Category Archives: Rare Books

Occupational Therapy Reveals “A Psychiatrist’s Anthology”

Post contributed by Roger Pena, Research Services Librarian

During the Fall 2023 semester, the History of Medicine Collections of the Rubenstein Library welcomed close to 50 first-year graduate students from the Occupational Therapy program at Duke’s School of Medicine. Duke Health and Hospitals have provided occupational therapy services since the 1940s and 2021 marked the inaugural year of the Occupational Therapy Doctorate program.

Occupational Therapists (OTs) are trained in the social, emotional, and physical effects of an illness, injury or disability and help support the development of daily life (occupational) skills to help patients live independently and perform everyday tasks more easily and with less pain. For example, one (of many) functional areas OTs address is handwriting, where providers support skills through physical exercises, self reflection, organizational goals and confidence building.

Although it may be considered a “new” field, with the establishment of the National Society for Promotion of Occupational Therapy (now known as the American Occupational Therapy Association, or AOTA) in 1917, many principles and treatments of occupational therapy can be seen throughout medicine prior to the 20th century in areas such as psychiatry, hygiene, physical therapy and rehabilitation. What may surprise some is the fact that some early interventions of occupational therapy took from the arts and crafts movement of the early 20th Century as well as weaving, gardening and the art of bookbinding. By 1918, occupational therapy schools were established in Boston, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Philadelphia to train reconstruction aides (as OTs were known at the time) in evidence-based practices and treatments to help soldiers returning from World War I. Soon, however, occupational therapy would grow to reach a wider range of patients and those in need of more holistic interventions.

The visit to the Rubenstein Library served as an opportunity for these future OTs to interact with the History of Medicine Collections and Duke Medical Archives artifacts, manuscripts and rare books related to the history of their field and related branches of medicine.

Materials included:

  • Massage roller and devices to help feed patients with physical limitations
  • Duke football programs from the 1950s commemorating annual match between Duke and UNC to raise money for the NC Cerebral Palsy Hospital in Durham and raise awareness
  • Medical illustrations and student journals from OTs

A Psychiatrist’s Outlet

Cover of "A Psychiatrists Anthology"While curating Rubenstein Library materials for this session, one title of particular (and peculiar) interest was “A Psychiatrist’s Anthology” by Dr.  Louis Karnosh, published in 1932 (2nd edition) by the Occupational Therapy Press. This small publisher was part of the formally named Neuro-psychiatry Department at City Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.  Dr Karnosh, a psychiatrist, was the head of the above-mentioned department and also served as a professor of pathology and dentistry at Case Western Reserve University. “A Psychiatrist’s Anthology” – a collection of poems and stories – is inspired by Karnosh’s patients and looks at six different psychiatric conditions suffered by those he is treating – delirium tremens, general paresis, melancholia, schizophrenia, paranoia, and senile dementia.

The anthology also serves as an ode to his love of poetry and book printing. The first part explains Karnosh’s reasoning for creating an anthology of poems and stories while also describing his desire to publish a book in the tradition of Old World book binding and printing. “As a specimen of bookcraft, this is but an amateur’s feeble emulation of master bookmakers of yesterday … The pen and ink sketches, the type composition and printing are done by the author.”  The uncut pages, woodcut illustrations, the typography of the movable type, and the limited numbered copy give the air of books printed centuries before.

Every part of this anthology has symbolism and meaning to represent the six conditions Karnosh delves into through story and rhyme. The preface is written in poetic verse and explains Karnosh’s thoughts and ideas on what it means to be a psychiatrist while the introduction gives Karnosh the opportunity to speak to his readers about empathy for his patients – to not convolute mood with madness. ” I must keep to the road… Luring sirens… are calling and are singing phantastic farrago of popular psychologies. I must retain an objective calm…. I must first be an able dissector before I can synthesize…. Above all I must not treat diseased effectively by interjecting my own into the problem at hand. There must be no clash of feeling with feeling.” Each of the six conditions includes an original hand-drawn illustration, poem, and patient anecdote by Karnosh as well as a short encyclopedia entry about a mythical or literary figure to help the reader better connect to the condition(and patient) described. The folly of Prometheus to describe delirium tremens (alcohol withdrawal); Don Quixote to describe the condition of paranoia.

