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The MHL Welcomes a New Content Contributor

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The History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group was established in 1990 as the Wellcome Trust’s History of Twentieth Century Medicine Group. In October 2010 it moved to the School of History, Queen Mary University of London, where it is supported by a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award to Professor Tilli Tansey. In developing and strengthening links between members of the biomedical research community and medical historians, the Group played – and continues to play – a prominent role in promoting and facilitating the study of the history of twentieth-century medicine and medical science by encouraging the creation and deposit of material sources for use by present and future historians. Continue reading

Digital Highlights: Charcot’s Lectures from the Salpêtrière

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Illustration from "Lectures" of a patient in a 'hystero-epileptic attack.'

Illustration from “Lectures” of a patient in a ‘hystero-epileptic attack.’

Jean-Martin Charcot, head of the medical staff at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, France, was a popular figure in late nineteenth century France. He was famous beyond French borders and part of his fame stemmed from the Leçons sur les maladies du système nerveaux, faites à la Salpêtrière, translated into English by Doctor George Sigerson as Lessons on the Diseases of the Nervous System and published in three volumes starting in 1877. (Check out Volume Two and Three!) Continue reading

The MHL Welcomes a New Content Contributor: Emory Contributes to the Medical Heritage Library

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The Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University is pleased to contribute digitized versions of over 180 titles selected from our Historical Collection to the Medical Heritage Library. Many scholars find these additions valuable for learning and research. Individual volumes in DiscoverE will include a link to these volumes. Continue reading

Digital Highlights: “Earnest Willie”

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Frontispiece photograph of William Upshaw.

Narratives from the sickbed have been popular for centuries. In the nineteenth century, a particular style of sickroom story was popular; it can be loosely described as the “angel in the house” story. This phrase is often used to describe stories that center around women such as Susan Coolidge’s 1870s What Katy Did but it can be stretched to cover narratives with a male protagonist and William David Upshaw’s 1903 “Earnest Willie” or Echoes from a Recluse seems to check the boxes. Continue reading

From Remedia: “TRANSMISSION: Disposing of the dead: The cremation debate in the 19th century”

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In her insightful book, “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War,” Drew Faust shows how the Civil War forever changed America’s experience of death. Never before had the country seen such a large fatality toll within such a short period of time: 750,000 people are believed to have died during the war, a number, according to Faust, “approximately equal to the total American fatalities in the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War combined.”[1] Such a scale of carnage introduced imminent challenges in handling the dead bodies of soldiers and civilians.

Yet the profound changes in Americans’ outlook on death persisted even in the aftermath of the war. Anxieties about infection and the desire to honor and commemorate the dead culminated in a debate about the practice of and location for disposing of corpses. Like in the Civil War, what was at stake in this debate was nothing less than the future of America. Continue reading