~This post courtesy Dawne Lucas, Technical Services Archivist, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Tuesday, September 3, 2019  12:00 NOON-1:00 PM  Bondurant G-100 (light lunch provided)

Bringing Big Data to Asylum Studies: Historical Possibilities, Ethical Challenges

Dr. Robert C. Allen, James Logan Godfrey Professor of American Studies and Co-Director of the Community Histories Workshop, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Sarah E. Almond, Assistant Director, Community Histories Workshop, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Using material from the State Archives of North Carolina, Dr. Allen and Ms. Almond have overseen the creation of what they believe to be the first comprehensive, searchable patient database of a nineteenth-century American insane asylum, some 7200 admissions between 1856 and 1918. Complementing the database is a collection of some 5500 extended intake forms (1887-1918), and hospital/state administrative records, including a hospital cemetery inventory of more than 700 interred patients, minutes of hospital board meetings, comprehensive medical staff meetings and interviews with patients (1916-17), and records of the N.C. Eugenics Board (1958-59). Utilizing a multi-disciplinary approach, Allen and Almond, together with their students, are exploring these unique materials and their ethical use in research, graduate and professional teaching/training, and public engagement. 

Dr. Robert C. Allen is the James Logan Godfrey Professor of American Studies and Co-Director of the Community Histories Workshop. He co-founded and was Director of the Digital Innovation Lab (2011-2016) and Co-PI of the Carolina Digital Humanities Initiative (2012-14). His work on “Going to the Show,” an online digital resource documenting the history of moviegoing in North Carolina, was awarded the American Historical Association’s Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital History in 2011.

Sarah E. Almond is the assistant director of UNC’s Community Histories Workshop. She previously served two years as the program coordinator of the Dorothea Dix Park History Initiative. She is a recent graduate of the joint Masters program between NCSU and UNC-SILS, and holds a MA in Public History in addition to a MSLS with a focus on archives and records management. Her primary interests include archival accessibility and representation, implementation of community archiving practices, and digital humanities pedagogy. She holds certificates in Digital History (NCSU) as well as Digital Curation (UNC-SILS), and is the designer and co-creator of Redlining Hayti, which links discriminatory lending practices and urban renewal in her hometown of Durham, NC. She holds a BA, summa cum laude, in Literature and Language from the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

Tuesday, October 15, 2019  12:00 NOON-1:00 PM  Bondurant 2025 (light lunch provided)

Artificial Hearts: A Controversial Medical Technology and Its Sensational Patient Cases from Haskell Karp to Dick Cheney

Shelley McKellar, PhD, Hannah Professor in the History of Medicine, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada

Today artificial hearts are a clinical reality after decades of contentious development. Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney told reporters that it ‘saved his life’ when asked about living with an artificial heart device for 20 months in 2010-2012. But not all artificial heart implant patients, like Haskell Karp and Barney Clark, enjoyed such successful recoveries.

In this presentation, McKellar examines the clinical use of artificial hearts since the 1960s, situating the triumphant narrative of this technology and its ‘resurrectionist capacity’ alongside technical device challenges and difficult patient experiences. Who would not want a life-saving, off-the-shelf device fix for a loved one dying of heart failure? The appeal was the promissory nature of artificial hearts as a life-sustaining treatment, a medical technology that might alter the usual course of events that when a person’s heart failed, that person died.

McKellar argues that desirability—rather than feasibility or practicality of artificial hearts—drove the development of this technology. Artificial hearts were (and are) an imperfect technology, and its controversial history speaks to questions of expectations, limitations and uncertainty in a high-technology medical world.

Shelley McKellar, PhD is the Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University. She is also a Full Professor in the Department of History at Western University. She earned her PhD degree in History from the University of Toronto, after which she worked on a documentary history project at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and then she accepted her academic position at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.

Her research focuses on the history of surgery, medical technology and the material culture of medicine. She is the author of several books and articles: her first book, entitled Surgical Limits, is a biography of Canadian surgeon Gordon Murray, one of Canada’s most prominent and controversial surgeons, who was also dubbed Canada’s ‘blue baby doctor’ for fixing congenital heart malformations in the era before open-heart surgery; she co-authored the book Medicine and Technology in Canada, 1900-1950, which highlights medical devices and practices in Canada, such as insulin, TB x-ray screening, and the use of iron lungs. Her most recent book, Artificial Hearts: The Allure and Ambivalence of a Controversial Medical Technology published by Johns Hopkins University Press, traces the potential and promise of this medical technology from the 1950s to present day.

At Western University, she teaches history of disease courses that focus on epidemic outbreaks and social response to history students in the Faculty of Social Science. She also teaches the history of medicine, the medical profession, and related historical aspects of ‘doctoring’ to medical students in the medical school at Western University. She is also curator of the Medical Artifact Collection at Western – a small research and teaching university collection – that allows her to play with amputation saws, toothkeys, bloodletting instruments and more with her students.

Tuesday, November 12, 2019  12:00 NOON-2:00 PM  Fearrington Reading Room, Wilson Special Collections Library (light lunch NOT provided for this one!)

Drop by to compare what you’ve seen in the gross anatomy lab with historical representations of human anatomy over the centuries. Materials are drawn from holdings at the Wilson Special Collections Library. You don’t want to miss this fun and educational open house event.

About the Bullitt History of Medicine Club

The Bullitt History of Medicine Club is a student organization within the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Medicine. The club promotes the understanding and appreciation of the historical foundations upon which current medical knowledge and practice is constructed, by encouraging social and intellectual exchanges between faculty members, medical students, and members of the community. The club’s annual McLendon-Thomas Award recognizes the best unpublished essay on an historical topic in the health sciences written by a UNC-Chapel Hill student. Please visit the Bullitt History of Medicine Club website for more information.