Tag Archives: history of medicine

Valentines for a Valentine

Posted on by
4

By Arlene Shaner, Acting Curator and Reference Librarian for Historical Collections

In honor of Valentine’s Day, these two “valentines” seemed appropriate items from our collection to share this week.

Micrography valentine for Valentine Mott

Valentine 1. Click to enlarge and marvel at the minuscule script.

Dr. Valentine Mott

Dr. Valentine Mott

Pioneer American surgeon Dr. Valentine Mott (1785-1865), NYAM’s third president (1849), was the recipient of these two examples of micrography, created by David Davidson. Mott was born in Glen Cove, Long Island, and attended medical school at Columbia College. As a student, he also trained under a cousin, Dr. Valentine Seaman. After receiving his degree in 1806, he sailed to Europe, where he studied with Sir Astley Cooper in London, and then spent time in Edinburgh. When he returned to New York in 1809, he began to lecture in operative surgery at Columbia. By 1811, he had been appointed a professor of surgery, and in 1818 he was the first doctor to successfully perform surgery on the innominate artery, two inches away from the heart, to repair an aneurysm in the right subclavian artery. His patient survived for 26 days before succumbing to a secondary infection. For the rest of his career, he divided his time between the United States and Europe, serving on the medical faculties of the Rutgers Medical College, Columbia’s College of Physicians & Surgeons, the University Medical College and the Medical Department of New York University, and performing an extraordinary number of surgical procedures.

Micrography valentine for Valentine Mott

Valentine 2.

Aside from the charming but obvious play on Mott’s name and the tenuous connection to his surgery on the innominate artery, there is nothing on these “valentines” that explains why Davidson chose to make them. Davidson remains a bit of a mystery himself. Born in Russian Poland in 1812, he immigrated first to England and then to the United States, where he settled on the Lower East Side for awhile before moving on to Baltimore and finally to Boston. Davidson describes himself as an “Artist in Penmanship” at the Stuyvesant Institute on one of the valentines, and he was the creator of a number of different micrographic specimens, including portraits of famous figures and renderings of important buildings. Micrography, the art of using miniscule script to create abstract shapes or representations of objects, is a Jewish art form that dates back to the tenth century. In micrography, the writing itself is so small that the words themselves are not apparent except under close examination. Davidson is credited as one of the first practitioners of micrography in the United States. Various sacred writings were used in the execution of micrography, and for some of his creations Davidson used Hebrew texts, but for these two valentines he used English versions of the Book of Jonah and of a number of Psalms.

Hot Springs: Respite for the brain-weary and infirm

Posted on by
Reply

By Johanna Goldberg, Information Services Librarian

Blizzards, cold weather, and short days call for vacations to warmer climes.

Fortunately, our collection contains a large number of items relating to balneology, the science of baths and bathing, including pamphlets from hot spring resorts across the United States from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Even if we can’t really get away, we can take a virtual trip to a warm soak thanks to these guides.

Some of the content in these pamphlets has not aged well, due to both medical progress (no one today could claim that a hot spring could cure syphilis) and political correctness (Hunter’s Hot Springs’ view of Native Americans is appalling by today’s standards). But they offer a unique look into how these destinations marketed themselves using the medical claims and social mores of the era.

Arrowhead Hot Springs

“Here the brain-weary may forget a busy world, the seeker after pleasure find it unalloyed with vice, and all, with their loved ones, secure under the watchful care extended to guests night and day.”

Cutter’s Guide to the Hot Springs of Arkansas

“The following diseases are successfully treated, the failure to cure being the exception; where a perfect cure is not effected, a benefit is experienced by all where the waters are properly used: Rheumatism, Gout, Scrofula, Paralysis, Neuralgia, Ozena, Catarrh, Sore Throat, Syphilis—acquired or hereditary, in its different forms—Asthma, Gravel, Diseases of the Kidney and Bladder, Eczema, Psoriasis, Uticaria, Impetigo, Prurigo, Rupia, Chronic Ulcers, Glandular Enlargements, Ring Worm, Migraine or Sick Headache, Enlarged Tonsils, Menstruation Troubles, and Sterility. This is a long list, yet the truth is not half told. Not a week passes but some remarkable cures are effected where all hope of recovery had been abandoned before a visit to these Springs had been concluded upon.”

Cincinnati Sulpho-Saline Springs and Bath House

“Cincinnati is in fact positively the only place where mineral water, fresh from mother earth, can be employed for the restoration of the sick to health and vigor, where all the advantages of a great city can be enjoyed at the same time.”

Hunter’s Hot Springs at Springdale, Montana

“The fact that the Indian of untutored mind should be able to appreciate the value of thermal springs may strike us at first as strange and inconsistent. But the Indian, and particularly the Indian of the wilds unchanged by contact with the whites, lived very close to Nature and learned many of her secrets.”

