From our researchers

Collections of Stones, Collections of Ideas

Staff From our researchers, In the museum, Out of the stacks November 3, 2016November 22, 2016Chemistry in medicine, History of medicine, John Syng Dorsey, Lithotomy, Urinary stones

– by Wood Institute travel grantee Dr. Edward Allen Driggers*

Historians take for granted the ways in which the profession produces knowledge. Usually historians construct a question from the historiography or primary sources that they encounter. I think occasionally, though, Clio speaks and we are inspired. I recently completed one of the most dynamic years of my life: my daughter was born into the world, I completed my Ph.D. in the history of science, and I completed my first year on faculty in the history department at Tennessee Technological University. My recent research trip to the Historical Medical Library at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia did the same thing for me that it did in 2014 under my first Wood Institute travel grant: it allowed me to be quiet and let the muse speak. It was inspiring.

Female Trouble: Headaches and the Modern Woman

Staff From our researchers, Out of the stacks, Voices from our collection September 9, 2016September 19, 2016Headaches, History of medicine, Pain in medicine, Women's healthcare

– by Wood Institute travel grantee Christine Yao, PhD*

Who among us has not experienced the dreaded throb of cranial pain that accompanies stress and anxiety? Headaches seem to be the physiological manifestation of modern life’s tensions: perhaps more so than aches in any other part of the body, pain in the head symbolically ties together physical, mental, and emotional distresses.[1] In popular culture, headaches are also seen as a particularly female trait – think of the old misogynistic joke about a woman pleading a headache as an excuse to avoid a man’s sexual advances. While acting as humor on the basis of supposed female frailty and sexuality, the alleged headache functions to indicate the inner conflict the woman has between the different demands she faces because of her gender and her will as an individual. Managing these clashing societal demands and personal desires is, as it were, a headache.

A Little-Known Manuscript Dated 1471, made for Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara

Staff From our researchers, Out of the stacks July 28, 2016July 29, 2016Baptista Massa of Argenta, Emblems, Ercole d’Este, Medieval manuscripts, Provenance

–by Peter Kidd, Wood Institute travel grantee*

Baptista Massa de Argenta, *De fructibus vescendis*, 1471, Call number 10a 189

In early November 2014 I spent a stimulating morning looking at the medieval manuscripts belonging to the Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. One that particularly caught my interest is a small volume of 80 leaves, each about 155×115mm (6”×4½”), whose main content is a treatise in 27 chapters on edible fruits, from figs and grapes to pumpkins and capers. It was an appropriate acquisition for the College because it discusses each fruit under various headings, giving their general medical and other properties, and their effect on various parts of the body.

A Serpentine Arms Race: S. Weir Mitchell, George Halford, and the Most Venomous of Snakes

Staff From our researchers, Out of the stacks June 7, 2016June 14, 2016George Halford, History of medicine, Silas Weir Mitchell, Snake venom, Snakebite treatments

– by Dr. Peter Hobbins*

The title of ‘world’s deadliest snake’ has long been contested, and remains difficult to adjudicate. The criteria are varied, including: 1) the annual human death toll; 2) the innate toxicity of the venom for laboratory animals; 3) the rarity of the serpent, and 4) whether it is a shy or aggressive species. The clinical impact of bites, whether leading to rapid death from respiratory paralysis, awful and extensive ulceration, or permanent disability, tends to be a lower-level consideration – except, naturally, for those who have been bitten.

Until the 1860s, however, it was unclear whether there was any meaningful difference between the venoms of poisonous snakes around the world. Indeed, for centuries it had been presumed that they all possessed the same ubiquitous ‘venom’. The potency of their bites was instead believed to depend largely upon environmental factors, such as the ambient temperature, and especially by the malevolence of the serpent itself. “The cause of the Venom is to be imputed to the Spirits enraged”, wrote French apothecary Moyse Charas in 1670, “and not to any other thing or parts in the Vipers body”.

Medical Journal Editors Unite

Staff From our researchers, Out of the stacks May 24, 2016June 2, 2016American Medical Editors’ Association, History of medicine, Medical journals, Medical print culture in North America

– by Wood Institute travel grantee Jennifer J. Connor, PhD*

A journal has demands that never cease – a perpetual machine, it requires constant attention and lubrication. The metaphor of a machine seems obvious to me – applicable to any small scholarly journal that I have edited, even with the advent of online access – so I was fascinated that early medical journals adopted a ‘life cycle metaphor’ to personify journals as organisms that lived from birth to death. Here, the exhaustion of their “parent-surrogate” editors was seen as the main reason that journals ceased to exist.[1] I decided to expand my historical research on medical print culture in North America, and the centrality of Philadelphia[2], to learn more about medical editors and the professionalization of that role.

Prescribing from the Bookshelf: S. Weir Mitchell and the Therapeutic Value of Restricting Reading

Staff From our researchers, Out of the stacks, Voices from our collection April 12, 2016June 7, 2016Bibliotherapy, Neurasthenia, Reading, Rest cure, Silas Weir Mitchell, Women's healthcare

– by Ph.D. candidate Mary Mahoney*

My dissertation focuses on the history of bibliotherapy, or the use of books as medicine. I recently travelled to the College of Physicians to examine the papers of Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, a physician perhaps best known for his invention of the “rest cure” to treat neurasthenia. While Mitchell certainly believed in the therapeutic value of reading in his own life – both reading and writing fiction throughout his career – his reputation has been shaped inexorably by his belief in the therapeutic value of restricting reading as a form of medicine. Neurasthenia was a disease that manifested itself in symptoms that affected the mind and body, including headaches, depression, numb limbs and exhaustion. While Mitchell genuinely believed that restricting reading was vital to resting the body and returning it to health, his female patients felt deprived because reading was a vital part of their lives.

Reading was an act that S. Weir Mitchell understood in bodily terms. Writing in Fat and Blood, his foundational work on the rest cure, he wrote about reading as an act that proved dangerous for bodies suffering from nervous exhaustion. Reading posed a threat for both the strain it placed on a reader’s eyes and the energy it drew from the body. A case study from Fat and Blood details these dangers.