Fugitive Leaves – from The Historical Medical Library

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.

Bringing Out the Dead: Adventures in Cataloging, Part I

Staff Intern work, Out of the stacks May 11, 2016April 16, 2018Cataloguing, History of medicine, Medical trade ephemera, Pamphlets

IN WHICH OUR HERO UNCOVERS BURIED TREASURE….

OUR FIRST ADVENTURE TAKES US DEEP INTO AN INTERN’S FIRST EXPERIENCE IN ORIGINAL CATALOGING, MEDICAL SUBJECT HEADINGS, AND THE WONDROUS HISTORY FOUND IN MEDICAL TRADE EPHEMERA.

– by Hend El-Santaricy, Library intern

In my quest to become a more experienced cataloger, I found the internship opportunity at the Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia (HML) to be a perfect way to achieve my goal. My project was to catalog the medical reprints and pamphlets described in this blog. I started the cataloging process after the collection was initially sorted by another librarian. This allowed me the privilege of spending all my time cataloging.

I started this internship wanting nothing more than a cataloging experience. I have had opportunities to work on different collections before. In every previous experience, I was able to delve into a special relationship with the collection, its history, its use, and its potential. I knew I could perform my assignment at the HML well but I was not certain, though, if I could build a relationship with a collection about the history of medicine. I was a stranger to the medical field.

The Brains of the Operation: Processing the Records of the Office of the Executive Director

Staff Intern work, Out of the stacks April 22, 2016April 18, 2018Access, Archives, Institutional records, MPLP, Processing

– by Mary Hanes, Archives intern

The records generated by organizations provide important evidence about the organization’s history and function. In January of 2016, I started to process the College of Physicians of Philadelphia Office of the Executive Director records. The Director oversees the everyday governance and administration of the College. This includes overseeing the budget, strategic planning, special projects, and creating and maintaining relationships with other institutions. With so many responsibilities, the office generates a considerable amount of documentation, from correspondence to meeting minutes. The scope of my project includes processing boxes the Library received from the Office of the Executive Director and arranging them to better document the office’s administrative activities and governance duties.

Because the Executive Director’s Office produces so many files, the office keeps active records and sends the inactive files in boxes to the Library. Boxes arrive with varying levels of organization. Recently, the executive assistant to the current CEO requested minutes from a specific committee meeting. Although the material was located, it became clear that the collection needed processing to make it more accessible for current staff and future external researchers.

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.

‘To be buried alive is, beyond question, the most terrible of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality.’

Staff Out of the stacks, Staff projects March 30, 2016April 12, 2016Death, History of medicine, Mortality, Premature burial

Cases of being accidentally buried alive date back to the 14th century when the corpse of philosopher John Duns Scotus was reportedly found outside his coffin with bloodied hands. Since then, there have been countless tales of people hearing cries and wails of the dead, longing to get out of their coffins. As recently as 2014, there was a noted case of a woman being buried alive in Peraia, Greece. The woman succumbed to cancer. Not long after her burial, her children heard screams coming from her grave. She was exhumed, and it was discovered that she actually died of cardiac arrest. To the horror of her family, it was discovered that her death occurred after she was in the grave.

The Historical Medical Library has an array of materials that touch on this subject – a subject that was, and is, still a fear to many.
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Location, Location, Location: Finding the Daunteseys of Agecroft Hall

Staff From our researchers, Out of the stacks, Voices from our collection March 11, 2016December 16, 2019Agecroft Hall, Deeds, Early Modern England place names, History of medicine, John Dauntesey, Recipe books

-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.