Author: MHL

From Our Partners: NLM Welcomes Applications to its Michael E. DeBakey Fellowship in the History of Medicine for 2021

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The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is pleased to announce applications are open to its Michael E. DeBakey Fellowship in the History of Medicine, supporting research onsite at the NLM in its historical collections.

The NLM Michael E. DeBakey Fellowship in the History of Medicine provides up to $10,000 to support onsite research in the historical collections of the National Library of Medicine, which span ten centuries, encompass a variety of digital and physical formats, and originate from nearly every part of the globe. The collections also include the Michael E. DeBakey papers—representing the diverse areas in which DeBakey made a lasting impact, such as surgery, medical education, and health care policy—along with the papers of many other luminaries in science and medicine.

Anyone over the age of eighteen, of any academic discipline and status, who has not previously received this Fellowship may apply. Non-U.S. citizens may apply. Group applications should be submitted under the name of a single principal researcher.

For details about the application process and required documents, please visit this website dedicated to the Fellowship.

To apply for the NLM Michael E. DeBakey Fellowship in the History of Medicine, visit the online application portal.

To receive consideration, all required materials must be submitted to the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (FAES), via the online application portal, by midnight EDT, September 25, 2020. Selected fellows will be notified and awards will be announced in December.

For further information about the materials available for historical research at the National Library of Medicine, please visit https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/index.html, or contact the NLM’s History of Medicine reference desk by email at NLM Customer Support or by phone 301-402-8878.

The Fellowship was established in 2016 and is supported by The DeBakey Medical Foundation, in honor and memory of Michael E. DeBakey (1908–2008), a legendary American surgeon, educator, and medical statesman. During a career spanning 75 years, his work transformed cardiovascular surgery, raised medical education standards, and informed national health care policy. He pioneered dozens of operative procedures such as aneurysm repair, coronary bypass, and endarterectomy, which routinely save thousands of lives each year, and performed some of the first heart transplants. His inventions included the roller pump (a key component of heart-lung machines) as well as artificial hearts and ventricular assist pumps. He was a driving force in building Houston’s Baylor University College of Medicine into a premier medical center, where he trained several generations of top surgeons from all over the world. He was a visionary supporter of the NLM, playing a pivotal role in its transformation from the Armed Forces Medical Library in the 1950s, in the establishment of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine in the 1960s, in launching NLM’s outreach initiatives in the 1990s, and in promoting the digitization of its indexes to pre-1960s journal articles.

From Our Partners: New Digital Collection at NYAM!

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The New York Academy of Medicine Library is very pleased to announce the launch of the Dr. Robert Matz Hospital Postcard Collection, a pilot digitization project that provides access to 118 hospital postcards from the five boroughs of New York City. Spearheaded by Dr. Robin Naughton, Senior Digital Program Manager, the collection offers a window into the history of hospitals in the New York area as well as some of the visitors to those hospitals. Many of the postcards have messages and postmarks, allowing the viewer to ascertain the time period when the cards were created.

The Matz Collection can be viewed here: http://bit.ly/2SJlId9

ALHHS/MeMA 2019-20 Call for Publication Awards Nominations

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~This post courtesy Polina Ilieva.

The Archivists and Librarians in the History of the Health Sciences (ALHHS)/Medical Museums Association (MeMA) is currently seeking nominations for its three Publication Awards. 

Nominations can be from one of three categories: 

  • Monographs published by academic or trade publishers.
  • Articles published in journals, trade or private periodicals of recognized standing.
  • Online resources produced predominantly by ALHHS/MeMA members.

All nominations must meet the following criteria: 

  • Published within 3 years of the award date. 
  • Author(s) must be ALHHS/MeMA member(s) in good standing for the last 12 months. 
  • The nominated monograph, article, or electronic resource is related to the history of the health sciences or works on the bibliography, librarianship and/or curatorship of historical collections in the health sciences.

Nominations that meet each of the above criteria will be considered by the Publication Awards Committee.

The Committee will look for the following benchmarks of excellence when evaluating qualifying nominations:

  • Quality and style of writing.
  • Contribution to the field.
  • Relevance to the profession.

