Category: News

MHL at the Images and Text Workshop

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The MHL is very pleased to be participating in the Images and Texts in Medical History workshop at the National Library of Medicine this week. The workshop will bring together historians and librarians interested in applying digital humanities tools to researching the history of medicine. Participants and observers will gather at the National Library of Medicine April 11-13 to explore innovative methods and data sources useful for analyzing images and texts in the field of medical history.

Several members from the Medical Heritage Library will be presenting and attending. Our presentation will be Tuesday, April 12th 9:20-10:40 and will include brief presentations from:

Melissa Grafe, Yale Medical Library
Phoebe Evans Letocha, Johns Hopkins University
Aimee Medeiros, University of California San Francisco
Polina Ilieva, University of California San Francisco

We look forward to seeing you there and to the fruitful discussions we’re sure will result!

The MHL Welcomes a New Partner: The Osler Library

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The Medical Heritage Library is pleased to announce our first new partner of 2016: the Osler Library of the History of Medicine at McGill University.

The Osler Library of the History of Medicine at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, opened in 1929 to house the collection of rare medical and other books donated by Sir William Osler (1849-1929), the renowned physician and McGill graduate and professor. Initially comprising 8000 titles listed in the Bibliotheca Osleriana, the collection – one of the world’s outstanding ones – has grown to around 100,000 works including rare monographs, journals, archives and prints, as well as scholarly publications about the history of the health sciences and related areas. To date, the Library has scanned 152 items, all of which are available on the Library’s own Internet Archive site as well as in the MHL collection.

Making the Osler Library’s items available through the MHL not only enriches the MHL collection, but makes the Osler’s items searchable through the MHL’s Bookworm and full-text search tools.

We’re delighted to be able to include the Osler’s material in our collection and will be tagging more as the Library continues to scan items.

In Memoriam

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It is with great sorrow that I report that Kathryn Hammond Baker passed away on Tuesday, November 17, after a prolonged illness.  As so many of you know, Kathryn was remarkable, deeply invested in the Countway and its audiences as a whole, as well as with the role of libraries and archives more broadly.  She had been a beloved teacher at Simmons College, and a Past President of New England Archivists.

At the Countway, she had been responsible for developing the Harvard Medical School records management program, and for catalyzing the development of the Archives for Women in Medicine, well before I arrived at the Center for the History of Medicine (CHOM) in 2006.  Upon becoming deputy director of CHOM, Kathryn’s energy and intelligence transformed our center, whether in advancing our acquisitions, cataloging, and educational programs, or in developing such collaborations as the online Medical Heritage Library (whose governance committee she chaired), through which millions of users worldwide have accessed the Center’s collections.  She was largely responsible for our receiving multiple grants – from the Sloan Foundation, the Council on Library and Information Resources, and the National Endowment for the Humanities – that enabled us to extend the reach of our program and to enable the history of medicine to inform contemporary medicine and society.  Perhaps most importantly, she developed a remarkable team at CHOM, whose ongoing important work is a tribute to her sincere investment in their education and efforts.

Not only was Kathryn smart, strategic, and funny, but she was the most stoic person I’ve ever met.  She was private about her illness, but that paralleled her long refusal to allow it to interfere with her work.  She was truly inspirational, and will be deeply, deeply missed.

New to the MHL!

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Lots of state medical journals, that’s what’s new around here!

Check out:

And we also have a ton of new monographs:

And as always, check out our full collection for more!

The MHL Welcomes a New Partner: Rush University Medical Center Archives

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The Rush University Medical Center Archives, Chicago, Ill., is the official archival agency of Rush University Medical Center and Rush University. The Rush Archives holds almost 3000 linear feet of material from these two institutions and their predecessor schools and hospitals going back to the founding of Rush Medical College in 1837, two days before the city of Chicago was incorporated. The Rush Archives also includes the personal papers of many individuals related to those institutions. Photographs, audiovisual material, paintings, artifacts, nursing school uniforms and caps, and digital assets document the history of Rush, also.

From St. Luke’s News, August 1946, p. 11. From the St. Luke’s Hospital Records, #4704.

From St. Luke’s News, August 1946, p. 11. From the St. Luke’s Hospital Records, #4704.

Hundreds of the Rush Archives’ most used documents have been digitized and are available on the Internet Archive, including annual reports and newsletters from Rush Medical College; Presbyterian Hospital, founded in 1883; St. Luke’s Hospital, founded in 1864; and the Central Free Dispensary, founded in 1873. These items also document Presbyterian Hospital and St. Luke’s Hospital’s nursing schools, founded in 1903 and 1884, respectively. These newsletters and annual reports provide significant information and photographs regarding the advancement of medical and nursing education, developments in research, and changes in patient care during Rush’s more than 175 years of serving Chicago communities.

All of the yearbooks in the Rush Archives from the following schools are now available online, also:

–St. Luke’s Hospital School of Nursing

–Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing

–Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Hospital School of Nursing

–Rush University and its four colleges, Rush Medical College, the College of Nursing, the College of Health Sciences, and the Graduate College

Thanks to the Book Digitization Initiative Grant and the Yearbook Digitization Project grant from the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI), these items were digitized by and made available through the Internet Archive.