El Paso de Robles Hot and Cold Sulpher Springs

“On the skin of an average-sized adult there are about seven million pores—seven million little sewer outlets—which are discharging vents of twenty-eight miles of connecting tubes or pipes—through which a large proportion of effete, worn-out débris of the human body, and noxious, poisonous substances, as I have just proved, are cast out from the animal economy . . . The large quantity of bi-carbonate of soda and of sulphur in these waters washes out all these obstructions from the mouths of these millions of little sewers, and after a few days’ bathing leaves the skin almost as smooth as satin.”

Which vacation destination would you pick?

Coughing, Sneezing, or Spitting Will Not Be Permitted

Posted on by
6

By Johanna Goldberg, Information Services Librarian

As the United States experiences high flu activity, we thought we’d look back on the 1918 flu pandemic, which lead to the deaths of 50 million people worldwide, including nearly 675,000 people in the United States.1

The first case of the so-called Spanish Influenza in the United States originated at Boston’s Commonwealth Pier on August 28, 1918.2 On September 3, it landed in nearby Brockton, Mass., where the disease became widespread by the middle of the month.

Brockton’s Volunteer Leaders

Ernest A. Burrill detailed the efforts of the city in Brockton’s Fight Against Influenza. One problem faced was a lack of food—sick parents could not cook for children, and residents were afraid to enter infected homes. A well-organized food department came to the rescue, preparing food at a community kitchen and delivering it to 388 sick people at its peak on October 10.2

Brockton officials established a field hospital to centralize medical staffing. “A tented city grew up over night,” and within days of its opening, patients moved from area hospitals to the tents. During its two weeks of operation, the field hospital treated more than 300 patients. The food department provided the makeshift hospital with “5 dozen ham sandwiches, 3 quarts chicken stew, 2 dozen cakes, 32 quarts of gruel, 27 quarts of broth, 35 quarts of milk, 9 loaves of bread, in addition to jellies, preserves, etc.”2

Brockton’s Field Hospital

The flu peaked in Chicago in mid-October. A month earlier, an ambitious public health campaign instructed residents to cover their mouths when sneezing and coughing.  In a 1918 report, Commissioner of Health John Dill Robertson wrote, “The danger of uncovered coughing and sneezing has probably been so thoroughly impressed upon the people of the City of Chicago that fruit will be borne from this source for years to come.”3 (Chicagoans, is this fruit still being borne?)

A poster from Chicago’s Public Health campaign, presumably released prior to the Health Department closing the theaters.

In Chicago as in much of the country, “places of amusement were closed” at the peak of the pandemic. “This included theaters of all kinds, cabarets, dance halls, athletic meets, and everything of this kind. People were advised to go home and to get nine hours of sleep, on the theory that rest was the best preventive medicine that could be had. In fact, by cutting out all these night assemblages there was no place for the people to go and they had to remain home.”3

In addition, Chicago and other cities banned public funerals. In Chicago, only 10 mourners, not including clergy, could attend for fear of spreading the disease from the family of the deceased and through contact with infected premises.

Chicago churches, schools, and workplaces remained open, although clergy were instructed to keep services short and officials closely monitored school conditions. “Nothing was done to interfere with the morale of the community,” wrote Dill.  The Health Department did require closing, thorough cleaning, and subsequent inspection of places of public assembly.3

A selection of captions from Chicago newspapers.

Scientists had developed a vaccine for pneumonia, which often co-occurred with the flu in 1918, and health officials distributed 174,264 doses in Chicago once determining the severity of the pandemic.3  The Brockton report indicates that the New York City Health Department prepared a vaccine for the flu strain, but it was not yet available to them.2

While the current flu outbreak does not compare to the 1918 pandemic, we can learn from earlier experiences. Cover your mouth, do what you can to avoid contact with sick people, and be grateful that you can get vaccinated.

For more on the 1918 flu, visit http://www.flu.gov/pandemic/history/1918/

References

1. Flu.gov. (n.d.). Pandemic Flu History. Retrieved January 17, 2013, from http://www.flu.gov/pandemic/history/index.html#

2. Burrill, E. A. (1918). The story of Brockton’s fight against influenza. Brockton: Press of Nichols & Eldridge.

3. Robertson, J. D. (1918). A report on an epidemic of influenza in the city of Chicago in the fall of 1918. Chicago: Dept. of Health.

“Nature” and Motherhood

Posted on by
Reply

By Arlene Shaner, Acting Curator and Reference Librarian for Historical Collections

Image courtesy of Jessica Martucci.

Image courtesy of Jessica Martucci.