The (Poet) Doctor is In

Newspaper clipping with the headline "Jobless, Man Shoots Doctor. Blames Him for the Failure to Get Disability Compensation."
Newspaper article reporting Karnosh attack

Physicians as poets and writers is a tradition that dates back centuries, from John Keats, William Llyod Carlos and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to the contemporary Nawal El Saadawi, Irène Mathieu and Rafael Campos. Physicians have long seen the therapeutic value of writing and reading poetry for both patients and themselves. At Philadelphia Hospital, founder Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush were proponents of patients using writing as therapy while Walt Whitman was known to visit field hospitals and read poetry to wounded soldiers during the Civil War.

A look into the life of Dr Karnosh revealed an interesting and almost haunting past. Aside from his responsibilities as the head of the Neuropsychiatry Department at Cleveland Hospital and medical school professor, Dr Karnosh served as an expert witness in the Cleveland area murder cases[1] for both prosecutors and defense teams, having the ultimate responsibility of determining the mental capacity of the accused to stand trial. In 1940, Dr Karnosh was shot[2] on the front door of his home by a former patient who had accused him of writing a negative evaluation that resulted in the loss of the patient’s pension. Karnosh survived the attack.

Writing and poetry seemed to have had a therapeutic value for Dr Karnosh and may have served as an outlet for all the stress and pressure that came with his responsibilities. He was known to give lectures on various topics across the Ohio area and contributed advice columns[3] in local papers. A look at the catalog record at Case Western Reserve University’s Library, shows several books attributed to Karnosh as the main author, co-author or medical illustrator, including a textbook on psychiatry for nurses that had eight different editions.

As for the link between physician and poetry,  Dr. Rafael Campos, physician, poet and Director of Literature and Writing Programs of the Arts and Humanities Initiative at Harvard Medical School explains, “Poetry does a better job in teaching because it is about embracing the human aspect of suffering.” He goes on to say, “It’s our own humanity. That can be really healing for patients.”[4]

A New Approach

In explaining his thoughts for writing a “Psychiatrists Anthology,” Karnosh mentions that it is a “product of avocational moments of a psychiatrist who spends time with his patients in occupational therapy.” By the time the first edition was printed in 1931, occupational therapy had been an officially recognized medical discipline for close to fifteen years but “didn’t fit neatly into the medical model.” OT took a more holistic approach to therapy with aspects of nursing care, physical therapy, social work, psychiatry, health advocacy, and orthopedics seen in its treatments and interventions. Were poetry and art how Karnosh connected with his patients? Were these occupational skills part of his own mental well-being?

At a time when those with mental illness, physical disabilities and depression were seen as ills of society, occupational therapy and new OTs seemed to bring a breath of freshness to medicine with a focus on developing vocational skills as well as supporting the mental well-being of patients.

Today, there are approximately 500 accredited Occupational Therapy programs (with nearly 200 more vying for accreditation status) and over 180,000 occupational therapists and OT assistants practicing in schools, hospitals and outpatient clinics across the United States. As of December 12, 2023, Duke University’s Occupational Therapy Doctoral Program was granted accreditation  from the Accreditation Council of Occupational Therapy Education (ACOTE).

Footnotes

[1] The Evening Review. East Liverpool, Ohio. Tuesday, January 26, 1932

[2] The Daily Sentinel-Tribune.Bowling Green, Ohio. Wednesday, July 03, 1940

[3] The Coshocton Tribune. Coshocton, Ohio. Thursday, October 12, 1939

[4] Demarco, S. (2020, March 11). Doctor-poets search for the right words to help patients heal. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-11/column-one-doctor-poets

 

 

A Melancholy Skeleton

Post contributed by Roseen Giles, PhD, Assistant Professor of Music and Curator, Duke University Musical Instrument Collections

A white ivory carving against a black velvet background. The carving shows a skeleton leaning against a pedestal with a clock. Symbols of worldly power and wealth--like a crown, a knight's helmet, and flags--are piled at his feet.
Memento Mori, approximately 1650, Rubenstein Library

There is a melancholy skeleton who lives in Duke University’s History of Medicine Collections at the Rubenstein Library. In truly every sense, he is a marvel. Meticulously carved from a single piece of ivory, this piece is crafted with astounding virtuosity by an artist who must have known as much about the science of anatomy as they did of the human condition. The composition dates from the middle of the seventeenth century but the name of the artist and the circumstances of its creation are unknown. It is perhaps fitting that the subject of this skeletal wonder is the greatest mystery of all: death. The remarkable details of the carving suggest that it is a vanitas or memento mori, a genre of artworks that remind us through a series of recognizable symbols of the certainty of death and the fleetingness of life. The skeleton itself represents a human life spent; despite our differences and all the things that mark us as unique individuals we will all one day die, leaving behind ossified remains that are, to the untrained eye, indistinguishable one of from the other.

