– by Robert Hicks, Director of the Mütter Museum & the Historical Medical Library
William Maul Measey Chair for the History of Medicine
Special collections libraries occasionally spawn serendipitous discoveries while performing the most tedious tasks. Reference Librarian Caitlin Angelone was performing another bout of purging decades’ old pamphlet boxes of unneeded offprints of medical journal papers when she discovered a yellowed, folded wall poster. Carefully opening it, she discovered a ten-day diet schedule for posting in Union army hospital kitchens during the Civil War. In fact, the fine print at the bottom of the schedule commanded medical officers to conduct an “experimental trial” of the diet plan and report results to Surgeon General William A. Hammond, and scrupulously account for and report related expenses under the hospital fund, dated October 28, 1862.