Category Archives: Featured

A Love Letter

Post contributed by Michelle Wolfson, Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Intern.

This exhibit is based on a lot of things. Its main foci are the horrors and heroes of Hiroshima. Three out of forty-five hospitals remained standing after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, though greatly damaged still, and according to numerous resources, 90-93% of doctors and nurses were killed or injured. The medical staff who survived suffered from pain—physical, emotional, and otherwise—and extreme uncertainty and fear, but gave the best care possible to their community. Even with rumors of the atomic bomb making for unsafe conditions for seventy-five years, they did not leave; and some came from outside the city with offers of help and supplies.

But what are the actual things in this exhibit and what do they mean? For me, it is an exhibit based on letters. Letters to oneself in the form of a diary  as seen in the Japanese manuscript written for the medical journal Teishin Igaku. A letter from an artist friend, relieved and grateful to hear of his friend’s survival, in the form of a beautiful scroll. The scroll’s contents were translated and sent by letter to eventually be included in the book that became Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6-September 30, 1945 . A letter—and it is one of many—about the book and the process of it, which serves as a window into the grace, gratitude, and genuine respect and friendship between two doctors. This even became a quest for a missing letter, perhaps Einstein’s last one before passing, still lost but, for me, an education in the world of archives anyway.

Handwritten manuscript for the medical journal Teishin Igaku.
Hiroshima Scroll.
Portuguese edition of Hiroshima Diary.
Letter from Dr. Michihiko Hachiya to Dr. Warner Wells.
A note from Dr. Wells about Einstein’s lost letter.

It is a story based on letters. This exhibit is my own contribution—a love letter to Hiroshima Diary and its creators, for teaching me about Hiroshima in a new way, and the medical staff and people who survived, as well as those that did not. This is what it is to me, and this is what I wanted to share with you. I hope you find meaning in it as I have.

Warmest regards,

Michelle

The exhibit, The Horrors and Heroes of Hiroshima, will be on display from August 17 to October 1, 2023, in the Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Room. An online exhibit is also available here. This exhibition was curated by Michelle Wolfson, the Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Intern. Wolfson is a graduate student in Library Science at East Carolina University and half-Japanese.

Color Television on Fire

Post contributed by Blake Beaver, a graduate student intern for the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History.

A decade-plus institutional battle occurred between United States television networks, set manufacturers, and governmental agencies over implementing a technical color standard for TV. The National Television Standards Committee (NTSC)’s second standard, implemented in 1953, included color, allowing color television to compete with black-and-white in manufactured sets and programming. Finally, in the early 1970s, color television sales overtook those of black-and-white sets, and all three major television networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) produced and aired color programs. However, several scares about the safety of color television sets from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s complicated the technology’s hard-won prominence. The radiation levels of color TV sets formed one primary concern. As Susan Murray documents in her history of color television, the panic was “likely exaggerated in its scope and potential dangers,” yet:

It succeeded in bringing to the surface anxieties about the connection between vision problems and television screens, a more general concern over the possibility of radiation leaks from everyday technological objects, a growing mistrust in science toward the decade’s end, and an underlying fear of nuclear war (Murray 2018, 247).

The Rubenstein Library’s recently acquired Consumer Reports Archives shed light on a second safety scare that plagued color television, previously undocumented in Murray and other scholars’ histories: fires.

image showing television set on fire
Product testing for a 19-inch color television set from the Consumer Reports Iconographic materials collection.

 

Relevant manuscripts from the Technical Department include correspondence with parties as diverse as television consumers, set manufacturers, government agencies, and legal firms, in addition to enclosed reports and ephemera like the National Commission on Product Safety’s press release from January 27, 1970, which publicized the color TV fire hazards. These manuscripts extend our understanding of cultural anxieties about color television beyond the radiation problem.

The collection’s first mention of the fire hazard controversy appears in a letter from consumer Frederick P. Schmitt to the Consumers Union on October 16, 1969. Schmitt attached a clipping of a Newsday article, “U.S. Is Checking TV Fire Danger,” published the same day, which reported on a presidential commission to investigate the fire hazards of color TV sets.

Newsday article on color TV fire hazards from the Consumer Reports Technical Department records.

