Search Results for: )

Digitization Collaborative Provides Open Access to Over 100 Years of American Medical History through the Internet Archive

  By

The Medical Heritage Library has completed its National Endowment for the Humanities-funded initiative Medicine at Ground Level: State Medical Societies, State Medical Journals, and the Development of American Medicine, 1900-2000

Boston, MA, October 2, 2017. The Medical Heritage Library has released 3,907 state medical society journal volumes free of charge for nearly 50 state medical societies, including those for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, through the Internet Archive (http://www.medicalheritage.org/content/state-medical-society-journals/). The journals – collectively held and digitized by Medical Heritage Library founders and principal contributors The College of Physicians of Philadelphia; the Center for the History of Medicine, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine; The New York Academy of Medicine Library; the Library and Center for Knowledge Management at the University of California at San Francisco; the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health; the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries; and content contributor the Health Sciences and Human Services Library, University of Maryland, Founding Campus, with supplemental journal content provided by the Brown University Library, the Health Sciences Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Library System, and UT Southwestern Medical Center Health Sciences Digital Library and Learning Center –  consist of almost three million pages that can be searched online and downloaded in a variety of formats. State medical society journals document the transformation of American medicine at both the local and national level, serving as sites not only for scientific articles, but for medical talks, local news regarding the medical profession, pharmaceutical and device advertising, and unexpurgated musings on medicine and society throughout the 20th century.

Project supporter and former president of the American Association for the History of Medicine, Distinguished Professor of History Nancy J. Tomes, Stony Brook University, notes: “The value of this collection lies precisely in the insights state journals provide on issues of great contemporary interest. They shed light on questions at the heart of today’s policy debates: why do physicians treat specific diseases so differently in different parts of the country? Why is it such a challenge to develop and implement professional policies at the national level? How do state level developments in health insurance influence federal policy and vice versa? How do factors such as race, class, gender, and ethnicity affect therapeutic decision making? How have methods of promoting new therapies and technologies changed over time? These are issues of interest not only to historians but to political scientists, sociologists, and economists.”

The digitized collection offers unprecedented, centralized access to one of the richest resources concerning the evolution of American medicine and will open the texts to new forms of analysis in the digital humanities, such as those supporting the investigation of health trends and outcomes over time and region, as well as visualizations.

Journals were digitized between 2015 and 2017 through the National Endowment for the Humanities (grant number: PW-228226-15), with additional funding provided by the Harvard Library and the Arcadia Fund, as well as Harvard Medical School. All publications found in the collection are provided free of charge by individual journal publishers agreeing to open access for content currently under copyright. Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. For more on the NEH Office of Digital Humanities visit http://www.neh.gov/odh/.

Beyond the Internet Archive’s portal through which MHL content is delivered, the Medical Heritage Library hosts state-by-state links to the journals (http://www.medicalheritage.org/content/state-medical-society-journals/journals-by-state/) and the MHL’s advanced search interface (http://mhl.countway.harvard.edu/search/), which offers full-text, proximity, date, and language searching among other features.

 

About the Medical Heritage Library
Founded in 2010 with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to digitize 30,000 medical rare books, the Medical Heritage Library (MHL) is a digital curation collaborative among some of the world’s leading medical libraries that promotes free and open access to quality historical resources in medicine. The MHL’s 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 our understanding of the world in which we live. The MHL’s growing collection of digitized medical rare books, pamphlets, journals, and films number over 200,000, with representative works from each of the past seven centuries, all of which are available through the Internet Archive. Information about the MHL may be found on our website, www.medicalheritage.org.

 

Media Contact
Hanna Clutterbuck-Cook
medicalheritage@gmail.com

Upcoming Lecture: Weill Cornell Medicine: a “Brief” History of Cornell’s Medical School

  By

~Post courtesy Lisa Mix, Head, Medical Center Archives Weill Cornell Medicine.

The lecture will be followed by a reception and book-signing at the Samuel J. Wood Medical Library, 1300 York Avenue.  The Cornell Store in the Library will offer a 20% discount on purchases of Dr. Gotto’s book, Weill Cornell Medicine.

Antonio M. Gotto, Jr., MD, DPhil, is Dean Emeritus of Weill Cornell Medicine, and Provost for Medical Affairs Emeritus of Cornell University. From 1997-2011, Dr. Gotto was the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean at Weill Cornell and Provost for Medical Affairs at Cornell University.  During his tenure, the Medical College saw an overhaul of its curriculum; record-setting fundraising campaigns; a renaming in honor of foremost benefactors Joan and Sanford Weill; the establishment of a branch campus in Qatar and of a medical school in Tanzania; affiliation with the Houston Methodist Hospital; and the development of state-of-the-art facilities including the Weill Greenberg Center and the Belfer Research Building.

