2019 – Page 3 – Fugitive Leaves – from The Historical Medical Library

Between the Pages: Victorian Women’s Letters to H. Lenox Hodge

Staff From our researchers, Out of the stacks, Voices from our collection April 17, 2019December 16, 2019Doctor-patient, Gynecology, H. Lenox Hodge, Nineteenth century medicine, Women's healthcare

– by Wood Institute travel grantee Annelle Brunson*

Cracking open the accordion-notebook of Dr. Hugh Lenox Hodge (1836-1881), I read from the top, thumb and index finger poised delicately at the faded yellow corners. Each turn of the page wafts the familiar musty odor of the archives. Each page brings another woman in distress. Hodge was one of the leading doctors of female diseases in nineteenth-century Philadelphia. His entries can seem vaguely impersonal, a simple version of the forms we fill out today: name, age, address, family members, symptoms, and physical notations. Unlike today, his diagnoses carry a heavy weight of non-scientific judgment.

Nineteenth-century doctors, almost exclusively male, entertained peculiar ideas about the female body. Hysteria was at its diagnostic climax, reproduction was at the root of all women’s ills, and terminality was still a gift and a punishment from God. But what intrigued me most were the documents inter-leaving the accordion; the correspondence from female patients, who offer a very different view of the patient experience. Their letters appear carefully composed but the ink blots at the ends of sentences and words suggest an occasional hesitation, a desire to get this right—and they tell a deeper story of the women’s lives read in-between the lines.

Rockbridge Alum Springs

Staff #TravelTuesday April 2, 2019February 22, 2019Health resorts, Mineral water, Vacation

This month we are thinking of warmer weather in Rockbridge County, Virginia. Rockbridge opened as a resort in the 1830s by James Campbell, who hoped to exploit the growing interest in the nearby waters. The resort was then sold to brothers John and William Fraizer in 1850, and they began buildings its 36 buildings by 1853.

Rawley Springs and Massanetta Mineral Springs Company

Staff #TravelTuesday March 5, 2019March 11, 2019Health resorts, Spas, Spring water

Rawley Springs is an unincorporated community in Rockingham County, 9 miles west of Harrisonburg, Virginia, and was once known for its lavish medical resort. European men began to settle the land in the early 19th century. One of the earliest settlers was Benjamin Smith, who sent his wife Elizabeth to the springs for her health in 1810. Doctors were perplexed on what was causing her illness, but within six weeks of staying at the springs and drinking the water she was cured. Shortly after, people began to set up summer camps by the springs. Joseph Hicks is credited for purchasing land and officially advertising the small village as a resort community in 1824.
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A Day at the Beach? Mothers at the Children’s Seashore House

Staff From our researchers, Out of the stacks February 25, 2019December 5, 2019Beaches, Children's health, Children's Seashore House, Fresh air treatment, Vacation

– by Meggie Crnic, Senior Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania

As I carried the hefty, bound volumes to my research station, I wondered what stories they might reveal. Unwrapping the protective covers, I maneuvered a book to examine its spine. It was a Children’s Seashore House (CSH) patient log book from the 1920s.

From my previous research I knew that the CSH was a pediatric hospital in Atlantic City, NJ. It opened in 1872 to care for Philadelphia’s children who could not otherwise afford time at the seashore. The CSH was a beachfront institution where physicians used “marine medication,” to care for children with a range of pediatric disorders. At the hospital children experienced sea-air, sea-water, and sun bathing as their therapies. Elite medical research supported marine medication and prominent physicians on both sides of the Atlantic prescribed patients time at the shore. The belief in the curative and restorative powers of marine environments transcended national, cultural, religious, and class boundaries. It also gave rise to a vast network of pediatric seashore hospitals in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

Atlantic City as a winter resort

Staff #TravelTuesday February 5, 2019January 2, 2019Beaches, Health resorts, Winter

This month we are heading down to Atlantic City, New Jersey. Atlantic City has been known as a summertime resort since it was incorporated in 1854. The first hotel was the Belloe house, built in 1853, and has been home to the Miss American Pageant. The city was the inspiration for the board game Monopoly.

Many of us may know Atlantic City as a summertime resort, but did you know it also advertised itself as a winter resort for its “sanitary effect upon diseases and invalids?”

William Osler, Medicine, and Fairy Tales

Staff From our researchers, Out of the stacks, Voices from our collection January 9, 2019January 9, 2019Fairy tales, History of medicine, Literature and medicine, William Osler

– by Wood Institute travel grantee Ryan Habermeyer*

Several years ago, in a daze of dissertation research, I stumbled upon a passing comment by William Osler, pioneer of modern medicine: “To talk of diseases is a sort of Arabian Nights entertainment.” What a curious coupling, fairy tales and medicine. As much as I tried to forget it and press forward with my dissertation I kept returning to that idea. How is pathology a bedfellow to fairy tales?

Here is my best conclusion: For centuries, disease was almost indistinguishable from magic – spontaneous, metamorphic, at times exotic, powerful, and mysterious. For centuries, disease provoked both wonder and fear; it elicited a kind of grotesque enchantment. Disease, I like to think Osler is suggesting, tells a story. It has traceable beginnings, chaotic middles and dramatic ends. To us, the victims, it is the villain which must be vanquished; but I imagine if diseases could talk they would cast themselves as the heroes and heroines struggling to survive against impossible odds.

Sharon Springs

Staff #TravelTuesday January 2, 2019March 23, 2020Health resorts, Mineral water, Spas

This month we are visiting Schoharie County, New York! The village of Sharon Springs is west of Albany and is near attractions such as Howe Caverns, Adirondack Park, Catskill Park, Fenimore Art Museum and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Sharon Springs, before European settlement, was frequented by the Iroquois population for the spring’s natural healing waters. Major European settlement began in 1825 with the establishment of a boarding house opened by David Eldredge.