 

Schmitt complained to the union that the government protected “the alleged culprits” by omitting the manufacturers’ names and inquired whether the union knew of “these potential killers” so he might prevent the “risk” of “danger” and “possibly death” from his color set. Unfortunately, per the response from Monte Florman, Associate Technical Director at the Consumers Union, the presidential commission refused to release information to the union and the public.

The National Commission on Product Safety’s release on the matter advised that “approximately 22 million color TV sets” were in use at the time and provided a staggering statistic about the disproportionate flammability of color television sets compared with their black-and-white counterparts: “a smoke and fire incident ratio” of “about 40 to 1.”

National Commission on Product Safety press release header from the Consumer Reports Technical Department records.

Although the commission’s press release applauded “the industry for its efforts” to ameliorate the hazards, not all television set manufacturers handled the controversy in this manner. We observe this fact in the collection’s most extensive exchange about the fire controversy, a series of letters from 1970 between consumer Melvyn L. Marks of Silver Springs, Maryland, Sylvania Entertainment Products, and the Consumers Union. Sylvania’s lackluster response to Marks, whose 21LC 28 M set experienced a fire in its “high voltage flyback transformer,” speaks to manufacturers’ inconsistent approach to such a crisis.

Melvyn L. Marks’s letter to Sylvania Entertainment Products from the Consumer Reports Technical Department records.

 

After repeatedly reaching out to Sylvania about their intentions to “correct or pay for correction of these faulty units,” which “other companies have publicized that they will,” Sylvania subjected Marks to the rigamarole of numerous follow-up communications and a comprehensive service history. Marks signs off in a particularly zesty follow-up, “Awaiting your long overdue reply.”

In addition to consumers, insurance companies and their legal representatives communicated with Consumer Reports. In a letter dated June 3, 1970, San Francisco-based attorney Warren Sullivan wrote the union on behalf of his client, Balboa-Newport Insurance Company, seeking the union’s assistance in “[recovering] [a] loss of $11,000, which occurred by reason of a fire to [their] assured’s home” and which they claim was caused by the client’s Sears & Roebuck “colored television set” catching fire or exploding “in the middle of the night while the set was in the ‘turned off’ position.”

These concerns over the flammability of color television sets continued into the mid-1970s. Tragically, some of these fires proved fatal. In 1973, a memo from the newly formed United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), launched a year prior by the Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA), announced “a possible fire hazard in 12,000 Zenith 19-inch table model color television sets,” in one instance causing the death of “several members of the family.’

This brief glimpse into an overlooked scandal in U.S. television history is just one example of the diverse research trajectories that the Consumer Reports Archives facilitate. In addition to consumer electronics, the Technical Department records collection includes materials on testing procedures, methods, data, and evaluations for appliances, automobiles, chemicals, foods, public services, special projects, and textiles. The collection is available at Duke University’s Rubenstein Library, and the finding aid can be found here.

References

Consumer Product Safety Commission, memorandum. September 13, 1973. Washington D.C. Consumer Reports. Technical Department records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

Melvyn L. Marks to Sylvania Entertainment Productions Division, letter. February 16, 1970. Silver Springs, M.D. Consumer Reports, Technical Department records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

Melvyn L. Marks to Sylvania Entertainment Productions Division, letter. May 18, 1970. Silver Springs, M.D. Consumer Reports, Technical Department records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

Susan Murray. 2018. Bright Signals: A History of Color Television. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

National Commission on Product Safety, press release. “Commission Releases Information on Color TV Hazards.” January 27, 1970. Washington D.C. Consumer Reports. Technical Department records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

Warren Sullivan to Consumer Reports, letter. June 3, 1970. San Francisco, C.A. Consumer Reports. Technical Department records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

Announcing the winners of the 2023 Andrew T. Nadell Prize for Book Collecting

We are pleased to announce the winners for the 2023 Andrew T. Nadell Prize for Book Collecting. The submitted collections were creative and inspiring and the judges found it challenging to select the winners.

In the Undergraduate category, Javah Xie, a Computer Science and Philosophy major, won first place for their collection “A Philosopher’s Collection; Or, A Collector’s Philosophy.” Second place went to Lily Elman, a Trinity Program II major studying Disabled Bodies as Minority Bodies in Theory and Practice, for her collection “The Wounded Storyteller: Disability, Illness, and Memoir.” And Rebecca Schneid, an English major, won honorable mention for her collection “Barely Hidden, Yet Always Here: Queer Poetics and Queer Poetic Influences.”