Our special mini-series issues related to environmental history, A World Not Quite Fatal: New Views on the History of Environmental Health, continues this Thursday, January 17, 2013, with a talk by Jessica Martucci from Mississippi State University about breastfeeding and fears of environmental contamination. Both human and animal studies from the mid-20th century suggested that toxins such as DDT might be concentrated in mother’s milk and could be transmitted to their babies. The La Leche League published a pamphlet called “DDT and Mother’s Milk” in 1972, encouraging mothers to continue to breastfeed their babies despite these concerns. Professor Martucci will look at how discussions surrounding the possible transmission of toxins through breastfeeding formed part of a larger conversation about both the “nature” of motherhood and infant feeding and a developing movement of environmental activism.

Jessica Martucci is an Assistant Professor in the History Department and Gender Studies Program and is associate member of the Center for the History of Agriculture, Science, and the Environment of the South at Mississippi State University. She received her B.A. in Biology and Environmental Studies at Oberlin College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently finishing her first book project, Back to the Breast: Natural Motherhood and Breastfeeding in the 20th Century.

To register for this event, click here.

History Night: Seeking Submissions

Posted on by
2

RBR deskThe New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) Section on the History of Medicine and Public Health is pleased to announce its Third Annual History Night to be held on April 8, 2013, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm. The event will take place at NYAM located at 1216 Fifth Avenue at the corner of 103rd Street.

We are inviting all those interested in presenting to submit papers on topics in the history of medicine and public health for consideration. Papers submitted previously at other educational events are eligible for submission. The time allotted for those papers chosen for presentation will be 15 minutes, with an additional 3-5 minutes for Q & A.

A panel of members of the NYAM Section on the History of Medicine and Public Health will select the papers to be presented.

The submission deadline is February 1, 2013. Papers may be submitted electronically to Donna Fingerhut at dfingerhut@nyam.org. Questions may be directed to Donna at 212-419-3645.

Symbols in a Life of Psychic Tension

Gallery

Posted on by
Meprosan advertisement with pictures of a woman throughout her day.

This gallery contains 5 photos.

By Johanna Goldberg, Information Services Librarian Forget the articles: Advertisements can be the most interesting part of medical journals from decades past. The ads below, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology between 1940 and 1970, show how … Continue reading →

Putting Asthma on the Map

Posted on by
Reply

By Arlene Shaner, Acting Curator and Reference Librarian for Historical Collections

Southwest Map

Map from The South-west and New Mexico for phthisis, weak lungs, asthma, bronchitis, etc. Chicago: American Health Resort Association, 1891.

On Wednesday, December 12, 2012, Carla Keirns, MD, PhD, from the Stony Brook University School of Medicine will present this year’s John K. Lattimer Lecture, “Putting Asthma on the Map: Weather, Pollen, Pollution and the Geography of Risk.”

Dr Keirns will discuss how the patient’s environment has been central to the prevention and treatment of asthma since antiquity, and how, beginning in the 19th century, physicians learned to use measurements of humidity, sunlight and rainfall to predict places and seasons that would be safe for asthmatics. During the same period, indoor and outdoor risks such as pollen and dust began to mark regions and spaces as risky or dangerous, and led to efforts to escape attacks through travel or fortifying the home environment against triggers. Recent efforts to predict or create safe places have turned again to the outdoors, both through national regulation of air pollution and the efforts of minority communities and their academic and activist partners to document the disproportionate environmental risks faced by their members.

Register for the event here.

“Die Free”: Black Soldiers in the Civil War

Posted on by
Reply

By Lisa O’Sullivan, Director

Surgeon's Certificate for Dick Parker Wills 1903

Surgeon’s Certificate for Dick Parker Wills 1903

More than 200,000 African men served in the Union Army’s United States Colored Troops during the Civil War. Among them were James Wills, Mack Wills, Dick (Wills) Parker, Andy Wills and Richard Wills, who fled the Tennessee plantation of Edmund Wills to join the 4th Heavy Field Artillery of Columbus, Kentucky.

In Die Free: A Heroic Family Tale acclaimed journalist Cheryl Wills explores the story of her great-great-great grandfather, Sandy Wills, and his companions. In unearthing her family history, she uncovers the discrepancies, disparities, and decisions “great and small, careless and deliberate” that impacted the treatment and care of black soldiers.

Black soldiers died from disease at a disproportionate rate to their white compatriots, and, as documented in Die Free, their higher burden of mortality continued after the end of the war. Evidence from medical records and surgeon’s certificates indicates that many black soldiers also struggled to have their conditions taken seriously and to be granted pensions.

We are delighted to be welcoming Cheryl Wills to the New York Academy of Medicine on December 10. She will appear in discussion with the renowned Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer, to explore the experiences of her family, and reflect on the ongoing legacy of the discrimination they suffered.