Up to one Publication Award in each category will be presented at the 2020 annual meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Winners do not need to be present to win.

To nominate a work, please send a PDF or 3 physical copies of a printed work (photocopies are acceptable), or the URL for an online resource to the Publication Awards Committee Chair. Please include along with all nominations a cover letter giving the item’s complete citation (including all authors, publisher, and publication date) and the category under which the nomination falls (i.e. Monograph, Article, or Online Resource). Authors may nominate their own works. Re-nominations are also allowed, so long as the nominated publication still falls within the 3-year time period.  

The deadline for nominations is Friday, February 14th, 2020. For more information, please contact Publication Awards Committee Chair: Polina Ilieva at polina.ilieva@ucsf.edu

Explore some of the earliest printed medical books in our collection online

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~This post courtesy Melissa Grafe, John R. Bumstead Librarian for Medical History, Head of the Medical Historical Library at Yale University and President, Medical Heritage Library, Inc.

Medical Heritage Library partner the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library at Yale University is pleased to announce that parts of its incunable collection are now available online! The effort to digitize these incunables and make them freely available worldwide was generously funded by the Arcadia Fund.

The Medical Historical Library, part of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, contains over 300 medical and scientific incunabula, which are books, broadsides, and pamphlets printed before 1501. These incredibly rare incunables represent the earliest history of printing in Europe and the first examples of medical knowledge circulated in printed form. Many of the incunables display elements of the print and manuscript world, including marginalia, historiated initials, and some of the earliest printed depictions of the human body, often derived from manuscript illustrations. The 44 incunables digitized in this project represent ones not found online anywhere. Topics include astrology, medicine, plague, anatomy, remedies, herbals and much more.

Tree of life from Gaerde der suntheit (1492)
Tree of life from Gaerde der suntheit (1492):

The incunable collection was donated to the Medical Library by one of our founders, Dr. Arnold Klebs (1870-1943), a Swiss tuberculosis expert and bibliophile. The last decade of Klebs’ life was especially devoted to his ambitious incunabula project. He hoped to publish a catalog with full entries for scientific and medical incunabula. In 1938, he published a short-title catalog (i.e. brief entries), Incunabula scientifica and medica, of all known scientific and medical incunabula.

Wolf howling at the moon from Bernat de Granollach’s Lunarium: ab anno 1491 ad annum 1550
Wolf howling at the moon from Bernat de Granollach’s Lunarium: ab anno 1491 ad annum 1550

Klebs did not purchase many incunabula himself. Instead, he encouraged fellow bibliophile and famed neurosurgeon Dr. Harvey Cushing to buy them and acted as intermediary with book dealers in Europe. Through the efforts of Klebs and Cushing, Yale’s Medical Historical Library holds one of the largest medical and scientific incunable collections in the United States.

Please explore these incunables on the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library site on Internet Archive, as part of the Medical Heritage Library. You can also find other Arcadia-funded digitized texts, including medieval and Renaissance medical and scientific manuscripts, Yale Medical School theses and early Arabic and Persian books and manuscripts, in this collection. 

A Tale of Two Roberts. Explorations in 19th-Century Medical and Theological Pamphlets

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~We’re delighted to offer this guest post! Lesa Scholl is Head of Kathleen Lumley College, the postgraduate college of the University of Adelaide.

I was extremely grateful to the amazing Hanna Clutterbuck-Cook recently when I sent out a desperate Friday afternoon email. This semester I’ve been visiting the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University, where they have a fantastic collection of nineteenth-century manuscripts and rare books. While I was examining Anglican pamphlets and tracts that engaged with poverty, hunger, and social justice, I happened upon a particular pamphlet: Remarks on Fasting, and on the Discipline of the Body: In a Letter to a Clergyman. By A Physician (1848). This pamphlet intrigued me, primarily because it was a medical doctor writing to a clergyman, not to speak against the practice of fasting, but to encourage appropriate ways in which to fast: ways that would promote bodily and spiritual health. He also gives a fascinatingly detailed description of what an appropriate diet ought to be—although he loses me when he tries to get me to refrain from coffee!