In the Graduate/Professional Schools category, first place went to Joshua Shelly, a doctoral candidate in the Carolina-Duke German Studies Program, for his collection “Alte Bücher in Haifa: (Re)building a German Jewish Library in the 21st Century.” Merlin Ganzevoort, also a doctoral candidate in the Carolina-Duke German Studies Program, won second place for his collection “Turbayne, Morris, and Thomson: A Collection of Victorian Book Art.”

In addition to cash prizes ($1,500 for first, $750 for second, $500 for honorable mention), all six winners will receive any in-print Grolier Club book of their choice and a three-year membership in the Bibliographical Society of America.

Since 1947, the Duke University Libraries have awarded the prize in alternate years to promote reading for enjoyment and the development of students’ personal libraries.  In recent years, winners of the Andrew T. Nadell Prize for Book Collecting have gone on to place highly at the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest, hosted by the Library of Congress. The Andrew T. Nadell Prize for Book Collecting is named for Dr. Andrew T. Nadell M’74, who began collecting rare books when he was a student at Duke.  He now collects early books and manuscripts on the learned professions and skilled trades, an expansion of his earlier interest in medicine as a profession.  With his wife, Eleanore Edwards Ramsey, he also collects the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival.  He credits his interest in rare books to two of his mentors at Duke, Professor of Medical Bibliography G.S.T. Cavanagh and Professor of the History of Medicine Gert H. Brieger. We greatly appreciate Dr. Nadell’s support of this prize.

Diseases, Drugs, and Dosages

A Q&A with Jeremy Montgomery, PhD candidate in History at Mississippi State University in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Node of Excellence and a History of Medicine Collections travel grant recipient.

What is your research project?

My dissertation examines the medical armamentarium in the United States between 1800-1860. Taking a synchronic view, my project seeks to describe medical education, knowledge production, and treatment options between the regions. It takes seriously the diverse medical marketplace by incorporating discussions about “regular” and “irregular” forms of medicine. In addition to the types of medical care, my project examines the black and white body, free and enslaved, also. Lastly, my dissertation discusses and describes symptomology, therapeutics, and Materia Medica within the early-to-mid nineteenth century.

The opening pages of the M.M. Haworth Diary.

 

What collection(s) did you use from Duke’s History of Medicine Collections?

While at the Rubenstein Library, I reviewed multiple sources. For this trip, I narrowed my search for sources that discussed Materia Medica and therapeutics. In particular, I reviewed the Peter Washington Little Manuscript, Notes on the Lectures of Materia Medica by Benjamin Barton, M.M. Haworth Medical Diary and Journal, Isaac Brooks Headen papers, Caleb Budlong Physician’s account books, Henry Fish Papers, Salisbury, [Mass.]., Lee Griggs daybook, Lee Griggs physician’s ledger, Lectures on the diseases of children, New Haven; Charles Watts papers, New Orleans, Physician’s account book, Lectures on Materia Medica and Therapeutics, Elements of Materia Medica and Therapeutics, On the Teaching of Pharmacology, Materia Medica, and Therapeutics in Our Medical Schools, Materia Medica and Therapeutics, and last but not least The Essentials of Materia Medica and Therapeutics.

What surprised you, or was an unexpected find, in the collection you used?

I was surprised by my findings in the M.M. Haworth Diary. From the opening pages (see above) to his prescription list, I found this to be a rich primary source. This source list the diseases and their prescription(s). The multiple prescriptions are revealing because this time period does not connect a particular pathogen to a disease so it may be argued that the treatments will be different. In addition, this source listed the dosages. The apothecary symbols next to the prescriptions allow greater depth with regards to the medical armamentarium in the nineteenth-century. In short, it was a great day!

A list of diseases with their prescriptions from the M.M. Haworth Medical Diary.

 

Anything else you’d like to share?

Yes! The History of Medicine Collections travel grant was my first travel grant I have received in my professional career, and it was generous. Furthermore, the staff at the Rubenstein Library are incredible. I had the pleasure of meeting Rachel Ingold—Curator, History of Medicine Collections. Rachel helped me navigate the application process and invited me for coffee when I arrived.  If she invites you for coffee, please accept. We discussed my project some more and she was able to point me to additional resources that I was able to view on my week-long trip. In fact, the M.M. Haworth Diary is an example of an additional source that Rachel was able to help me review on my trip.

