This month we are heading to New Canaan, Connecticut. The original building that later held Brooks’ Sanatorium was built in 1898 by a wealthy summer resident, Ellen Josephine Hall. Hall purchased the 11 acre property with the intention of opening a sanatorium for her nephew, Dr. Charles Osborne. They left town and the building was sold to Dr. Myron J. Brooks and his wife, Marion.
Tuberculosis
The Diversity of Hormone Therapies in the United States, 1920-1964
– by Kate Grauvogel*
With the isolation of estrogens, androgens, progestins, and insulin in the 1920s and 30s, boundless therapeutic uses for hormones became possible.[i] Fertility control, mental illness, and tuberculosis were just a few of the seemingly disparate problems that researchers attempted to treat or control by regulating hormones. My research adds to this picture by showing just how varied these uses were and how the community of researchers compared and coordinated their efforts. At the Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, I discovered additional diverse uses for hormone therapies in the published works of Dr. Edward Strecker and the papers and published works of Dr. Max B. Lurie.
Letting Fall Grains of Sand or Pins into a Glass: Finding the Poetry of René Laennec at the Historical Medical Library
-by Wood Institute travel grantee Ligia Bouton*
I arrived in Philadelphia on a beautiful clear afternoon in October. After Hurricane Joaquin grazed the city a few days before, the buildings looked freshly washed and the light remained watery. I was in Philadelphia with the help of a Wood Institute Travel Grant from the College of Physicians to facilitate research toward my current creative project, “The Cage Went in Search of a Bird.” This project explores how tuberculosis captured America’s collective cultural imagination during the 19th century, creating an image of an illness that affected both the body and the spirit. I hoped to find texts in the Historical Medical Library focused on the treatment of the disease in the 19th century and then explore any breathing devices or other medical apparatus developed to treat tuberculosis that was housed in the Mütter Museum’s collections.