Staff research

Mütter Medicine Mondays: Radiation and Radium Therapy

Staff #MütterMedicineMondays, Staff research May 24, 2021May 19, 2021Digital image library, Radiation, Radium therapy, Twentieth century medicine

– by Patrick Magee, Visitor Services/Gallery Associate

As covered in previous Mütter Medicine Mondays posts, the cutting edge of medical treatment is rarely a place free from debate. A common theme found in emergent medicine is the trade-off: what inconveniences will be had, or sacrifices will be made, to improve one’s prognosis overall? Radiation and radium therapy remain at the forefront of these discussions due to their roles as diagnostic tools and treatments for maladies like cancer, but their medical uses present similar dilemmas to those seen throughout the world when other forms of nuclear energy are invoked.

Seeing Is Believing: Ophthalmology In The Renaissance Era

Staff #MütterMedicineMondays, Staff research May 3, 2021April 14, 2021Digital image library, Medieval medicine, Ophthalmology, Woodcuts

– by Patrick Magee, Visitor Services/Gallery Associate

Woodcut from [Ophthalmodouleia], das ist Augendienst [219r]

Have you been to your eye doctor lately? The process might have been a little bit different than it was ten or twenty years ago, with developments in optometry resulting in new tests, diagnostic processes and equipment. In some instances, dilation is not even needed for a full exam to be completed anymore! Now, recognizing that these changes have come within many of our lifetimes, can you imagine how much different ophthalmology was a hundred years ago? What about during the Renaissance era? Through the Digital Image Library, we have assembled a collection of images and historical records that show off just what Renaissance era eye doctors could do with the tools and knowledge of the time. Keep in mind some of the forthcoming imagery (both literal and written) might not be for the faint of heart!
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Mütter Medicine Mondays: When the Medical & The Narcotic Overlap

Staff #MütterMedicineMondays, Staff research April 19, 2021March 31, 2021Digital image library, Narcotics, Nineteenth century medicine, Opiates, Pamphlets

– by Patrick Magee, Visitor Services/Gallery Associate

Did you like Medieval Medicine Mondays? We at the Museum did too, and it helped us gain insight into a bunch of medical oddities and trends over time! In this week’s blog entry, I want to once again shift our focus to a more recent time in medical history, one defined by printed pamphlets and a myriad of experimental drug treatments. Advertisements and texts meant for everyday people are a wonderful way to glean information about medical standards of the time and putting them into context can reveal something of a record of societal climate.

Prophylaxis, A Medical Advent Still Employed To This Day

Staff #MedievalMedicineMonday, Out of the stacks, Staff research March 8, 2021March 8, 2021Digital image library, Humoral theory, Medieval medicine, Prophylaxis

– by Patrick Magee, Visitor Services/Gallery Associate

Welcome to another edition of Medieval Medicine Monday! On Mondays, I highlight information found through the Digital Image Library and draw connections between the world of the early teen centuries and the world we have come to know since! Using a mixture of primary sources of original content, alongside more modern academic writing, Medieval Medicine Mondays are a peek into the shared knowledge of the past through the applied knowledge of the present.

In the medieval and early modern eras, treatment of the plague was very touch-and-go due to a relatively limited amount of medical knowledge about both the condition and the immune system in general. In prior issues, we have discussed how medical superstitions came into play during times like these, although there is some evidence that more modern medical techniques were already starting to come into play towards the tail end of the medieval era. Enter prophylaxis.

How Thorazine Shows That Medical and Social Histories Shape Each Other

Staff #MedievalMedicineMonday, Out of the stacks, Staff research February 22, 2021May 19, 2021Digital image library, Medical trade ephemera, Mental health, Thorazine

– by Patrick Magee, Visitor Services/Gallery Associate

Welcome back to another issue of #MedievalMedicineMonday! On Mondays, Visitor Services/Gallery Associate Patrick Magee will be exploring the depths of medieval botanical medicine as depicted by woodcuts found in our early printed books. This week is a little different – although there is a theme of medical treatment changing over time present across all #MedievalMedicineMonday posts, for now the focus will be on a more recent time in history that perhaps just feels medieval to certain readers – the 1950s.

Plague Era Woodcuts Shed Light on Shared Beliefs In Action

Staff #MedievalMedicineMonday, Out of the stacks, Staff research February 1, 2021May 19, 2021Bubonic plague, Digital image library, Medieval medicine, Religion, Woodcuts

– by Patrick Magee, Visitor Services/Gallery Associate

Welcome back to another issue of #MedievalMedicineMonday! On Mondays, Visitor Services/Gallery Associate Patrick Magee will be exploring the depths of medieval medicine as depicted by woodcuts found in our early printed books.

This week, we’re going to look at how woodcut creators and the general public made sense of the beginnings of a plague. In Pestbuch, Hieronymus Brunschwig depicted the onset of a pandemic through a series of woodcuts, themselves serving a purpose somewhere between documentation and warning. In the woodcut drawings, Brunschwig depicts a mixture of illness at its worst alongside the continuing lives of everyday folks and doctors/attenders of the sick.

Antikamnia Calendars: 19th Century Medical Advertising

Staff Out of the stacks, Staff research January 20, 2021May 19, 2021Antikamnia Chemical Company, Digital image library, Medical trade ephemera, Nineteenth century medicine, Patent medicines, Pharmaceutical companies

– by Josh Bicker, Visitor Services Floor Supervisor

Among the College of Physicians Medical Library’s collection, we have a number of advertisements for the Antikamnia Chemical Company. Within these, a curious image can be found in an advertising pamphlet of the time, portraying a stout man, dressed in a suit, with an enormous skull atop his neck. With spectacles perched at the bridge of his nose, he closely inspects a round tablet with the letters “AK” monogrammed on it. Rays of light shower over him, and at the bottom of the page we see the phrase “Tis The Genuine”. It is as if he has received some divine inspiration.