At the skeleton’s feet are some of the most common symbols of the vanitas genre: traces of earthly pursuits such as warfare, monarchy and, perhaps most importantly, objects which point to the passing of time. This level of detail will be familiar to those acquainted with Hans Holbein the Younger’s masterpiece The Ambassadors (1533), a painting which contains quintessential examples of vanitas, among them a lute with a single broken string. Music and sound can in this case stand in as a metaphor for human life, one that is equally transient and decaying as soon as it is brought into existence. Tucked behind our skeleton’s crossed legs we can see a sickle or scythe, the symbol for the tyranny of time and of its god Saturn. The pedestal upon which he rests his arm contains the mechanical parts of a timepiece, innovative new inventions in the early modern period. The skeleton cradles his own head as he leans upon the ticking pedestal in a striking gesture that suggests both a contemplative and melancholy temperament. Perhaps most astonishing is the detail of the sash that surrounds but does not fully touch his back—as if it had been taken up with a momentary gust of wind that froze it in its movement.

Black-and-white illustration of a skeleton leaning on a shovel. Its skull is tilted back and its mouth is open. There is a mountainous landscape behind it.
Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543), p. 163

The stick upon which the skeleton rests his right hand does not seem particularly remarkable, but a comparison to two drawings from Andreas Vesalius’s (1514–64) revolutionary anatomical treatise De humani corporis fabrica [On the Fabric of the Human Body] (Basel, 1543) reveals that there may be more to this detail than meets the eye. In one of these illustrations—possibly attributable to a pupil of Titian, Joannes Stephanus of Calcar (c. 1488–1576)— a skeleton turns his head up towards the heavens (Figure 2). The positioning of his neck and torso suggests a depth of feeling: his head is turned slightly to one side as he looks up and he rests his weight on a staff very much like the one in the ivory vanitas. In Vesalius we can see that the skeleton is leaning not on a walking stick but on a shovel, which he will use to dig his own grave. In yet another of the images from the Fabrica we can see the same skeleton looking not upwards but down with one hand supporting his own head and the other resting on a skull—not his own, apparently— which is placed upon a pedestal very similar to the timepiece in our carving. The anatomical accuracy in both the drawings of the Fabrica and of our ivory skeleton is remarkable enough, but their gestural embodiment of human thought and emotion make these works truly astonishing historical witnesses. Their subjects point to the contradictions of lived existence: the unstable dichotomy between the physical and mental, between anatomy and emotion, between scientific and artistic knowledge.

Black-and-white illustration of a skeleton leaning on a tomb. It rests its skull on its left hand and places its right hand on another skull.
Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543), p. 164

The unknown artist who made the vanitas skeleton in Duke’s History of Medicine Collections understood the rhetorical power of the ephemeral made material, when the truths of existence are brought into dialogue with the irrationality of consciousness. The very material they chose is telling of this. Ivory is rare and costly but lends itself well to the intricate detail of the piece’s low relief; it is not human bone but stands in for it in a vivid and arresting way. There are many things that such a piece can teach us about the history of medicine and, more specifically, seventeenth-century understandings of human anatomy and the physicality of emotions. But in reminding us that we will certainly die it can also tell us something about how to live. It represents, in short, a kind of contemplative interaction between the living and the dead, an interaction which suggests that the health of the human body is inextricably linked with our thoughts and emotions. In this way our melancholy skeleton can, even by representing death and transience, help us to understand and to improve the health and well-being of the living.

X Marks the Spot: Adding Coordinates to Rare Maps’ Catalog Records

Blog Post Contributed by Liz Adams, Rare Materials Cataloger

The Rubenstein Library has 2,142 individually cataloged printed maps, collectively covering nearly the entire world. There are aerial views of Alexandria, Egypt and Venice, Italy; fire insurance maps of our own North Carolina and ones of nearby Tennessee and Virginia; and pre-1800 (or what we call “early”) maps of what is now the United States. We have maps charting rivers in Southeast Asia and thematic ones related to public health and nuclear proliferation. Our maps perform dual functions: they orient users to particular places and ideas in particular times and reveal the beliefs of the map creators about those places and the wider world.

Elaborate printed map showing an early depiction of North and South America
Map of America from Blaeu’s Toonneel des aerdriicx, ofte nievwe atlas, dat is Beschryving van alle landen; nu nieulycx uytgegeven, 1648.

