Plate from “Beiträge zur Geburtskunde und Gynaekologie…”
We’re pleased to announce that the Medical Heritage Library collection on the Internet Archive has topped 40,000 items. As of this writing, we are, in fact, over 43,000! Continue reading
Photograph and case history of Private Samuel Decker. He posed for this portrait at the Army Medical Museum along with the prostheses he developed after losing both hands to an artillery accident during the battle of Perryville. — vol. 5, image 5.
The Center for the History of Medicine recently digitized a remarkable collection of Civil War-era images titled Photographs of surgical cases and specimens. Nearly 150 years after it was first published, this six-volume set provides a sobering look at the state of the art in surgery during and after the war. Continue reading
List of other “American Health Primers” from the front of “The Summer and Its Diseases.”
Welcome to summer! It came in with a genuine heatwave here in the Northeast, but heat exhaustion and sunburn aren’t the only ailments prevalent during the summer; Dr. James C. Wilson of Philadelphia wrote a whole book on the subject called (cheerfully enough!) The Summer and Its Diseases. Continue reading
From Richard R. Madden’s Phantasmata: or, Illusions and fanaticisms of Protean forms, productive of great evils (1857).
As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!
From Horatio G. Kern’s Catalogue of surgical and dental instruments, elastic trusses, syringes, &c. : manufactured by Horatio G. Kern, No. 25 North Sixth Street, above Commerce, Philadelphia (1869).
As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!
Distillery equipment.
Lewis Feuchtwanger’s 1858 Fermented Liquors is much more than the subtitle implies: a treatise on brewing, distilling, rectifying, and manufacturing of sugars, wines, spirits, and all known liquors, including cider and vinegar. Also, hundreds of valuable directions in medicine, metallurgy, pyrotechny, and the arts in general. Continue reading
From Guyot-Daubès’ Curiosités physiologiques : les hommes-phénomènes : force, agilité, adresse : hercules, coureurs, sauteurs, nageurs, plongeurs, gymnastes, équilibristes, disloqués, jongleurs, avaleurs de sabres, tireurs (1885).
As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!
Title page of "The Misfortunes of Mary Roesly."
Mary Roesly, a young Massachusetts woman, was waiting for a train in 1864: “By a sudden start, as I had just mounted the car platform, I was instantly thrown under the car, and my arm was crushed at the elbow…” (6) Continue reading
Title page from "An Account of the Disease..."
Medical mysteries are a popular genre — or subgenre, depending on how you classify it! The details of Napoleon’s poisoning, the exact violence used on the Romanovs or Rasputin, or the “Black Dahlia” murder are historical narratives that still get readers. Alongside these large-scale stories, though, there are smaller puzzles in the history of medicine and science. Continue reading
