Are you missing our collections as much we are? You can always view some items in our digital image library and on the Internet Archive.
Now we’re inviting you to interact with our digital images in a brand new way! Inspired by the annual GIF IT UP! contest, we’re asking you to create original animated GIFs using select digital content from our image library.
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On September 7, 1918, 300 sailors arrived in Philadelphia from Boston, where, two weeks earlier, soldiers and sailors began to be hospitalized with a disease characterized as pneumonia, meningitis, or influenza. The sailors were stationed at the Philadelphia Naval Yard.
On September 11, 19 sailors reported to sickbay with symptoms of “influenza.” By September 15, more than 600 servicemen required hospitalization.
Physicians and other public health workers in Philadelphia first met on September 18 with city officials to discuss what they perceived as a growing threat. Public health officials demanded that the city be quarantined – all public spaces, including schools, churches, parks, any place people could congregate, should be closed. City officials did not want to create panic. They were more concerned that local support for President Wilson’s efforts in World War I should not be disturbed. Anything that would damage morale – or the city’s ability to raise the millions in Liberty Loans required by federal quota – was unacceptable.
The Board of Health declared influenza a reportable disease on September 21, which required physicians to report any cases they treated to health officials. The Board advised residents to stay warm and keep their feet dry and their bowels open. The Board also suggested that people avoid crowds.
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As part of its partnership with the Medical Heritage Library, the Historical Medical Library (HML) of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia has completed a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded initiative Medicine at Ground Level: State Medical Societies, State Medical Journals, and the Development of American Medicine, 1900-2000.
The Medical Heritage Library has released 3,907 state medical society journal volumes free of charge for nearly 50 state medical societies, including those for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, through the Internet Archive (http://www.medicalheritage.org/content/state-medical-society-journals/). The journals – collectively held and digitized by Medical Heritage Library founders and principal contributors The College of Physicians of Philadelphia; the Center for the History of Medicine, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine; The New York Academy of Medicine Library; the Library and Center for Knowledge Management at the University of California at San Francisco; the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health; the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries; and content contributor the Health Sciences and Human Services Library, University of Maryland, Founding Campus, with supplemental journal content provided by the Brown University Library, the Health Sciences Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Library System, and UT Southwestern Medical Center Health Sciences Digital Library and Learning Center – consist of almost three million pages that can be searched online and downloaded in a variety of formats.
The Battle Creek Sanitarium of Battle Creek, Michigan was a health resort which employed holistic methods based on principles promoted by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Treatments included hydrotherapy, electrotherapy, phototherapy, physical training, exposure to fresh air, enemas, and dietetic plans crafted to lower patient’s libidos in order to live a chaste lifestyle free of sin. It became a destination for both prominent and middle-class American citizens, including celebrities such as J.C. Penney, Henry Ford, Amelia Earhart, Warren Harding, Mary Todd Lincoln, and Sojourner Truth. In order to draw so many prominent figures and a wealthy base of clients to its somewhat remote location in Michigan – and to promote the ideas of its founders, the Kellogg brothers – the Sanitarium needed to produce a wide swath of promotional materials, many of which survive today in The Historical Medical Library’s Medical Trade Ephemera collection.
As is the case in so many libraries and archives, the manuscript collections at the Historical Medical Library used to be difficult to find, let alone search. Some were available through the College website as (essentially) text files. Unless a researcher knew the name of the collection he or she wanted to consult, it was virtually impossible to find the correct information.
The anti-vaccination movement has been around nearly as long as the usage of vaccinations. Vaccines were first used as early as 10th century in China in the form of inoculations which is a slightly different process than vaccination. Inoculation uses the live and non-weakened form of the virus, while vaccinations use dead or weaken forms of viruses. The Western world didn’t begin the use of inoculations until the early 1700s.
