook whose employment history in the kitchens of wealthy New Yorkers matched a spate of typhoid outbreaks in those same households in 1906. Mallon was a healthy carrier of typhoid, and was put under enforced quarantine by the Board of Health, which she vigorously resisted. On her release in 1909 she took multiple aliases and continued to work as a cook until 1915, when she was again detained and kept in isolation until her death in 1932. To some, Mallon was “the most dangerous woman in America”; to others, she was a symbol of the undermining of individual liberties by the government.4

In the case of typhoid fever, a combination of new vaccine technology and improved sanitation measures (particularly water chlorination) saw cases in the United States drop dramatically in the early 20th century. However, as is the case for many preventable infectious diseases, typhoid remains a problem in parts of the world with less developed public health infrastructure. On a global scale, medical and governmental responses to public health issues continue to exist in an uneasy tension with broader political and social concerns.

References

1. John Duffy,  A history of public health in New York City (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1968), p566

2. Poultney Bigelow, The Pest at Our Gates, (New York: Merchants’ Association of New York, 1908)

3. Alan M. Kraut, Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes and the Immigrant Menace (New York: Basic Books, 1994), pp 1-9

4. Judith Walzer Leavitt, Typhoid Mary: captive to the public’s health (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996); Alan M. Kraut, Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes and the Immigrant Menace (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 97-104.

 

Guest curator Riva Lehrer on Vesalius 500

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Our “Art, Anatomy, and the Body: Vesalius 500” festival guest curator, artist and anatomist Riva Lehrer, describes some of her thinking about bodies, anatomy and art.

In 1543, when Andreas Vesalius published his De humani corporis fabrica (On the fabric of the human body) many contemporaries refused to accept his results. They contradicted canonical texts passed down over millennia: belief and expectation trumped direct experience and observation.

It’s easy to smile condescendingly at such pig-headedness. Yet we can scarcely look in the mirror without being caught in a fog of distortion. Every day we’re overloaded with information about how we should look and how our bodies should work. There are still plenty of ways in which our biases form medicine, and medicine, in turn, forms us.

"Circle Stories #4: Riva Lehrer" 1998 self portrait

“Circle Stories #4: Riva Lehrer” (1998).

I was born with visible disabilities. My body has always been seen as lacking, in need of correction, and medically unacceptable. My parents and doctors pushed me to have countless procedures to render it more “normal” as well as more systemically functional. These were two different streams of anxiety—how I worked and how I looked— yet they became inextricably woven together. My life in the hospital gave me a tremendously intimate view of medicine, as does the fact that I come from a family of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. It gave me an acute awareness of how medical choices control and shape our bodies.

I first studied anatomy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and later at the University of Illinois at Chicago, as a visiting artist in the cadaver lab. I often think about what my first anatomy professor told me, many years ago. She remarked that when she was a child, people grew into their original faces. Whatever oddities they were born with formed what they looked like, year after year. Faces were hard-won and unique. But modern dentistry, nutrition, grooming—all the large and small interventions of medicine—made people look much more alike than they did sixty years ago.

In the 21st century, medicine is not just about the “correction” of significant impairments; personal perfectibility is as much the point of modern medicine as the curing of significant diseases. We view our bodies as lifetime fixer-upper projects.

Yet, it’s that very fluidity that opens profound questions about the identities our bodies express. Technologies such as radical cosmetic surgery, cyborgian interfaces, and gender reassignment procedures raise and complicate our expectations. Medicine offers new options if the inside of our bodies does not match the appearance of the outside. We live in a state of wild restlessness, trying to see and feel who we are. We see chimeras of possibility.

"At 54" Riva Lehrer 2012 self portrait

“At 54” by Riva Lehrer (2012).

My body was not normalized through all my surgeries; yet the original body I had would not have lived. It’s been changed so many times that I can’t even guess at what it would have been. My own mutability has given me a deep interest in the two-way relationship between one’s body and the course of a life.

I teach anatomy for artists at the School of the Art Institute and am a visiting artist in Medical Humanities at Northwestern University. My studio practice focuses on the intersection of the physical self and biography. I interview people in depth about the interweaving of their bodies and their stories. These interviews become narrative portraits, as I try to understand what can be known about a life in a single portrait image.

Join us as we explore the role of anatomy in identity formation through our celebration of the 500th anniversary of Vesalius’ birth. We’ve invited artists, performers, scholars, and historians to help us ask how our imaginations form our living flesh. Let’s all look in the mirror and ask, what are we really seeing, and what do we believe we see?

Some of the issues our speakers will explore include:

""Chase Joynt" by Riva Lehrer and Chase Joynt 2014

“”Chase Joynt” by Riva Lehrer and Chase Joynt (2014).

—How do we decide what is “lifesaving” and what is “elective” surgery when it comes to identity? Transgender performer Chase Joynt questions what it means to save a life, and how his dealings with the medical establishment led him to question such choices.

—How many of us were raised with the constant imprecation to stand up straight? Sander Gilman peers into the use of posture lessons in public schools to control the American body.