It’s a truism that early printed maps look a little different to modern eyes. This is partly the result of imprecise mathematical knowledge prior to the 18th century. According to David Woodward in The history of cartography, “before careful measurement, distances from place to place could be roughly paced” (13). “Roughly” is the key word. These differences are also bound up in the original goals of the maps, which in the case of Western European countries, often included economic, religious, and political expansion nearby and into faraway places (that is, colonialism) (Woodward 19). And finally, and very much related to the first two points, the world has never been static. For example, there was once a province called Carolina that included North Carolina and South Carolina as well as parts of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Things change.

A map catalog record with coordinates under Scale.

I’m a cataloger, and catalogers want to describe those early maps accurately. But how do we do that when distance was “roughly” measured, or when place names and boundaries have changed? For example, how do we document a map showing that Texas once “included much of what later became Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Oklahoma” (Lepore 222)? Subject headings do some of that work in a catalog record, but geographic headings specifically relate to modern boundaries, not historic. The real heavy lifting comes from including bounding coordinates, the easternmost and westernmost longitudes and northernmost and southernmost latitudes seen on a map. We provide those coordinates in two places in the record, one more visible than the other. If you look at one of our catalog records online, you’ll see the coordinates under “Scale.” We also include those same coordinates as coded data in a separate area in the MARC record (see row below beginning with “=034”). This coded data is very precisely structured data. You can’t see it in our online catalog, but if you ever need access to it, let us know! We’re here and happy to help.

A record in our data editing software. The added coordinate data is circled in red.
A section of the United States with it's coordinates listed below.
Finding the coordinates using Bounding Box.

Adding coordinates to map records is a relatively new practice, and not all Rubenstein Library maps include that data. We’re trying to change that. Using a combination of data editing software, and digitized versions of maps, we’ve begun adding that data point to our early printed map records. Doing this work today has an immediate impact for researchers. In our online records, you can see the coordinates and use that data to make research decisions. It also serves an important task for the future. Coordinate data is easily accessible to librarians and can be changed into other data standards for use in digital humanities projects (Kiser & Smeltekop). Without coordinates, this work may be at a standstill.

Since we began this project a few weeks ago, we’ve made changes to over 100 hundred records, with no plans to stop. We still have several hundred to go!

Want to know more about maps? We don’t blame you! In 2013, Duke students in Borderworks Lab curated “Mapping the City: a stranger’s guide,” an exhibit featuring maps and atlases held by the Rubenstein Library. The exhibit is online and is very cool.

 

Works Cited

Kiser, Tim, and Nicole Smeltekop. “A Method for Creating Scanned Map Metadata for Geoportals, Library Catalogs, and Digital Repositories: Reworking Existing MARC Records of Paper Maps to Create New Records for Their Scanned Counterparts.” Journal of Map & Geography Libraries, vol. 14, no. 2-3, Feb. 2018, pp. 109–131. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text, doi:10.1080/15420353.2019.1640166.

Lepore, Jill. These Truths: a History of the United States. W.W. Norton & Company, 2019.

Woodward, David. “Cartography and the Renaissance: Continuity and Change.” History of Cartography, vol. 3:1, University of Chicago Press, 2007, pp. 3–24.

The Satirist and Tinkerer, Hogarth

Blog post contributed by Liz Adams, Rare Materials Cataloger

large volume
Volume of Hogarth prints awaiting treatment in conservation.

Way back in 2018, back when the new decade was but a glint in our eyes, we received something very big (literally and metaphorically) here at the Rubenstein: a single volume of 83 prints associated with William Hogarth. The creation dates for these prints span from 1732 (Midnight modern conversation) to 1781 (Mr. Walpole). Some of them are sincere, like a portrait of the actor David Garrick as Richard III. Others chart corruption and vice, notably in the series A rake’s progress and A harlot’s progress. Still others are pointed rejoinders to Hogarth’s nemeses, which included people like the satirist Charles Churchill (The bruiser, C. Churchill), alcoholic beverages (Gin Lane), and the French military. The themes are varied; the production methods evolve; and even Hogarth’s role in the creation of these prints oscillates between publisher, printer, artist of original work, and artistic supervisor. The prints are thus unified by their differences.

Hogarth engraving: “The Sleeping Congregation.”  A note on the right corner notes that this engraving was “retouched & improved April 21 1762 by the Author.”  Description from catalog record: The scene is the interior of a perpendicular Gothic church. The sand in the hourglass has run out, but the preacher continues to lecture, oblivious to the fact that his congregation has fallen asleep….”