Discover more about Die Free here. In addition to their service as soldiers, African Americans also acted as nurses, surgeons and hospital workers during the Civil War. Some of these contributions are explored in Binding Wounds, Pushing Boundaries, an exhibition at the National Library of Medicine.

Voices from the AIDS Epidemic

Posted on by
1

By Johanna Goldberg, Information Services Librarian

State of Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, 1987.

State of Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, 1987.

Today, health care professionals can use multiple tests to detect HIV infection. Where available, drugs therapies allow people to live with HIV for many years before developing AIDS. Of course, this was not always the case. In commemoration of World AIDS Day on December 1, we are revisiting some of the voices published in the early years of the epidemic.

In 1982, 14 doctors presented their front-line experiences at an international symposium, the proceedings of which were published in book form the following year. Their frustration with their inability to successfully treat their young patients rings out clearly.

“Thirteen of 42 patients in our series have already died. Nationwide, half of the patients have died.” Half of their patients with “Pneumicystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) , the most common infection,” responded to the administered drug . “However, excluding three who are still being treated, only two patients who had PCP are presently alive, even though six recovered from their initial infection.” In the ten patients with Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, eight died. “Only one, a 22-year-old man with CMV pneumonia, has recovered.” As the authors go on to say, “treatment remains a knotty problem.”

At another symposium, also published in book form, Dr. Kevin M. Cahill, the senior member of the New York City Board of Health, applauded the efforts of individual doctors and nurses, in addition to the “superb work” of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis.  But he chastised the inaction of the “organized medical community.”

“When a fatal infection had struck down veterans attending an American Legion convention, health professionals across the country joined in the search for a solution. When women using tampons became ill with toxic shock syndrome, medical societies and research centers immediately focused their enormous talents on that problem. But when the victims were drug addicts and poor Haitian refugees and homosexual men, their plight did not, somehow, seem as significant to those expected to speak for the health professions. No major research programs were announced, and until it became clear that the disease could spread to the general population through blood transfusions, organized medicine seemed part of the conspiracy of silence.”

Where are we today? Even with so much knowledge about prevention, the CDC estimates that 50,000 people in the United States become newly infected with HIV each year; about 33,000 people receive AIDS diagnoses. In the United States, HIV incidence in people aged 13-29 rose 21 percent between 2006 and 2009.

Prevention education remains essential. Visit the CDC’s Act Against AIDS page or World AIDS Day’s website to find out more about current prevention and testing measures.

For a year-by-year timeline of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States, visit AIDS.gov.

Sources:
Cahill, K. M. (1983). The AIDS epidemic.  New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2012). Basic Statistics. Retrieved November 28, 2012, from http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/basic.htm

Gold, J. W. M., Armstrong, D., Sears, C. L., Henry, S., Donnelly, H., Brown, A. E., …Wong, B.(1983). Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome: Infection and Neoplasia in Homosexual Men and Intravenous Drug Addicts. In C. S. F. Easmon & H. Gaya (Eds.), Second international symposium on infections in the immunocompromised host (pp. 105–113). London: Academic Press.

Skulls and Surgery

Posted on by
1

By Lisa O’Sullivan, Director

Row of plaster cast skulls

Plaster casts of skulls held in the NYAM Rare Book Reading Room, some showing signs of trepanation.

The practice of trepanning, or trepanation, which involved making a hole in the skull, is one of the oldest known surgical procedures. Skulls with holes have been found from the Neolithic period, and the technique continued to be practiced by cultures across the world. The surgeries relieved swelling of the brain and skulls showing bone regrowth indicate that the treatment was survived by many.  The reasoning behind such surgeries changed over place and time, and included questions of spiritual possession, convulsions, fractures and infections.

On Thursday, December 6, the fascinating history of such surgical procedures and the development of surgery, neuroanatomy and the other neurosciences will be explored by Dr. Eugene S. Flamm at the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at the Columbia University Medical Center in a richly illustrated talk “Neurosurgery Before Neurosurgery.”

Image shows trepanning operation

John Browne, A Compleat Discourse of Wounds (London, 1678)

Dr. Flamm is the Jeffrey P. Bergstein Professor and Chairman of the Dept. of Neurosurgery at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is an active researcher and clinician with in interest in cerebrovascular neurosurgery and spinal cord injury. Dr. Flamm is also an ardent book collector, the President of the Grolier Club, a NYAM Fellow and supporter and author of, among other works, From Skulls to Brains: 2500 Years of Neurosurgical Progress, which features many books from the NYAM collection.

More details about the event can be found here. Enquiries about From Skulls to Brains can be directed to NYAM at history@nyam.org.