—Artist Steven Assael creates dramatic portraits of New Yorkers, from street performers to elderly eccentrics. His work shows us how identity travels from the inner self to the outer shell.  Assael is a long-time professor at New York’s School of Visual Arts, one of the last bastions of serious anatomical study in the U.S.

—Famed choreographer Heidi Latsky will discuss GIMP and how she creates dance for performers with a range of movements and morphologies. A performance and film excerpt bring us into the innovative strategies used by the GIMP collective.

—Many contemporary artists use anatomy in investigations of identity and formal exploration. Curator Ann Fox will present images from an international roster of artists. She will be joined by Taiwanese artist Sandie Yi, who will show work that deals with the intense difficulties of having a physically different body in China.

"Coloring Book" Riva Lehrer 2012

“Coloring Book” by Riva Lehrer (2012).

—Graphic Medicine is a consortium of comics artists who explore medicine from the standpoint of doctor, nurse, patient and family member. The founders of Graphic Medicine, MK Czerwiec and Ian Williams, will discuss how the vulnerable body is rendered in comics form. Comics allow artists to move from the inside of the body to the outside in seamless transitions, to weave together objective perspectives and highly personal, subjective experiences.

Celebrate Andreas Vesalius’s 500th Birthday With Us on October 18

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On October 18, our second-annual Festival for Medical History and the Arts, “Art, Anatomy, and the Body: Vesalius 500” will celebrate the 500th birthday of anatomist Andreas Vesalius.

Vesalius’ groundbreaking De humani corporis fabrica (The Fabric of the Human Body) of 1543 is a key Renaissance text, one that profoundly changed medical training, anatomical knowledge, and artistic representations of the body, an influence that has persisted over the centuries. Our Festival is one of a global series of celebrations of his legacy.

Our day-long event will explore the intertwined histories of art and anatomy, illustration and medicine, performance and the body, body snatching and dissection, identity and intersexuality, disability and representation, and contemporary visual arts and the body. Speakers, performers, and artists will be joined by anatomical cartoonists, 3D printing demonstrations, workshops, and more. Artist and anatomist Riva Lehrer will be our guest curator. Speakers and presenters will include Daniel Garrison, Steven Assael, Sander Gilman, Brandy Schillace, Lisa Rosner, Ann Fabian, Bill Hayes, Michael Sappol, Chase Joynt, Proof X, and  Kriota Willberg (look for a full list of speakers later this summer).

Follow our blog over the summer for guest posts from Festival participants and more on the wonderful Vesalius holdings in our collection.

 

 

 

2014–2015 Helfand and Klemperer Research Fellows

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By Lisa O’Sullivan, Director, Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health

We are pleased to announce the 2014–2015 Helfand and Klemperer Research Fellows: Laura Robson (University of Reading) and Heidi Knoblauch (Yale University).

Rösslin, Eucharius. The byrth of mankynde, otherwyse named the womans booke. [London : Tho. Ray[nalde]], 1545.

The Audrey and William H. Helfand Fellowship in the History of Medicine and Public Health  focuses on the use of visual materials. Laura Robson will explore how medical works in the sixteenth century used images and texts from Andreas Vesalius’ anatomical treatise, the Fabrica. She will use Geminus’s Compendiosa (1545) and Raynalde’s translation of The byrth of mankynde (1545) to demonstrate the complex relationship between anatomical image and text and to unite the history of the book with the history of the representation of the body.

Louis A. Sayre Personal Casebook with multiple photographs, drawings, and ephemera of his patient, Aldoph Roussell ca. 1867

Louis A. Sayre Personal Casebook with multiple photographs, drawings, and ephemera of his patient, Aldoph Roussell ca. 1867

Our Paul Klemperer Fellow in the History of Medicine, Heidi Knoblauch, will use Lewis Sayre’s casebooks, the Photographic Review of Medicine and Surgery, and Bellevue Hospital Records. Looking especially at images and records from the Photographic Department at Bellevue Hospital (1868−1906), the first such department in a civil hospital in the United States, she will explore how 19th- and early 20th-century medical professionals in the U.S. used photographs of patients. What did physicians intend to do with photographs? What role did patients play in the collection of photographs? Her research will track how patients and physicians conceived the confidential nature of recording, collecting, and disseminating medical information (an ongoing question for medical archivists and historians).

Keep an eye out for guest posts from our fellows, who will also present their work at the end of their fellowships.

The Drs. Barry and Bobbi Coller Rare Book Reading Room – the panoramic view

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The Drs. Barry and Bobbi Coller Rare Book Reading Room captured by Ardon Bar-Hama.

The Drs. Barry and Bobbi Coller Rare Book Reading Room captured by Ardon Bar-Hama. Click for the full panoramic experience.

The Drs. Barry and Bobbi Coller Rare Book Reading Room has reopened. Renovations improved environmental conditions for the collections, including a new HVAC system, restored the historic windows, and a return to the cork floor’s former glory. We are once again welcoming readers and visitors to the room and were delighted to have the chance to host the wonderful Ardon Bar-Hama, who kindly captured the space in its full panoramic glory. Click through on the image to see the interactive (and highly zoom-able) panoramic view.