In 2019, I learned these differences were not just between prints but also within them. Hogarth was a tinkerer: He would return to the same copper plate, darkening and expanding shadows, adding crosshatching, changing clothing and facial features, and even excising text. He would do this work multiple times, releasing subsequent editions, or “states” of each print. There are at least ten different versions of some of Hogarth’s most famous prints, all subtly different and requiring the viewer to have excellent “I spy” skills. Luckily (for me and you, but mostly me), Hogarth is a very famous and well-studied artist.  Dr. Ronald Paulson’s Hogarth’s graphic works tracks every change, making it possible to differentiate between moderate cross-hatching and slightly deeper cross-hatching. Thanks, Dr. Paulson!

Hogarth engraving: “The bench : of the different meaning of the words character, caricatura and outrè in painting and drawing.”

I want to point out just one more wrinkle: After Hogarth’s death in 1764, his copper plates first went to his family, who then sold them to the publisher John Boydell. In 1790, Boydell published a volume of Hogarth’s works using the unaltered copper plates. Thus, a print that might be physically dated 1732 might really have been printed in 1790, long after Hogarth’s death. Furthermore, Boydell printed the plates on laid paper given to him by Hogarth’s wife Jane, as well as on a newer type of paper known as wove (Donihue). This can make dating quite complicated, as the use of laid paper might still mean that Boydell printed it, and not Hogarth. Some of our prints are also trimmed and mounted, making it hard to distinguish paper at all. In situations like that, caveats in catalog records really do work wonders.

This all leads me to 2020. The future that seemed far away is our present. Our once uncataloged volume of 83 Hogarth prints is now very much cataloged. You too can see what comes of industry and idleness (spoiler: basically what you’d expect) and what wigs looked like in the 18th century (elaborate and itchy). Happy new year, new decade, and new researching to you all!

Hogarth engraving: “The five orders of perriwigs as they were worn at the late coronation, measured architectonically.”

These prints were a gift acquired as part of the Frank Baker Collection of Wesleyana and British Methodism.

Citations

Donihue, David. “Boydell Editions.” In Development: William Hogarth Prints: Boydell Editions, 17 Mar. 2005, http://www.greatcaricatures.com/articles_galleries/hogarth/html/editions/ed_boydell.html.

 

 

Emancipation from the Cook Stove and Getting Boys into the Kitchen: Early 20th Century Cookbooks

Post contributed by Stephanie Fell, Rare Materials Project Cataloger

When the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection was packed and shipped to Duke in early 2015, many of the materials were boxed thematically. Therefore, as we have been cataloging the collection, the materials tend to come in waves of various themes and subject matter. Lately a number of cookbooks and monographs relating to domestic arts have been coming across my desk. Some have been traditional cookbooks and domestic arts manuals, offering recipes, menus, and nutrition information, as well as advice to the home maker, from cooking, cleaning, and child care tips to household budgeting and how to decorate the home. I wanted to point out a couple of items in particular that caught my attention.

Red cover with gold. A woman kneels in front of a cook stove.
An example of the typical publisher’s binding cookbook from the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection

These particular books, at first glance, are traditional cookbooks or domestic arts manuals for women to help them maintain a healthy and happy home through cooking and good housekeeping. Looking more closely, however, they contain a subversive message that rejects traditional gender roles and encourages the reader to emancipate herself from the kitchen.

Book opening to an illustration of a man and woman standing in the kitchen
Foods and home making by Carlotta C. Greer

Foods and Home Making by Carlotta C. Greer, published in 1938, was intended to be used by teachers to train boys and girls to do household tasks better. This text looks typical of the genre and time period; it includes “many suggestions and devices to stimulate pupils to participate in home activities and to do their share in making their homes attractive and happy” (page iii-iv). Upon closer examination, the “To the teacher” note includes the following advice: “Much of the material of Foods and Home Making is suitable for boys as well as girls. Knowledge of food selection is necessary for boys. Stimulation of boys’ interest in home making contributes to their appreciation of home life” (page v). The author encourages the reader to get her sons involved (and appreciate!) the work involved with sustaining and maintaining a household.

Another noteworthy feature of the Rubenstein Library’s copy is that it contains manuscript annotations indicating the owner was using the volume to prepare for an exam. Part of my work as a rare materials cataloger is to include provenance-related information such as this in the library’s catalog record in copy-specific notes. This kind of information about the book is important to include in the bibliographic record, because it shows not only how a former owner used the item, but also helps to differentiate this copy from copies at other institutions.

Book page with notes written in pencil
Manuscript annotations show a former owner’s use of the item.

