-by Wood Institute travel grantee Melissa Schultheis*
Recipe books are of particular importance to research of seventeenth-century medicine and literature. These texts provide a glimpse of early modern healthcare, both the roles of lay and professional medical providers and the principles that are foundational to the period’s understanding and treatment of the body. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia houses several seventeenth-century medical texts, including MS 10a 214, which is part of ongoing work by Rebecca Laroche and Hillary Nunn. Central to this post, however, is a recipe book signed and presumably owned by John Dauntesey (1529-1694). The Recipe book or MSS 2/070-01 contains an almanac, a transcription of “An hundred and fourteene Experiments and cures of Phillip Theophrastus Paracelsus,” several gynecological recipes, and numerous other recipes in nearly half a dozen hands in both Latin and English.[i] Signed in 1652, the manuscript, as I have discussed elsewhere, seems to represent the seventeenth-century medical community’s transition from traditional to contemporary practices. For example, MSS 2/070-01 frequently relies on Galenic medicine; however, several recipes are attributed to practitioners who work against Galenic tradition, including Paracelsus and Martinus Rulandus. This text’s amalgamation of medical trends seems indicative of the medical community’s shifting views, and with more study I hope this amalgamation can tell us more about those who used and were treated by recipes contained in MSS 2/070-01.
I travelled to the Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia this past summer with the help of a grant from the Francis Clark Wood Institute. I was in Philadelphia to research my dissertation project, “What About the Woman?: Managing Maternal Mortality in Philadelphia, 1850-1973,” which asks how turn of the twentieth-century campaigns to lower the United States’ high infant mortality rates affected women’s health and altered the boundaries of the maternal-fetal relationship. The stately oak study table I called home for my two-week stay was piled high with archival materials from the Babies Hospital of Philadelphia, the Pediatric Society of Philadelphia, and the Committee on Maternal Welfare.
Why was I interested in these records? Earlier in the year I happened upon a 2013 American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology article by Mary D’Alton called “Putting the ‘M’ Back in Maternal-Fetal Medicine.”[1] In it, D’Alton urges maternal-fetal specialists to reprioritize maternal health in the wake of recent and startling statistics: maternal mortality rates in the United States have not decreased in over three decades and maternal morbidity rates are on the rise. D’Alton asserts that infant and maternal health are intimately intertwined; in other words, we focus our attention on one body at the expense of the other’s health. Read more
Throughout history, the Fellows of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia have been at the forefront of many advancements in the history of medicine, not least of whom was Dr. Robert Abbe, a pioneer not only in the field of plastic surgery, but also in the use of radium in medical therapy.
Jeffrey Womack, a Library volunteer and doctoral student at the University of Houston, and Tristan Dahn, Digital Projects Librarian at the Historical Medical Library, explore the discovery of radium by Pierre and Marie Curie, and tell the story of early experimentations with radium, including Dr. Abbe’s self-experimentation, and the use of radium in such “health” products as the “Radium Emanator.”
Pamphlet advertising The Saubermann Radium Emanation Activator, circa 1900.
Abbe’s long correspondence with Marie Curie culminated with her visit to the College in May 1921, during which Curie donated the piezo-electrometer currently on display in the Hutchinson alcove of the Mütter Museum.
Quartz piezo electrometer, donated to the Mütter Museum by Marie Curie in 1921.
Jeffrey Womack is a doctoral student at the University of Houston, completing his dissertation on the development of radium and x-ray therapies between 1895 and 1935, under the direction of Martin Melosi. His recent publications include “Nuclear Weapons, Dystopian Deserts, and Science Fiction Cinema,” in Vulcan: The International Journal of the Social History of Military Technology 1, No. 1 (2013; Bart Hacker, editor), and “Miracle in the Sky: Solar Power Satellites,” in American Energy Policy in the 1970s, (Robert Lifset, editor; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014). He is also a contributor to the Encyclopedia of American Environmental History. Jeffrey is currently based in the Philadelphia area, where he teaches at Drexel University.
Tristan Dahn is a recent graduate of the Library and Information Studies program at McGill University. He joined the Library staff in September 2015, and is currently overseeing the digitization of 20th century state medical journals through the Library’s partnership in the Medical Heritage Library. Tristan also is leading the Library’s experiments in the digital humanities.
“Presented by Dr. Corse.” Page from the Catalogue of the Mütter Museum, Volume 1 (CPP 7/002-01). 1884.
As a freshman in college who enjoyed collecting dead things—skulls, bones, taxidermy, wet preserved animals, among other things—I always hoped that I would have the chance to visit the Mütter Museum at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. I’ve long been fascinated by death, so the Mütter seemed to be a place I just had to visit. But never did I imagine myself in the College’s Historical Medical Library poring through the original handwritten catalog and countless other nineteenth-century documents, analyzing the language used to describe “monsters,” and investigating how anatomists procured the bodies and body parts of people we might now call “disabled.” What made it possible for me to finally visit the Mütter, however, had nothing to do with my passion for collecting dead animals, but rather the field in which I am specializing: disability history. This relatively new field investigates the experiences of disabled people and also explores “disability” and “the normal” as social, political, and cultural categories in historical context.
Anti-vaccination cartoon, 1890s. From the Scrapbook of Anti-Vaccinations Clippings. Call number: 8c242.