Cotton Mather, a Puritan minister from Massachusetts, introduced large scale smallpox inoculations amongst his congregation in 1721 during an outbreak of the disease, but pushback came in the form of local clergymen and physicians opposed to the inoculations. Edward Jenner, who worked as a zoologist, scientist, and physician in England during the 1770s and 80s, was the first to inoculate patients from cowpox in England. Being such a new concept to the Western world, vaccines were in use in only a small population and very few knew what was the actual process was. Even Jenner was still working out the fine details of the inoculation to make it safer to implement. Despite the process being effective and Jenner being a Christian himself, there were groups who disagreed with his inoculations because of their own religious beliefs.
Although objectors to the vaccinations were adamant in their beliefs, most states, as well as the country of England, eventually passed their own laws on the need for a vaccinated population. Objections to these laws were due to the compulsory nature of the Acts. The 1898 Act added a clause that allowed “conscientious objectors” to refuse the vaccination. Through this clause parents could apply for an exemption from inoculations for themselves and their children. The Historical Medical Library (HML) holds a book called Sanitation v. Vaccination (1912), which argues that improvements in sanitation is what lowered the cases of diseases that were having devastating effects on the populations around the world.
There are many more examples like this in the form of pamphlets, books, news clippings, and images. One of the more recent historical anti-vaccination writings in the Library is from the United Lodge of Theophists (India, 1955) “Against Vaccination and Vivisection”. At the time of the publishing of this pamphlet, the anti-vaccination movement continued to argue against compulsory inoculations and were under the impression that Jenner had used his fortune that he made from his findings to push Parliament in his direction and fund the National Vaccine Establishment.
The Library holds many more items with examples of how the anti-vaccination movement has evolved over the years. From objections to vaccinations because of religious beliefs, then anti-compulsory issues, to mistrust in the governments and medical doctors that pushed for vaccinations: all of these reasons contribute to the anti-vaccination movements today.
The links below will direct you to the catalog record or finding aid of the resource listed. Remember to check our library catalog and finding aids – these are only some of the great sources we have about the anti-vaccination movement!
Anti-vaccination scrapbook, undated
Call number: Z8c 11
Records of the Anti-Vaccination Society of America, 1885
Call number: 10c 98
Scrapbook of anti-vaccination clippings, 1892
Call number: 8c 242
An Argument for and Against: The Compulsory Vaccination of School Children…
By C . N. Haskell, 1908
Call number: Homeopathy Pam vol.181, no.14
Both sides of the Vaccination question. The fallacy of Vaccination/What vaccination has really done
by John Pitcairn/Jay Franklin Schamberg, 1911
Call number: Dk 99
Leicester: Sanitation versus Vaccination: its vital statistics compared with those of other towns, the army, navy, Japan, and England and Wales
by J . T. Biggs, circa 1912
Call number: Dk 264
Replies to pro-vaccination arguments
by the National Anti-Vaccination League, circa 1944
Call number: Pam 847
Against Vaccination and Vivisection
by United Lodge of Theosophists, 1955
Call number: Pam 14684
Vaccination (journal)
Volumes 6-8, 1904-1906
Call number: Serial, Vaccination
Cotton Mather: First Significant Figure in American Medicine
by Otho T. Beall, 1954
Call number: 1b 2178
The eradication of smallpox: Edward Jenner and the first and only eradication of a human infectious disease
by H. Bazin, 2000
Call number: WZ 100 J54 BA 2000
The History of Vaccines (website)
Created by The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
*Content written by Patrick Elgert, Temple University Cultural Fieldwork Initiative intern
I have been involved with National History Day (NHD) since 2001 as both a judge and as a librarian. Judging this competition is exciting – middle and high school students put their heart and soul into projects, some of which are of exceptional caliber. Working with NHD as a librarian can be frustrating – students seem to stick with the same 10 broad topics, all of which can be researched with little more than a few clicks on Google.
I am going to tell students a deep, dark secret held closely by NHD judges: if we, the judges, read another paper, or see another exhibition, about the atomic bomb, or about the Salem witch trials, or about Alice Paul, we might start screaming. The impact of the atomic bomb on international relations, or the impact of the trials on the development of government in New England, or Paul’s impact on women’s suffrage cannot be denied. However, I’ve read a paper each year since 2001 about the atomic bomb, regardless of the annual theme of NHD, papers with bibliographies that are created using nothing but sources that are found online.