Dr. Gotto’s postgraduate work included doctoral studies at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and residency training at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.  Dr. Gotto has played a leading role in several landmark clinical trials demonstrating that cholesterol-lowering drug treatment can reduce the risk for heart disease.  A lifelong supporter of educational efforts aimed at cardiovascular risk reduction, Dr. Gotto has been National President of the American Heart Association and President of the International Atherosclerosis Society. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Dr. Gotto has contributed more than 500 scholarly articles and books to the medical literature, and is coauthor of the Living Heart series of books that explain the origins and treatment of cardiovascular disease to the general public.  His latest book is Weill Cornell Medicine: a History of Cornell’s Medical School.

The Heberden Society, which seeks to promote an interest in the history of medicine, was founded at the medical center in 1975.  With funding from the WCMC Office of the Dean, the society sponsors a series of lectures during each academic year.

Please join us for Dr. Gotto’s lecture and the book-signing reception:

Thursday, September 28, 5:00 p.m.

Belfer Research Building, Weill Cornell Medicine

413 East 69th Street (between York and First Avenues)

New York, NY 10065

Room 204 A-C

Embroidering Medicine Workshop

  By

~This post courtesy Emily Miranker, MA, Events & Projects Manager, Library and Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health.

Thursdays

September 14 through October 5, 2017

6:00 PM – 8:30 PM

This four-week workshop explores The New York Academy of Medicine Library’s historical collections, examining relationships between medicine, needlework, and gender. We will focus on the areas of the collection invoking the ideals of femininity and domesticity, as well as needlework (in the form of ligatures, sutures, and stitching of the body). Participants will learn hands-on embroidery skills and basic stitches, selecting and transferring images to make embroidered pieces inspired by images in the collection. collection. All levels of needlework experience are welcome. Materials will be provided.

Each class starts with an exploration of books about medicine, surgery, natural history, homemaking, or textiles, in the Academy’s Drs. Barry and Bobbi Coller Rare Book Reading Room.

Through graphic narratives, teaching, and needlework, Academy Library artist-in-residence Kriota Willberg explores the intersection between body sciences and creative practice. She teaches anatomy for artists at a variety of institutions including the New York Academy of Medicine Library, the Center for Cartoon Studies, and the Society of Illustrators.

REGISTRATION

$290 General Public

$250 Friends, Fellows, Members, Seniors and Students with ID

Advance registration required: NYAM.org/events/event/embroidering-medicine-workshop/

VENUE

The New York Academy of Medicine

1216 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10029

INSTRUCTOR

Kriota Willberg

The New York Academy of Medicine Library artist-in-residence.

The Center for the History of Medicine Presents: From Riding Breeches to Harvard

  By

~This post courtesy Andra Pham, Records Management Assistant, Center for the History of Medicine at the Francis A. Countway Library.

Join us for an evening discussion on the life and career of Linda Francis James Benitt, the first female graduate of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The presentation will begin by briefly exploring the context of women at Harvard at the turn of century, as well as Linda James’ life in Boston as a young student. Next, Bernice Ende, Linda’s great-niece, will share her personal insights on Linda’s life, as well how she inspired her toward ultimately becoming a “lady long rider”.

Linda Frances James was the first woman to graduate from the Harvard-M.I.T. School for Health Officers (predecessor of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health), receiving her C.P.H. in 1917. As a young public health professional in Boston, Linda worked as a Medical Social Worker at Massachusetts General Hospital, and as the Director of the After-Care Division at the Harvard Infantile Paralysis Commission. Her professional life shifted in 1922 when she married William A. Benitt, a young attorney from Goodhue, Minnesota. The couple decided to leave their careers and become farmers on Apple Acres—a 200-acre farm in South Washington County, Minnesota. In addition to life on the farm, James remained an active advocate for education, public health, and community. A two-part blog series on Linda is available here.

Bernice Ende was raised on a Minnesota dairy farm where riding was always an integral part of her life. After pursuing a career teaching classical ballet on the west coast, Ende moved to Trego, Montana, a remote part of North West Montana where she continued teaching ballet. Her retirement in 2003 brought not a lack of activity, but rather a change in focus. Drawn back to riding, Bernice felt the pull of the open road and adventure inherent in serious riding. Her first ride in 2005 has continued into the present. Now thirteen years later, having acquired nearly 30,000 equestrian miles, she inspires and encourages female leadership with her travels. For more information on Ende, visit her website: www.endeofthetrail.com

 

Wednesday, September 20, 2017
3:30pm

Light refreshments will be served.

Minot Room, 5th Floor
Countway Library
Harvard Medical School
10 Shattuck Street, Boston MA 02115

Free and open to the public.

Registration is required. Register online now through Eventbrite or email us at ContactChom@hms.harvard.edu.