The Physician’s recommended daily diet
The Physician’s recommended daily diet

This pamphlet is central to my current book project, Fasting and Wasting: Religion, Nutrition, and Social Responsibility in Victorian Britain. I’m also looking at Robert Wilson Evans’s The Ministry of the Body (1847), which Remarks responds to directly. Evans’s work was published in the previous year, also by Rivingtons, who had published Remarks, and while my doctor-author begins by being extremely flattering in his citations of Evans’s work, he proceeded to critique every criticism on fasting that the clergyman had presented! An eminent medical doctor defending fasting to a clergyman—offering to teach the clergyman how to teach his flock to fast appropriately—isn’t exactly the expected trajectory.

I had found my clergyman, but my doctor continued to elude me. And that is where my MHL connection began—with the desperate Friday afternoon email! Hanna put me onto the Royal College of Surgeons, whose librarian got back to me within an hour. With true librarian magic, my doctor was uncovered, thanks to a nineteenth-century penciled annotation: another Robert. Robert Bentley Todd, MD, one of the founders of King’s College Hospital in London.

A statue of Robert Bentley Todd stands outside King’s College Hospital

That Todd was the doctor is almost too good to be true. The question remains as to why such a prolific writer and influential figure chose to write the pamphlet anonymously. While I haven’t ascertained this answer fully, I suspect it was because it was well-known that Todd was good friends with John Henry Newman from his Oxford days, and it had only been three years since Newman’s extremely controversial conversion to Roman Catholicism. Given that Newman was also known for his more ascetic religious practices, including extreme fasting, and Todd’s own High Church persuasion, having the pamphlet signed may have influenced the readership to smell the dangers of popery. In fact, Todd was known to be deeply critical of extreme fasting, and, as his pamphlet details, held to fasting as food restriction more than complete abstinence—a stance that resonated with Todd’s and Newman’s fellow Oxfordian, Edward Bouverie Pusey’s attitude toward fasting in Tracts for the Times. Indeed, the reduction of portions rather than complete abstinence was seen as a way to prevent gluttony and intemperance at the end of the fast, and was believed to be more difficult than abstinence.

With my two Roberts—Evans and Todd—at the helm, my research has stretched out into the conversations that were occurring between medical doctors and theologians within nineteenth-century Britain, and the way in which these conversations impacted understandings of social responsibility and public health, as well as spiritual and moral wellness. I’m juxtaposing lesser known works in Victorian Studies, such as the multivolume Bridgewater Treatises and the Rivington Theological Library, with the more familiar Tracts for the Times, revealing the deep connections of thought and ethos between medicine and religion in the Victorian period.

The majority of my research engages with the way in which nineteenth-century doctors and theologians were thinking about the relationship between the body and the soul, and the way that then relates to the social body: how does our impetus to care for our physical bodies affect the way we think about the bodies around us? Many thinkers, both scientific and religious, saw a place for fasting that was both spiritually edifying, but focused outward toward the community: fasting to sympathize and understand; fasting to curb luxury and self-indulgence in an age of excessive consumerism when so many were starving; and, perhaps most importantly, in the words of Pusey, “to give to the widow, or the poor, the amount of that which thou wouldest have expended upon thyself.”

Duke University History of Medicine Collections Travel Grants

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~Post courtesy Rachel Ingold, Curator, History of Medicine Collections, Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

The History of Medicine Collections in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University is accepting applications for our travel grant program.

Anyone who wishes to use materials from the History of Medicine Collections for historical research is eligible to apply, regardless of academic status. Writers, creative and performing artists, film makers and journalists are welcome to apply for  research travel grants. Research Travel Grants support projects that present creative approaches, including historical research and documentation projects resulting in dissertations, publications, exhibitions, educational initiatives, documentary films, or other multimedia products and artistic works. All applicants must reside beyond a 100-mile radius of Durham, N.C., and may not currently be a student or employee of Duke University.

Grants of up to $1500 will be awarded and may be used for: transportation expenses (including air, train or bus ticket charges; car rental; mileage using a personal vehicle; parking fees); accommodations; and meals. Expenses will be reimbursed once the grant recipient completes research travel and submits original receipts.

