Author: Hanna Clutterbuck-Cook

New to the MHL!

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The MC Migel Library of the American Printing House for the Blind has been adding lots of great new items recently. Here are just a few:

Additionally, the Wellcome Library has been adding lots of titles to its collection of medical officer of health reports all of which are available as part of the MHL, too.

#ColorOurCollections 2017!

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We’re very excited to be working on our pages for #ColorOurCollections 2017!

If you’d like something to work on ’til February, check out NYAM’s Pinterest gathering of coloring pages — blank and completed by artists!

There was also this very interesting piece from Jill O’Neill at the Scholarly Kitchen with some thoughts about the inaugural #ColorOurCollections: What #ColorOurCollections Suggests.

Fake Silk: The Lethal History of Viscose Rayon

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Join UCSF Archives & Special Collections on Friday, December 2, at noon in the Lange Room for an afternoon talk with medical historian and author Paul Blanc MD MSPH  as he discusses the toxic legacy of viscose rayon portrayed in his new book, Fake Silk. Dr. Blanc poses a basic question: When a new technology makes people ill, how high does the body count have to be before protectives steps are taken? His work tells a dark story of hazardous manufacturing, poisonous materials, environmental abuses, political machinations, and economics trumping safety concerns. It explores the century-long history of “fake silk,” or cellulose viscose, used to produce such products as rayon textiles and tires, cellophane, and everyday kitchen sponges. His research uncovers the grim history of a product that crippled and even served a death sentence to many industry workers while also releasing toxic carbon disulfide into the environment. Continue reading

Blood Transfusion: 350 Years

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Richard Lower (1631–1691), anatomist. Oil painting by Jacob Huysmans. Iconographic Collections, Wellcome Library, London, accessed through Wellcome Images, https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/M0007626.html.

Richard Lower (1631–1691), anatomist. Oil painting by Jacob Huysmans.

Three hundred and fifty years ago, on December 17, 1666, the Philosophical Transactions published the first account of blood transfusion, in the form of a letter from physician Richard Lower to chemist Robert Boyle.i Lower’s experiments transfused blood from one dog to another. The article provided his methods, specifying where the arteries and veins were to be cut, how the quill was to be inserted that formed the blood’s conduit between animals, and many other details of the operation. Continue reading

Healing Energy: Radium in America

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The Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia has launched a new exhibit on the history of radiation medicine in the United States.

In the final years of the nineteenth century, researchers in physics and chemistry discovered new forms of energy, starting with x-rays in 1895. In 1896, Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium naturally emitted an invisible, previously-unknown form of energy. Following up on Becquerel’s work, the husband-and-wife team of Pierre and Marie Sklodowska Curie discovered that uranium ore contained two new elements—”polonium” and “radium”—that constantly radiated tremendous amounts of energy. The Curies came up with a new word for these emissions: “radioactivity,” Along with x-rays, this new form of energy came to be known as “ionizing radiation,” and it would forever alter the world of medicine.

The exhibit was created by Jeffrey Womack and Tristan Dahn and includes sections on the Curies, Robert Abbe, and the use of radiation in medicine.

~This post is courtesy Beth Lander, College Librarian, Historical Medical Library, The College of Physicians of Philadelphia