The anti-vaccination movement has been around nearly as long as the usage of vaccinations. Vaccines were first used as early as 10th century in China in the form of inoculations which is a slightly different process than vaccination. Inoculation uses the live and non-weakened form of the virus, while vaccinations use dead or weaken forms of viruses. The Western world didn’t begin the use of inoculations until the early 1700s.
Cotton Mather, a Puritan minister from Massachusetts, introduced large scale smallpox inoculations amongst his congregation in 1721 during an outbreak of the disease, but pushback came in the form of local clergymen and physicians opposed to the inoculations. Edward Jenner, who worked as a zoologist, scientist, and physician in England during the 1770s and 80s, was the first to inoculate patients from cowpox in England. Being such a new concept to the Western world, vaccines were in use in only a small population and very few knew what was the actual process was. Even Jenner was still working out the fine details of the inoculation to make it safer to implement. Despite the process being effective and Jenner being a Christian himself, there were groups who disagreed with his inoculations because of their own religious beliefs.
Although objectors to the vaccinations were adamant in their beliefs, most states, as well as the country of England, eventually passed their own laws on the need for a vaccinated population. Objections to these laws were due to the compulsory nature of the Acts. The 1898 Act added a clause that allowed “conscientious objectors” to refuse the vaccination. Through this clause parents could apply for an exemption from inoculations for themselves and their children. The Historical Medical Library (HML) holds a book called Sanitation v. Vaccination (1912), which argues that improvements in sanitation is what lowered the cases of diseases that were having devastating effects on the populations around the world.
There are many more examples like this in the form of pamphlets, books, news clippings, and images. One of the more recent historical anti-vaccination writings in the Library is from the United Lodge of Theophists (India, 1955) “Against Vaccination and Vivisection”. At the time of the publishing of this pamphlet, the anti-vaccination movement continued to argue against compulsory inoculations and were under the impression that Jenner had used his fortune that he made from his findings to push Parliament in his direction and fund the National Vaccine Establishment.
The Library holds many more items with examples of how the anti-vaccination movement has evolved over the years. From objections to vaccinations because of religious beliefs, then anti-compulsory issues, to mistrust in the governments and medical doctors that pushed for vaccinations: all of these reasons contribute to the anti-vaccination movements today.
The links below will direct you to the catalog record or finding aid of the resource listed. Remember to check our library catalog and finding aids – these are only some of the great sources we have about the anti-vaccination movement!
I arrived in Philadelphia on a beautiful clear afternoon in October. After Hurricane Joaquin grazed the city a few days before, the buildings looked freshly washed and the light remained watery. I was in Philadelphia with the help of a Wood Institute Travel Grant from the College of Physicians to facilitate research toward my current creative project, “The Cage Went in Search of a Bird.” This project explores how tuberculosis captured America’s collective cultural imagination during the 19th century, creating an image of an illness that affected both the body and the spirit. I hoped to find texts in the Historical Medical Library focused on the treatment of the disease in the 19th century and then explore any breathing devices or other medical apparatus developed to treat tuberculosis that was housed in the Mütter Museum’s collections.
Pennsylvania Council of National Defense Department of Medicine, Sanitation and Hospitals. Emergency Service of the Pennsylvania Council of National Defense in the Influenza Crisis. Harrisburg, PA. 1918. Call number: Pam 173
The 1918 influenza pandemic did not hit the world all at once, but rather in three waves throughout 1918 and into 1919. Though it is unclear how the influenza pandemic influenced the outcome of World War I, what is undeniable is the pandemic’s connection to the war itself.
The first wave was in early 1918, and may have originated in Haskell County, Kansas, where “18 cases of influenza of a severe type” were reported in January and February. From Camp Funston in Fort Riley, Kansas, influenza travelled to Europe with soldiers going to the battlefront of World War I. The general population picked the disease up from the military, and by June, it was epidemic among the German troops and appearing among civilians in mainland Britain. While this first wave did substantial damage, it was milder than and not nearly as lethal as the second wave, which appeared as the first wave was fading in late August.
The second wave began when three cities on three separate continents experienced outbreaks of influenza almost simultaneously. Boston, Massachusetts in North America; Brest, France in Europe; and Freetown, Sierra Leone in Africa all had influenza appear in their naval yards between August 22 and August 27, 1918. The first cases of influenza in Philadelphia appeared on September 7, when sailors from Boston arrived in the naval yard. By early October, hospital beds in Philadelphia were full, public meetings and church services were banned, schools were closed, and there was a severe shortage of coffins. Beginning in September 1918 and until spring of 1919, the weekly number of influenza-related deaths in Philadelphia dropped below three figures only once. In October alone, over 11,000 Philadelphians died from influenza.
By the end of October, public services and meetings, including school and church, were re-opened. In early November, influenza in Philadelphia had reached its peak and the number of deaths slowly declined. A reported 12,162 people had died by November 2, 1918. The end of the second wave for most American cities, including Philadelphia, came in mid-November. Philadelphia had a small resurgence during the third and final wave during February 1919. By the end of the pandemic, a huge number of people had died. A general estimate for the total number of deaths is 50 million, though estimates range from as low as 25 million to as high as 100 million deaths worldwide. Over 1.5 million of these deaths were in the United States. Whichever way the true numbers run, the loss of life is truly astounding.
The links below will direct you to the catalog record or finding aid of the resource listed. Remember to check our library catalog and finding aids – these are only some of the great sources we have about the influenza pandemic!
Primary sources
Note: Some of these materials are uncatalogued and are not linked to a catalogue record. When requesting the uncatalogued materials, please be sure to include all of the information shown here.
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