Graduate Student Workshop: The Efficient Archival Researcher

Date: Tuesday, April 18, 2023
Time: 9:00am – 1:30pm
Location: Rubenstein Library 249 (Carpenter Conference Room)
Registration required: https://duke.libcal.com/calendar/events/archivesresearch

In this workshop, explore the challenges of working with published and unpublished archival materials. Learn how to find appropriate archives for your research and how to plan a research visit, including for international research. Develop strategies for managing the many files and images you will collect when doing archival research. This session will also cover legal and ethical issues that surround accessing, using, and reproducing rare materials.

The workshop will end with a lunch panel of graduate students who will share the challenges and opportunities of their work in archives and special collections.

Black and white photograph with a white man and white woman wearing mid-century clothing, in a small room filled with file folders, each leafing through documents. Speech bubbles have been added. The man's speech bubble says "I swear it was in one of these folders." The woman's speech bubble says "Please go to the Efficient Archival Researcher"In the workshop you will:

  • Gain skills to locate, use, cite, and manage information related to special collections and archival materials at Duke and elsewhere
  • Learn about key ethical, legal, and scholarly communication-related issues pertinent to special collections research
  • Develop information management best practices and increase your knowledge of tools and expertise available to help you build an information management strategy
  • Connect with other graduate students 

The Strange Case of “Dr. Anonymous,” a Mystery in the Early History of Coronary Artery Disease : Passion, Discovery, and Serendipity in Book Collecting with Paul Kligfield, MD

Date: Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Time: 5:30 p.m.

Location: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Rubenstein Library Room 153

Contact: Rachel Ingold, rachel.ingold@duke.edu

Please join us on Tuesday, April 11, at 5:30 p.m. for our next Trent History of Medicine Lecture Series event. Paul Kligfield, MD, will present The Strange Case of “Dr. Anonymous,”  a Mystery in the Early History of Coronary Artery Disease :  Passion, Discovery, and Serendipity in Book Collecting.

William Heberden’s classic description of angina pectoris in the 18th century contained no speculation as to its cause, now known to be coronary artery disease.  Shortly after publication of his paper by the Royal College of Physicians, he received a letter from a man offering his body for autopsy to help search for a pathologic basis for his symptoms.  Indeed, death occurred within weeks of his correspondence and autopsy was performed by John Hunter.  The writer’s clinical description of his own symptoms of angina and impending sudden death was so medically accurate that historians have identified him as an unknown physician, described as “Dr Anonymous.”  Nearly half a century of interest in the history of cardiology, combined with passion and serendipity in medical book collecting, have now uncovered the true identity of Heberden’s previously unknown correspondent.  Come and share the discovery.

Paul Kligfield, MD, is Professor Emeritus of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, whose interests in the history of medicine include the development and early use of the stethoscope, the origins and technology of the electrocardiogram, and the development of the pathophysiologic understanding of angina pectoris. Dr. Kligfield has served on the Board of Governors of the American College of Cardiology, as President of the International Society for Computerized Electrocardiography, as President of the New York Cardiological Society, as a Director of the New York Heart Association, as Secretary and Trustee of the New York Academy of Medicine, and as President of the American Osler Society. He is a member of The Grolier Club of New York and an admitted bibliophile and recovering bibliomaniac.

 

 

Inaugural Janie K. Long Speaker Series: Queer Student Activism at Duke, April 29

Dr. Janie Long

Join the Duke University Libraries as we honor Dr. Janie Long, retired Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Duke and former Director of the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, with a dedicated study space and the launch of a new speaker series, the first in our history named for an LGBTQ administrator.

Panel Discussion: Queer Student Activism at Duke

Moderated by Steven Petrow T’78, Contributing columnist, The Washington Post, and author, in conversation with:

  • Mandy Carter, Activist
  • Angel Collie, Duke University Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity
  • Liam Miranda T’16 SPP’21, The Inclusion Playbook
  • Janelle Taylor T’19, Georgetown University Law Center

Date: Saturday, April 29
Time: 3:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Location: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room (Rubenstein Library room 153)

Reception to follow. Please register here to help us estimate attendance and refreshments.

