Category: Digital Highlights

New to the MHL!

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Our partners have been busily adding all sorts of wonderful things to our collection, including lots more MS and handwritten materials. Among the latest additions are fourteen volumes of handwritten notes on lectures given by Eli Ives, William Tully, both Yale School of Medicine professors, as well as others only identified by their initials.

You can view all fourteen volumes of notes in our collections here.

New to the MHL!

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Check out this beautiful bound manuscript, written on vellum, with red and blue lettering; first initial in colors and gold.

It ncludes some descriptive material by Dr. Ignaz Schwarz of Vienna,
antiquarian bookseller from whom Dr. Cushing purchased the manuscript in 1936.

A Contemporary Take

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If you’ve been following medical humanities publishing news lately, you’ve probably noticed the discussion around the forthcoming biography of James Barry by EJ Levy. If you haven’t, you can get a sense of the conversation in this piece from the Guardian.

The MHL doesn’t have much material on Barry, but does have a brief mention in an 1884 publication, Doctors Out of Practice from the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Images from the Library

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Check this out: The “Ui Breasail” home recipe cookery book, published in 1910 in Dublin, Ireland, during the heyday of what is often called the “Irish Renaissance” (alternately, the “Celtic Twilight”).

The advertisements as well as the recipe write-ups put this book squarely in the Irish-Ireland movement, a fascinating mixture of home rule politics, nationalism, and a drive towards turning Ireland’s culture inwards. “Ui breasail” translates roughly to “Hy Brasil or ‘The Blessed Isle,” a land akin to Atlantis with which Ireland was occasionally identified, supposed to be the home of eternal life among other things. Interestingly enough, flipping through the advertisements at the front of the book shows plenty for goods and services from England: fish from Grimsby, “Dr Ridge’s Food” from London, “W & G Foyle,” booksellers from London, but the vast majority are for businesses in Dublin or Belfast: the Army and Navy Stores, the Royal Irish School of Art Needlework (being “Irish-Ireland” was not necessarily a reason to avoid the “Royal” label, although it could be), Carson’s Paints, electrolysis in Ballsbridge, and a laundry in Rathmines.

This single volume is practically a case study in a key moment in the development of modern Ireland and the recipes are wonderful: learn how to make ‘beef olives’ two different ways! vegetarian puddings! queen cake and plum bread!

Looking for Recipes?

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This time of year, many of us in the US start pulling out recipe books, making ingredient lists, and trying to remember just how that really good pie we made last fall went. If you’re looking for inspiration, the MHL has you covered!

Try the 1890 Recipe book from the Gloucestershire School of Cookery and Domestic Science: fruit pie? gingerbread pudding? boiled whiting?

Maybe you want something a little more old-timey? Try the 1908 An old-world recipe book:

The hare soup recipe could be a big hit!

Gin and — Gingerbread?

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Many of us know one of the most popular methods of taking quinine was in a drink — if you watched Jewel in the Crown in the 1980s, you may even specify the drink as a gin and tonic. The liquor — of whatever kind — helped to cover the bitterness of the quinine, thus making a vital medicament palatable. Robert Robertson took it a step further and imagined quinine-laced baked goods.

The Walcheren campaign (1809) took place during the Napoleonic wars in Europe; this particular campaign left British military forces stranded in a swampy region of the Netherlands. Troops were exposed to malaria-bearing mosquitoes as well as other sources of remitting fevers. Quinine was in short supply and the campaign — such as it was — ended in an ignominious British withdrawal.

Robertson considers whether quinine might have been more effectively delivered to the troops — always assuming they had enough of it, of course — as a pastry: quinine-laced gingerbread.