In light of the maintenance going on at the Internet Archive which is making access to the MHL collections a little unpredictable, check out these past features in our Digital Highlights series! Continue reading
Page from Comstock’s “The Tongue of Time.”
Joseph Comstock’s The tongue of time, and star of the states: a system of human nature, with the phenomena of the heavens and earth. : American antiquities, remains of giants, geology, volcanoes, Egyptian and Indian magic, diet, dress, drinks, diseases, sleep, somnambulism, trances, resuscitation. : Also an account of persons with two souls, and of five persons who told colors by the touch is one of those texts which best speaks for itself. Continue reading
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
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
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
Title page from the published version of Comegys’ lecture.
In the mid-1850s, C.G. Comegys delivered the introductory lecture at the start of the new session of the Miami Medical College in Cincinnati. It was printed for general distribution in 1856. Continue reading
The gardeners among us have been planning their Spring 2013 gardening for months now. There are plenty of plants that can be prepared for the season before; perennials can be trimmed up and put to bed; beds for other plants can be prepared; the work is more or less endless if you want it to be. Just about now, too, the seed and plant companies start sending out their temptingly colored works for the creation of gardening wish-lists.
These works aren’t quite as colorful as, say, Burpee’s shiny Technicolor productions, but they provide valuable insight into the intersection between medicine, science, and gardening at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th. Continue reading
The rise of pediatrics as a specialty in the United States was in part a response to the devastating infant and child mortality due to unsanitary living conditions, contaminated milk, and inadequate and crowded housing, among many other problems. Continue reading
As city physician of Zurich, part of Jakob Rüff’s [or Jacob Rueff] (1500-58) responsibilities included the regulation of public midwives and their duties. In 1554, he issued a practical manual intended primarily for midwives, but which also addressed surgeons, elite women, and scholars. Two editions were released that year: one in Latin (De Conceptu et Generatione Homini) and one in German (Ein schön lustig Trostbüchle). Continue reading
Remedianetwork is a group blog project that tries to bring the history of medicine into dialogue with its present. This piece is the first in a semi-regular series of cross-posted content.
Obesity is often thought to be a twenty-first century disease. Our “modern lifestyle,” so the theory goes, with its rich diet, lack of exercise, and sedentary occupations, has led to the spread of a fatal condition. How far back would you date the beginning of this new epidemic? 20 years? 30? 50? Turns out, obesity was a concern as early as 1816. These medical tracts, held by the Center for the History of Medicine at the Countway Library, and published online in the Medical Heritage Library attest to longstanding anxiety. Go on, leaf through! Continue reading