The Duke University History of Medicine Collections acquire, preserve, interpret, and make available for research and instruction materials documenting the history of medicine, biomedical science, and health and disease in the global context of the Western medical tradition. The collections seek to bring historical perspectives to bear on contemporary health issues and to facilitate an interdisciplinary understanding of the history of medicine. Collection strengths include, but are not limited to anatomical atlases, human sexuality, materia medica, pediatrics, psychiatry, and obstetrics & gynecology.

The deadline for applications is January 31, 2020 by 5:00 PM EST. Recipients will be announced in March 2020. Grants must be used between April 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021.

Fellowships Now Accepting Applications

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Our partners at the Center for the History of Medicine are currently accepting applications for two separate fellowships. Following posts are courtesy Jessica Murphy, Public Services Librarian at the Center.

Since 2003, the Boston Medical Library (BML) in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine has sponsored annual fellowships supporting research in the history of medicine using Center for the History of Medicine collections. BML Fellowships in the History of Medicine at the Countway provide stipends of up to $5,000 to support travel, lodging, and incidental expenses for a flexible period between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021. Besides conducting research, the fellow will submit a report on the results of his/her residency and may be asked to present a seminar or lecture at the Countway Library.

The collections of the Center for the History of Medicine enable researchers to contextualize, understand, and contribute to the history of human health care, scientific medical development, and public health; they reflect nearly every medical and public health discipline, including anatomy, anesthesiology, cardiology, dentistry, internal medicine, medical jurisprudence, neurology, obstetrics and gynecology, pharmacy and pharmacology, psychiatry and psychology, and surgery, as well as variety of popular medicine topics and public health subjects such as industrial hygiene, nutrition, and tropical medicine. The Center serves as the institutional archives for the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and the Harvard School of Public Health, and is home to the Warren Anatomical Museum, which includes anatomical artifacts, pathological specimens, instruments, and other objects. Through the Center, researchers have the opportunity to use the rich historical resources of both the Harvard Medical Library and Boston Medical Library.

Fellowship proposals (no more than 5 pages) should describe the research project and demonstrate that the Countway Library has resources central to the research topic.
Applications should include:
• CV
• Length of visit
• Proposed budget and budget breakdown (travel, lodging, incidentals)
• Two letters of recommendation are also required

Electronic submissions of materials may be sent to: chm@hms.harvard.edu

Boston Medical Library Fellowships
Center for the History of Medicine
Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine
10 Shattuck Street
Boston, MA 02115.

Application deadline is Friday, February 14th.

Please see our website for more information and details about previous research recipients. Awards will be announced in early April.

and

The New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC) is now accepting applications for 2020-2021 research grants.

This collaboration of thirty major cultural agencies will offer at least twenty awards in 2020–2021. Each grant provides a stipend of $5,000 for a minimum of eight weeks of research at three or more participating institutions beginning June 1, 2020, and ending May 31, 2021. The Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine and its Center for the History of Medicine is a NERFC member. Visit the NERFC website for more information and list of participating institutions.

Special award in 2020–2021: The Colonial Society of Massachusetts will underwrite a project on the history of New England before the American Revolution.

Application Process: All applications must be completed using the online form.

Deadline: February 1, 2020

Questions: Contact the Massachusetts Historical Society:
Phone at 617-646-0577 or Email fellowships@masshist.org

Event: Heberden Society Lecture

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~Post courtesy Nicole Milano, Head, Medical Center Archives, NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine.

For those in the New York City area, please join us on November 21st at 5:00 pm in the Uris Faculty Room (A-126) for the Heberden Society history of medicine lecture series! Dr. Jeffrey S. Reznick will be presenting “So Comes the Sacred Work: Disabled Soldiers and the Humanitarianism of John Galsworthy during the Great War” at Weill Cornell Medicine (1300 York Avenue, New York, NY.) Dr. Reznick is the Chief of the History of Medicine Division at the National Library of Medicine.

John Galsworthy (1867-1933), recipient of the 1932 Nobel Prize for literature, was one of the best-selling authors of the twentieth century. While his name has become synonymous with The Forsyte Saga, the epic sequence of novels and “interludes” about the upper-middle-class Forsyte family, his literary reputation belies his humanitarianism during the Great War supporting British and American soldiers disabled in combat.

