Patient experiences

Patients’ Experiences of Tertiary Syphilis Treatment at the Philadelphia Orthopaedic Hospital and Infirmary for Nervous Diseases

Staff From our researchers, Out of the stacks, Voices from our collection March 24, 2021March 18, 2021Early twentieth century medicine, Nineteenth century medicine, Patient experiences, Philadelphia Orthopaedic Hospital and Infirmary for Nervous Diseases, Tertiary syphilis treatments

– by Janet Lynne Golden, Professor Emerita at Rutgers University

I have always wanted to write about patients’ experiences of illness and ask how new diagnostic tools, treatments, and knowledge changed their daily lives. And I have always wanted to dig into the vast collection of patient records from the Philadelphia Orthopaedic Hospital and Infirmary for Nervous Diseases (hereafter POH). My interest in the records began thanks to the late Larry McHenry, Jr., M.D. who had hoped to write a history of the POH, the nation’s first neurological hospital. The materials from the POH are a goldmine, and include administrative records and, more importantly, casebooks that document the experiences of patients being treated for a variety of ailments.

I Can’t Say

Staff Out of the stacks, Staff projects, Voices from our collection July 2, 2020June 30, 2020Amputations, Civil War medicine, Digital collections, Patient experiences, Silas Weir Mitchell, Veterans

– by Marie Hathaway, Library Assistant

Prior to the closing of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia for COVID-19, my co-worker Kristen Pinkerton and I were working in the stacks at the Historical Medical Library processing journal volumes for deaccessioning and updating metadata for journals that will remain. Going through the collection volume by volume to update metadata allowed us to get to know the collection in ways we might not have based on researcher requests alone. We were continually surprised. Just in the week prior to closing I found a colorful pamphlet about WWII-era chemical warfare and Kristen found a year book featuring a medical student’s romantic poem about spermatozoa.

As we’ve transitioned from working in the stacks to working from home, Kristen and I have been helping to comb through another part of the library’s collection—its digital resources. Like the physical stacks, the online collection has proven to be full of surprising and fascinating information.
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