This month we are back to Virginia to visit Crockett Springs Cottage in Montgomery County! The Crockett Warm Springs was part of the larger Lithia Springs Company and was also known as the Virginia Arsenic Bromide Company.
Year: 2020
GIF Our Stuff!
Are you missing our collections as much we are? You can always view some items in our digital image library and on the Internet Archive.
Now we’re inviting you to interact with our digital images in a brand new way! Inspired by the annual GIF IT UP! contest, we’re asking you to create original animated GIFs using select digital content from our image library.
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Examining Letters to Understand Medical History: The Samuel Preston Moore Papers
– by Wood Institute travel grantee Molly Nebiolo*
Samuel Preston Moore was a physician in Philadelphia in the mid-eighteenth century whose surviving letters reveal some of the deep connections physicians had within the Pennsylvania colony. In these letters, we can visualize the networks urban physicians had with more rural areas of the colony. Moore, who later became the provincial treasurer from 1754 to 1768 and was the treasurer of the Pennsylvania Hospital in 1767-1768, is a good example of this because of the rich detail he includes in some of the letters housed at the Historical Medical Library at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (HML).[1]
Buck Hill Falls
Located in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, Buck Hill Falls has been a destination since 1900 when Philadelphian Samuel Griscom inherited the property. Seeing the potential for growth, Howard Jenkins helped developed the land into 43 lots in 1901. It quickly became a destination for wealthier families of New York as a vacation getaway.
Repost: “Caged birds sing”: The Sophia E. Perry Diaries
Note: This post originally appeared on the In Her Own Right: A Century of Women’s Activism, 1820-1920 blog on 30 March 2020.
Many of the materials included as part of In Her Own Right represent women who fought for equal rights, jobs, and education in a man’s world. However, the Sophia Perry diaries give voice to another overlooked part of the population: (women) patients in mental institutions.
Interning (from Home) During an Outbreak
– by Morgan Rafel, Archives intern
If Isaac Newton could discover calculus while social distancing during the Great Plague of London, what could I accomplish while social distancing and working from home during the COVID-19 outbreak? I may not have discovered the next form of math, but I did accomplish quite a bit!
The first task I completed was crafting 5 tweets that promote the Library’s materials that were digitized as part of the “For the Health of the New Nation” grant. I came up with the idea that because the College is closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I could focus on the materials that included the topic of hygiene. Luckily, I was able to find a few lecture notes that focused solely on hygiene! In creating the tweets, I tried to tie them into the COVID-19 outbreak, reminding people that health comes first, fevers are good, and to wash your hands. You can view the tweets on the Library’s Twitter account @CPPHistMedLib here.
Make Work?? Making History!
Like most cultural institutions in the greater Philadelphia area, the Historical Medical Library (HML) along with the rest of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, closed to the public in mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
We closed in a hurry, with about 3 hours warning. Our focus was on securing the collection before we gave thought to what files we might need to take home with us to support work for an unknown period of time.
And being a librarian is challenging when you are away from your collection, particularly since the HML staff had been working intently on collections maintenance prior to closure. But as those of you in the profession know, there is always “virtual” work that can be done from the comfort of home.
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