Out of the stacks

Examining Letters to Understand Medical History: The Samuel Preston Moore Papers

Staff From our researchers, Out of the stacks, Voices from our collection , , ,

– 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]

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Make Work?? Making History!

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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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Commitment

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– by Wood Institute travel grantee Maureen Cummins*

 

I spent a fascinating week this past summer at the Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia conducting research for a limited-edition artist’s book, Commitment. Like many of my titles, Commitment is a double-entendre, referring both to a marital or romantic bond and hospitalization for insanity. Suffice to say, the project explores the connection between intimate human relationships and mental illness.
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Processing Collections Part I: Allen R. Myers’ and Arthur Asbury’s Presidential Papers, and the Babies Hospital

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– by Morgan Rafel, Archives intern

 

My favorite part of Kent State’s Masters of Library and Information Sciences program is that the final semester before graduation consists of a culminating experience. We could choose between a thesis, a research paper or project, or an internship. Seeing as I had little to no archival experience when I started the program, I knew I would have to find an internship. I knew I wanted to be in a museum setting, so I began applying mainly in the DC/Maryland area, but had no luck. I had reached out to Chrissie Perella, the Archivist at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (CPP)’s Historical Medical Library, about their archival internship about a year beforehand, so I decided to reach out again and see where it would go…

Fast forward a few months and I began my internship at the Historical Medical Library in January 2020. During this time I have, so far, had the opportunity to process three different collections; two Presidential Papers collections and the Babies’ Hospital of Philadelphia collection…well, half of it, but more on that later.

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Medical Schools and Their Reputations, a Concern both Past and Present

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– by Wood Institute travel grantee Laura Smith*

 

On November 1, 1874, Dr. James H. Lenow procured the cadaver of an African American man from the state penitentiary in Arkansas and began dissecting it in a shed at the Little Rock Barracks, a military facility.  Lenow would become an early faculty member at what would eventually be known as the University of Arkansas Medical School (UAMS) which was also located in Little Rock. The story of the dissection gave him prestige among the city’s residents and inspired local confidence in a growing medical status in the South.  Lenow’s was the first legal dissection in Arkansas, and the state was so mesmerized by the deed that they built a monument to the dissection in May of 1927 on the spot it took place.  The monument still stands today.

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Conceptualizing Malaria in Medical Terms, 1827-1838

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– by Wood Institute travel grantee Urmi Engineer Willoughby*

 

It is difficult to pinpoint the presence of the disease presently called “malaria” in early America because of the inconsistent terminology used by doctors in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

This is partially because the symptoms of malaria, which include fever, headache, chills, muscle aches, nausea, jaundice, vomiting, and general malaise, resembled other common diseases such as yellow fever, typhoid fever, and influenza. For much of the nineteenth century, doctors in Europe and North America referred to the disease using descriptive terms that indicated observed symptoms and environmental factors. The most distinctive features of malaria are its periodicity and alternating of chills and fever, evident in the medical term “intermittent fever,” the more common “fever and ague,” and more specific terms that identified the intervals between attacks of fever (quotidian, tertian, and quartan fever).

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Digitizing early medical education

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We are pleased to announce that over 20,000 pages of lecture notes and related material has been digitized to date as part of “For the Health of the New Nation” grant.  “For the Health of the New Nation: Philadelphia as the Center of American Medical Education, 1746-1868” is a two-year project funded by CLIR and organized by the Philadelphia Area Consortium for Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL).  The initiative will digitize, describe, and provide access to 140,000 pages of lecture tickets, course schedules, theses, dissertations, student notes, faculty lectures notes, commencement addresses, opening addresses, and matriculation records, sharing not only the voices of the medical greats, but also the often unheard voices of students.

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