Rush University Medical Center Archivist, Nathalie Wheaton, MSLS, is particularly fond of the 1895 issue of

Drawing by Rush Medical College student Christian H. Beyer, class of 1895. From The Pulse Yearbook, 1895, p.158. From the Rush Medical College Records, #4707.

Drawing by Rush Medical College student Christian H. Beyer, class of 1895.
From The Pulse Yearbook, 1895, p.158. From the Rush Medical College Records, #4707.

Rush Medical College’s yearbook, The Pulse, and the school’s newsletter, The Corpuscle, 1890-1900. “The 1890s were an exciting time in Chicago history, spearheaded by the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The World’s Fair really put Chicago on the map. The items in our collection from the 1890s feature wonderful drawings of smiling skulls, darkly funny poems, and photographs of its football team in action. During this era, Rush’s faculty was heavily involved in raising national standards for medical education. Rush Medical College set itself apart from many other Chicago medical schools by providing its students with a solid background in the sciences, incomparable laboratories, and experience in patient care through Rush’s teaching hospital, Presbyterian Hospital.” Rush Medical College became affiliated with the University of Chicago in 1898 and served as its medical school until 1941. To learn more about the history of Rush, please visit http://rushu.libguides.com/rusharchives.

Laying our hands on the 100,000th item in the Medical Heritage Library

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The Medical Heritage Library collection has more than doubled in size in the past year, with the upload of its 100,000th item this month. In October 2014, 10 new institutions from the United Kingdom joined the project and have so far contributed 30,000 titles to the growing collection, including its 100,000th item.

This milestone was achieved by the digitisation of Recent Developments in Massage by Douglas Graham, published in 1893 and originating from the collections of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh. This work is an update to and summary of Graham’s much longer (and denser) 1890 publication A Treatise on Massage. Graham describes a wide range of massage techniques to ease symptoms and treat diseases such as diabetes, diarrheoa, fever, and ulcers.

Interestingly, Graham even recommends massage to treat diseases of the eye, as well as sight problems including near and far-sighted eyes, and astigmatic eyes.

How do you massage an eye? Graham describes three methods, which start off mild and then become eye-wateringly severe:

Massage Simple,

which is done by moving the lids, under slight pressure, in a radial direction away from the centre of the cornea, and by circular friction, under slight pressure upon the upper lid, around the sclera-corneal margin and adjacent surfaces.

Massage Medicated,

is done in the same manner as Massage Simple of the eye, with the addition of lotions or ointments introduced inside the lids. [In the case of treating ulcers in this way, Graham recommends cocaine as an anaesthetic].

Massage Traumatique,

is as near like rubbing the inside of the lids with sand-paper as can be imagined. It is used for granulations of the conjunctiva and opacities of the cornea. The conjunctiva is at first rendered insensitive by means of cocaine. A finger or thumb is then rendered antiseptic in a solution of corrosive sublimate, and after this it is dipped into some finely pulverized boracic acid. The lid is then turned up or down, and the massage is as strong as can be tolerated for two or three minutes. A profuse flow of blood is occasioned thereby, but very soon, in place of the rugous surface which was felt at first, there is a smooth and soft surface, showing that the granulations have been rubbed off.

You can read through the whole book below or follow this link to read Recent Developments in Massage.

The Medical Heritage Library collection brings together a huge curated collection of works related to health and medicine in the 19th and 20th centuries, drawn from some of the most important medical history libraries in North America and the United Kingdom.

And as always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!

New to the MHL!

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Check out some of the latest additions to our collection!

As always, there’s more from the Medical Heritage Library at our full collection!

The MHL Welcomes a New Member: Health Sciences Library of the University of North Carolina

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The Health Bulletin, Volume 36, Issue 8, page 16 (August 1921).

The Health Bulletin, Volume 36, Issue 8, page 16 (August 1921).

The Health Sciences Library (HSL) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has recently added the North Carolina History of Health Digital Collection to the Medical Heritage Library. The North Carolina History of Health Digital Collection contains more than 1000 books, journals, reports, bulletins, minutes, proceedings, and histories covering topics in medicine, public health, dentistry, pharmacy, and nursing, dating from 1849 to the present. These materials thoroughly document the development of health care and the health professions within North Carolina and is thus a significant part of the state’s cultural heritage and history, helping to reveal manifold health problems and how these problems were perceived, understood, and treated over time. The digital collection provides consolidated online access to resources that have been difficult to find and utilize in print.

HSL Special Collections Librarian Dawne Lucas particularly likes the public service announcements from The Health Bulletin, which was “sent free to any citizen of the State upon request.” “The public service announcements were an eye-catching way to draw attention to prominent health problems in early 20th century North Carolina,” says Lucas.  “Some of them, such as the ones promoting the importance of vaccines, are still relevant today.”