Another volume I cataloged recently is Uncooked Foods & How to Use Them by Mrs. & Mrs. Eugene Christian. Published in 1904, it is dedicated to “the women of America on whom depend the future greatness of our glorious country”. This unassuming volume includes more than just recipes and housekeeping advice. Scrolling through the table of contents, the reader will find that chapter 8 is entitled “Emancipation of Woman”. The authors advocate a raw food diet — one reason for this being simplicity: “There is nothing more complicated–more laborious and more nerve-destroying, than the preparation of the alleged good dinner. There is nothing simpler, easier and more entertaining than the preparation of an uncooked dinner” (page [39]). The authors argue that eating raw foods is healthier and will “emancipate [the reader] from the slavery of the kitchen and the cook stove” (page [49]). They continue, “… the use of uncooked or natural foods will surely bring relief and freedom” (page 52). Mr. and Mrs. Christian were admittedly ahead of their time in more than one regard.

Title page of Uncooked Foods
Uncooked Foods & How to Use Them by Mr. & Mrs. Eugene Christian

As I’m cataloging the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection, which documents the work of women over the last 500 years, I’m not just describing the materials bibliographically, but I’m also trying to provide relevant access points and descriptive information for researchers. In addition to these items, the Rubenstein Library holds many other volumes related to cooking and domestic life. One can find other examples of domestic arts advice for women both inside and outside of this collection through Duke University Library’s online catalog. A genre term search for “Cookbooks” will return many items in that category and a keyword search for “prescriptive literature” may yield broader results.

The Phrenology of the Dukes

Post contributed by Brooke Guthrie, Research Services Librarian.

During the 1870s and 1880s, Dr. W. H. Barker traveled around North Carolina giving public lectures and, according to an 1873 article in The New Berne Times, “feeling the heads of the people.” This may seem strange, but Dr. Barker was no ordinary physician. He was a phrenologist and, as a phrenologist, touching heads was his specialty.

Announcement for Dr. Barker’s lecture in Wadesboro, N.C. in August 1883.
Announcement for Dr. Barker’s lecture in Wadesboro, N.C. in August 1883. (Found via Newspapers.com)

In the nineteenth century, the shape of a head was thought to reveal a lot about a person’s strengths and weaknesses. The size of various bumps or “organs” on your head could determine whether you, for instance, were combative, prone to secretiveness, or endowed with good digestive power. Phrenology began in Europe, but proved most popular in America. Phrenologists like Dr. Barker took advantage of the craze and began to offer professional readings to average people in small towns.

Illustration of a Head showing the location of phrenology “organs.”
Head showing the location of phrenology “organs.”

Phrenology was such an accepted “science” that practitioners were occasionally called as expert witnesses in court cases. Dr. Barker was subpoenaed in 1885 to testify at the murder trial of Ben Richardson. According to newspaper accounts, Dr. Barker was there “to determine Richardson’s insanity from a phrenological standpoint.” He also examined a state senator and concluded that the politician would do well in his job.

Dr. Barker was a respected practitioner. The Charlotte Observer stated in 1876 that Barker was “not a strolling humbug,” but rather a “gentleman of scientific attainment.” When Barker, a native of Carteret County, died in 1886, obituaries were published in several newspapers commenting on Barker’s wonderful skill and natural phrenological ability. Dr. Barker analyzed many heads during his career. Announcements for his lectures and head readings appear in newspapers across the state. Demand was so high that he often stayed in a town for weeks at a time speaking to large crowds and examining heads for several hours each night.

In May 1884, Barker analyzed a pair of rather famous heads: those belonging to Washington Duke and his youngest son, James Buchanan Duke.  In the 1880s, the Duke family’s tobacco company was thriving. James B. Duke had turned the firm of W. Duke Sons & Co. toward the mass manufacture and mass marketing of cigarettes. Barker’s phrenology readings were taken the same year that W. Duke, Sons and Company opened a factory in New York and eight years before, with the financial help of the Dukes, Trinity College would move to Durham. Perhaps Washington, then in his mid-sixties, and his son, in his late twenties, saw a phrenology reading as a way to celebrate the family’s successes.

Portrait photograph of Washington Duke sitting in an armchair.
Washington Duke

Portrait photo of James Buchanan Duke in a boater hat.
James Buchanan Duke

Dr. Barker recorded his assessment of the Dukes in New Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology. This small book, written by O. S. and L. N. Fowler, two of America’s foremost phrenologists, provides a chart for a personal phrenology exam along with a detailed explanation of how certain head “organs” correspond to certain traits. The Rubenstein Library has two copies of New Illustrated Self-Instructor, one for the analysis of each Duke.