This lecture will address the personal and ethical circumstances which motivated Galsworthy to take up what he called “the sacred work,” and the relevance of this history to scholarly and popular dialogue about the immediate and future care of soldiers disabled in war.

Co-sponsored with the Weill Cornell Division of Medical Ethics, this lecture is free and open to the public! Registration is not required.

UCSF Archives & Special Collections Artist in Residence

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~This post courtesy Polina Ilieva, Archivist, UCSF Library & Special Collections.

The UCSF Library Archives and Special Collections and the Makers Lab are piloting a one year artist-in-residence program. The UCSF Library Artist in Residence award, valued at $6,000, will be given annually to one candidate with a degree in Studio Arts or a related field and/or a history of exhibiting artistic work in professional venues.

The goal of this program is to promote health humanities by exposing and re-purposing historical materials preserved in the Archives and Special Collections. Through the collaboration with the Makers Lab, the artist will create works that explore connections between art and healing, examine the process of scientific discovery, address contemporary issues related to health care and social justice, or historical subjects in health sciences that are inspired by the Archives and Special Collections holdings including rare books, personal papers, photographs, artifacts, university publications, East Asian and Art collections. Possible projects can include, but are not limited to: painting; photography; performance; sculpture; 3D scanning and 3D printing; programmable electronics; and digital, video or installation art.

The recipient, who will be known as the UCSF Library Artist in Residence, will receive assistance from the staff of the UCSF Library and will have full access to the Library’s Archives and Special Collections and Makers Lab equipment. Please note that the artist will be accommodated as well as possible, but that there is no dedicated studio space available. The award is intended to cover travel, materials, and related expenses incurred by the artist; the amount given is set at $6,000, from which taxes may be deducted, and will be paid upon completion of the residency requirements.

The Artist in Residence will:

  1. Complete at least one project
  2. Curate exhibit on work done during residency
  3. Teach quarterly classes in Makers Lab and/or Archives (no credit and open to public)
  4. Post regular updates on Library news and social media channels
  5. Submit a final narrative report to be published on Archives news

The work done during the residency will become property of UCSF. UCSF will recognize the artist for all work done.

Application period open through January 10, 2020.

Questions? Contact Polina Ilieva. Download and share the Artist in Residence flyer to help us spread the word!

Ready to Apply?

Interested artists should submit the following information as a single PDF file with the filename (your-last-name-UCSF-artist-2020.pdf)

  • One page project proposal that addresses:
    • The conceptual approach of the project
    • Aspects of the collection that are of interest
    • How you would engage the public
  • One-year proposed timeline
  • Your CV
  • Two letters of recommendation
  • List of up to six past work samples that includes title, image of project, location, date completed, media, brief description of the project/conceptual information, and budget (if applicable)

Go here to submit your application!

Events: Boston Medical Library’s 44th Annual Garland Lecture

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The Boston Medical Library is proud to announce the 44th Annual Garland Lecture, with a lecture presented by Benjamin Sommers, M.D., Ph.D.

Medicare-for-All? Universal Coverage? Options, Evidence, and What Comes Next
The 2017 debate over repealing the Affordable Care Act and the upcoming Presidential election have reignited debate over the future of coverage expansion efforts in the U.S. “Medicare-for-All” has emerged as a key talking point in this discussion. This lecture will examine the potential implications of Medicare-for-All — for patients, for providers, and for the economy — and discuss possible alternative approaches to universal coverage. Drawing on the current policy context and recent evidence from research in this area, we will discuss what major changes might be next for the U.S. health insurance system.

Benjamin Sommers, M.D., Ph.D. is a professor of health policy and economics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is a health economist and primary care physician whose main research interests are health policy for vulnerable populations and the health care safety net. He has received numerous awards for his research, including the Health Services Research Impact Award for his work on the Affordable Care Act and the Article-of-the-Year Award both from AcademyHealth, and the Outstanding Junior Investigator Award from the Society of General Internal Medicine. In 2011-2012, he served as a senior adviser in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. His research has been published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Journal of Health Economics, and Health Affairs, and covered by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and National Public Radio. His current research focuses on Medicaid policy, health care disparities among low-income adults, and national health reform.

You can RSVP for the event here.