This project was made possible by a multi-year NC ECHO (Exploring Cultural Heritage Online) digitization grant for the creation of the North Carolina History of Health Digital Collection. NC ECHO is funded by the State Library of North Carolina through the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA).

To see the new items from UNC as well as the full Medical Heritage Library collection, follow this link!

Bookworm!

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Bookworm screenshot

Our Bookworm tool is live on its very own website — have you used it yet? In case you’re not in the ‘press buttons and see what happens’ school of learners, here are a few tips.

Bookworm is a search and visualization tool that allows users to graph and compare word occurrences in the full text and catalog records of all items in the MHL holdings with a user‐defined period of time. Bookworm delivers item level results and a link to each item via the graph; simply click on any point in the graph to see the results from that year.

  1. Bookworm will search 1, 2, or 3 word phrases in multiple search fields: just click the + to add a new field.
  2. Click all texts to restrict by library, language, or subject.
  3. Click the gear icon for these options:
    1. Change how you view your results.
    2. Changing the date range of the search.
    3. Change the case sensitivity of a search (it defaults to “sensitive”.)
    4. Change the metric you’re searching by (% of words, % of texts, word count, or text count).
  4. Once you’ve made any changes to your search parameters, you need to click search again to run the new query.
  5. To share a link of your results graph, click the chain link icon at top right.
  6. To export your results graph as an image or a document, click the download button at top right.
  7. Click on a point of the graph to see the results of the search from that particular point in time and get links to individual items.

If you have thoughts, comments, or questions please drop us a line.

As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!

The Migel Library Joins the MHL

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M.C. Migel keeps watch over the collection from above the original card catalog.

M.C. Migel keeps watch over the collection from above the original card catalog.

The Medical Heritage Library is pleased to announce the addition of titles from the Migel Library of the American Printing House for the Blind.

The M.C. Migel Library at the American Printing House for the Blind is one of the largest known collections of materials related to visual impairment in the United States.  The library holds over 20,000 items that range in scope from original research to fiction with characters or authors who are visually impaired.  While a majority of the collection is historical, we continue to acquire large numbers of new and relevant items in various formats.  The collection includes journals, agency reports, proceedings, organizational newsletters, and a large amount of non-English language materials.  The Library is also unique in that it contains thousands of individually cataloged periodical articles that are not thought to be organized by the subject of visual impairment anywhere else.  The Migel Library’s online catalog includes items from the Barr Research Library at APH.  The Barr Library began in the 1970s as a collection of materials used or authored by the Research Department at APH.  As a result, many of its 4,500 items are unique manuscripts that were researched and created at APH.

The Migel Library was started as a circulating collection at the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) in New York in the 1920s.  A reference library for the field was a major priority of AFB’s first director, Robert Irwin.  In 1926, the AFB board granted him $1,000 to start the collection.  Book donations flooded in from around the country at such a rate that Irwin needed to hire a full time librarian, Helga Lende, in 1929.  Lende’s knowledge of the German, French, Spanish, and Scandinavian languages was essential to developing such an inclusive collection – especially considering the amount of blindness research coming out of Europe following the First World War.  Lende’s 1940 bibliography Books About the Blind gives a sense of not only the popular literature being collected, but also many unpublished masters’ and doctoral theses in the Migel holdings.  By the time Helga Lende retired in 1964, the library had become one of the largest collections in the world in its area of specialty.  The Library was named after philanthropist Moses Charles Migel in 1963.  Having been inspired by his experiences with blinded soldiers while serving with the Red Cross in World War I, Migel helped found AFB in 1921, and headed their board until 1945. The general stacks of the Migel Library were formally transferred from AFB to the American Printing House for the Blind in Louisville, KY, in 2009.

Helga Lende, Librarian from 1929 to 1964.

Helga Lende, Librarian from 1929 to 1964.

Digitization of materials began in 2010 as a limited, grant-based project consisting of our most significant items.  Thanks to further funding through APH, we have been able to pursue a continuous digitization program for the foreseeable future.  We are reviewing the stacks item-by-item to digitize every eligible volume.  This includes the small pamphlets and articles that, while unique, were passed-over during the first phase of the project in the interest of efficiency.  Our Internet Archive page now includes 2,270 items and we are steadily adding to the number. All future items will be automatically tagged as part of the MHL and thus made available through the MHL’s Internet Archive page, as well forming part of the corpus for the MHL’s full-text search tool and Bookworm.

Annotated photo album, Industrial Home for the Blind, Light Buoy Industries, ca. 1928.

Annotated photo album, Industrial Home for the Blind, Light Buoy Industries, ca. 1928.

About the MHL: The Medical Heritage Library (MHL) is a digital curation collaborative among some of the world’s leading medical libraries, promoting free and open access to quality historical resources in medicine. Our goal is to provide the means by which readers and scholars across a multitude of disciplines can examine the interrelated nature of medicine and society, both to inform contemporary medicine and strengthen understanding of the world in which we live. The MHL’s growing collection of digitized medical rare books, pamphlets, journals, and films number in the tens of thousands, with representative works from each of the past six centuries, all of which are available here through the Internet Archive.