Title pages from New Illustrated Self-Instructor showing names of Washington Duke, James B. Duke, and Dr. W. H. Barker.
Title pages from New Illustrated Self-Instructor showing names of Washington Duke, James B. Duke, and Dr. W. H. Barker.

The next two images are charts from New Illustrated Self-Instructor showing the readings of Washington and James B. Duke. The far left column of the chart lists the “conditions” that can be measured with phrenology. The next six columns allow Dr. Barker, after feeling and measuring each Duke’s head, to note the size of the skull portion that corresponds to each condition. Washington Duke, for instance, was marked as having a “large” organ for firmness. (James B. Duke was also “large” in this area.)

The readings reveal quite a bit about the Dukes. Washington Duke is slightly less cautious than his son. The organ associated with vitativeness is very large in both men, indicating that they “shrink from death, and cling to life with desperation.” James B. Duke ranks higher in the condition of approbativeness, suggesting that the son is “over-fond of popularity” and ostentatious. Perhaps fittingly, approbativeness is described as the main organ of the aristocracy. Fortunately for Washington Duke, a man older than his son by several decades, he has higher circulatory and digestive power. Both rank as “full” in the parental love category indicating that they “love their own children well, yet not passionately.” One wonders what James B. Duke thought of this assessment of his father’s parenting skills.

Chart from New Illustrated Self-Instructor showing the readings for Washington Duke

Chart from New Illustrated Self-Instructor showing the readings for James B. Duke.
Charts from New Illustrated Self-Instructor showing the readings for Washington (top) and James B. Duke.

The readings of both men are overwhelmingly positive. They are, apparently, below average in no way. It is certainly possible that both men were well-endowed in all qualities, but it also just as likely that Dr. Barker, a businessman himself, would want to flatter his wealthy clients. We can only guess at the response Dr. Barker would have received if he had concluded that the Duke men were weak and dull with low self-esteem.

After 1884, the Duke family continued to prosper. James B. Duke formed the American Tobacco Company in 1890 and the family soon entered the textile business. Duke-led companies would, by the early 1900s, control the national tobacco market and the Dukes would make an enormous fortune in a variety of industries. Washington Duke died in 1905 at the age of 84. In 1924, James Buchanan Duke established The Duke Endowment, with Trinity College as one of its main beneficiaries, and the school was renamed in honor of Washington Duke and his family.

While Duke University saw enormous growth in the twentieth century, critiques of phrenology appeared as early as the 1840s and its popularity waned in the following decades. Now considered a pseudoscience, phrenology is often associated with racist and sexist theories.

Women’s Work in the Woods: Women Loggers During World War I

Post contributed by Jessica Janecki, Rare Materials Cataloger

Today’s blog post features a photograph album of 20 gelatin silver prints that depict women loggers at work in England during World War I. This item is from the  Lisa Unger Baskin Collection which documents women’s work across the centuries, from the 13th to the 20th. We chose to highlight this photograph album because it unites two of the Rubenstein’s collecting areas, women’s history and documentary photography.

Red leather spine of book.
The Great War: Glimpses of Women’s Work in the Woods.

Although the title, Glimpses of Women’s Work in the Woods, verges on the whimsical, these photographs show young women hard at work doing the grueling manual labor that, until the Great War, had been done almost exclusively by men.

Woman swinging axe.
Timber felling near Petworth. A typical feller using her axe on a small fir tree.

The women depicted in the photographs were members of the Timber Corps. During World War I, forestry, like many male-dominated industries, was left critically under-staffed and the British government encouraged women to do their part for the war effort by taking on these vital jobs. The images show women loggers felling trees with hand-axes and saws, trimming and “barking” felled trees, carrying logs, and driving horses. These photographs were taken in the summer of 1918 around the towns of Petworth and Heathfield in Sussex, England.

Photograph of tree falling and women fellers.
The tree falling.
Photograph of 6 women scraping the bark off three logs.
Heathfield. “Barking.”
5 women carrying a log.
Heathfield. Carrying the poles out of the wood.
Photograph of two horses and two women.
Timber felling near Petworth. Horse girls bringing logs down to railroad.

These images were captured by Horace Nicholls, a British documentary photographer and photojournalist. He had been a war correspondent during the Second Boer War and later returned to England to work as a photojournalist. Prevented from serving in World War I due to his age, in 1917 he became an official photographer for the Ministry of Information and the Imperial War Museum, documenting life on the home front.

The series was not issued commercially and the album in the Baskin Collection appears to be a unique production. The 20 gelatin silver prints are carefully mounted on cream card stock with gilt edges. The binding is full red leather with the title in gold on the front cover and spine. Each print has a hand lettered caption. Click this link to view the full catalog record.

Understanding the Eye through Pictures

Post contributed by Wenrui Zhao, a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at Columbia University and a History of Medicine Collections travel grant recipient

What did people know about the anatomy of our eyes and the causes of eye diseases in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? How did they understand vision and think about the sense of sight? My dissertation “Dissecting Sight: Eye Surgery and Vision in Early Modern Europe” tries to answer these questions. Thanks to a generous History of Medicine travel grant, I could consult the wonderful collections at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library to support my project.

The absolute highlight of my visit is the book Ophthalmodouleia, das ist Augendienst by the German surgeon Georg Bartisch, published in 1583 in Dresden. It is one of the earliest publications on eye diseases and eye surgery, and is written in vernacular German. Bartisch was a man of modest upbringing who never received university medical training, yet he was appointed oculist to the Elector of Saxony late in his life.

Bartisch’s treatise is about the mechanism of seeing, but also enacts an experience of seeing. The most striking feature of this book is the great number of finely-executed illustrations alongside the texts. These woodcuts depict various subjects related to ocular disorders and surgical techniques. The Rubenstein Library has one of the very few hand-colored copies of this treatise. While I have already seen this edition in black and white elsewhere, examining this beautiful hand-colored copy was a very different experience and brought new insights.

Color photo of movable flap illustration from Ophthalmodouleia, das ist Augendienst showing the interior of the head.

Two sets of the illustrations are movable flaps, representing the internal structure of the head and the anatomy of the eye respectively. The red blood vessels, light brown iris, and the meticulous shading and cross-hatching help distinguish different parts of the eye. They evoke the ocular surgical procedure, and prompt the readers to ponder their own faculty of vision when they lift these sheets layer by layer.

Color photo of movable flap illustration from Ophthalmodouleia, das ist Augendienst showing the anatomy of the eye.

Color photo of illustration from Ophthalmodouleia, das ist Augendienst showing a pair of scissors highlighted in gold and silver.Some of the images representing surgical tools were even heightened by gold and silver, such as this pair of scissors, thereby accentuating their intricate and elegant design.

Bartisch’s Ophthalmodouleia represents an emergent interest in the anatomy and physiology of the eye from the late sixteenth century. It also serves as a great example of how medical knowledge could be visualized and communicated at that time.

Anything and All Things of Interest to Women: The Sarah Westphal Collection

Post contributed by Laura Micham, Merle Hoffman Director of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture

Join the staff of the Bingham Center as we celebrate the newly acquired Sarah Westphal Collection and the opening of an exhibition of works from the collection.

The attention to recovering traces of women’s voices and women’s agency that motivates all of Sarah’s research and work in the field of medieval gender studies also underwrites her approach to building her collection.

—Ann Marie Rasmussen, Professor and Diefenbaker Memorial Chair in German Literary Studies, University of Waterloo

Date: Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Time: 2:00pm to 3:00pm
Location: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Rubenstein Library 153
RSVP on Facebook (optional)

Speakers:

  • Jean Fox O’Barr, Duke University Distinguished Service Professor
  • Ann Marie Rasmussen, Professor and Diefenbaker Memorial Chair in German Literary Studies, University of Waterloo
  • Thomas Robisheaux, Duke University History Department

The exhibit will be on display in the Michael and Karen Stone Family Gallery from July until December, 2018

Sarah Westphal, who received her PhD from Yale in 1983, was a member of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature and an affiliate of the Program in Women’s Studies at Duke from 1983-1986. In addition to her long academic career as a scholar of medieval German literature, Westphal has spent thirty-five years amassing a collection of over six hundred books written, printed, illustrated, or published by women from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Westphal’s particular interest is women in Britain and continental Europe in the eighteenth century. The collection includes monumental works such as a beautifully-bound first edition of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) as well as previously unrecorded works and unique manuscript collections.

In Sarah Westphal’s own words the collection is “anything and all things that women published or were interested in, especially in the eighteenth century.” The collection ranges from literature for children and adults to science, cookery, travel writing, prescriptive literature, political and philosophical treatises, biographies of women by women, and works by women printers and artists. This exhibition presents eighteen items selected by Westphal, each with its own complex story.

Color photograph of Sarah Westphal