$1,500 Prize for Book Collecting

The Duke University Libraries are proud to present the 2023 Andrew T. Nadell Prize for Book Collecting. The contest is open to all students enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate/professional degree program at Duke, and the winners will receive cash prizes.

Submissions due by March 31, 2023

More information: bit.ly/bookcollectors

First Prize

Undergraduate division: $1,500
Graduate division: $1,500

Second Prize

Undergraduate division: $750
Graduate division: $750

Winners of the contest will receive any in-print Grolier Club book of their choice, as well as a three-year membership in the Bibliographical Society of America.

You don’t have to be a “book collector” to enter the contest. Past collections have varied in interest areas and included a number of different types of materials. Collections are judged on adherence to a clearly defined unifying theme, not rarity or monetary value.

Visit our website for more information and read winning entries from past years. Contact Kurt Cumiskey at kurt.cumiskey@duke.edu with any questions.

Leonid Hurwicz Papers Reopen for Research

Post contributed by Vincent Carret, Part-time Research Scholar for the Economists’ Papers Archive and Visiting Scholar at the Center for the History of Political Economy.

The Leonid Hurwicz papers are now fully reopened for research as part of the Economists’ Papers Archive. Over the past few months, the bulk of the 252-box collection has been reprocessed by inventorying, describing, and rearranging its contents, in particular the now distinct Research and Writings series. The following blog post describes Hurwicz’s professional trajectory, as it emerged from his papers, and outlines some files present in the collection.

Portrait of Leonid Hurwicz, a middle-aged economist, facing camera.
Hurwicz at a 1980 conference in Spain

Leonid Hurwicz was a Polish-American economist who immigrated to America in 1940 after fleeing Poland, which is documented in several folders. While Hurwicz never received a diploma in economics, he worked with and learned from some of the most recognized economists during the 1940s. When he arrived in the United States, Hurwicz joined the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, which had just recently moved to Chicago. The Commission was the major driver in the development of econometrics, a new field of economic inquiry bringing together economic theory, mathematics, and statistics, and Hurwicz participated in the discussions surrounding the use of statistics in economics (collaborating for instance with Theodore Anderson).

At the end of the 1940s, the focus of the Cowles Commission turned to the theory of resource allocation, a field of economics inquiring into the best use of scarce resources in interdependent economic systems. Hurwicz, who was recruited by Walter Heller at the University of Minnesota in 1951, followed this shift. His work during the 1950s focused on the study of abstract market mechanisms, as documented in his collaborations with Kenneth Arrow and Hirofumi Uzawa. One question that became central to his work was the use of information in centralized and decentralized economic systems. Hurwicz built and studied economic models dealing with this problem, leading him to several long-standing collaborations with Thomas Marschak and Stanley Reiter.

During the 1960s, Hurwicz explored new ways of modeling the exchange of information, developing the concept of incentive compatibility to take into account individual agency in the distribution of information. His writings in the early 1970s document these new questions, Hurwicz’s answers, and the tools that he used, including game theory, which was also used to study different institutional arrangements. In the 1980s and 1990s, Hurwicz started working on a book collecting the state of the art on mechanism design, which brought together his interests in decentralization, information, incentives, and institutions. A highly formalized, mathematical endeavor, its theory and applications to auctions have led to several Nobel Prizes, including one for Hurwicz in 2007. His book, Designing Economic Mechanisms, coauthored with Stanley Reiter, was published in 2006.

Hurwicz’s success can be measured by the number of manuscripts preserved in his papers, his many correspondents, and the amount of working papers that he received from colleagues. His success also hinged upon his central place in the Department of Economics at the University of Minnesota, which became a powerhouse of economics in the 1970s-1980s.

Hurwicz’s work was abstract in a mathematical way, although always related to questions raised by changes in society. Among the most surprising items in the collection, perhaps attesting to Hurwicz’s ability to consider a problem under its most pure and abstract forms, I was amazed to find dozens of doodles that he made while taking notes. “Doodle” does not do justice to the intricate shapes, lines, circles, and points that make up these drawings. Seeing them next to the models and demonstrations that made up Hurwicz’s work, I was reminded of the Italian futurist movement and its celebration of the modern, industrial society. As I learned more about Hurwicz’s interests and work while processing his papers, these drawings became for me a metaphorical illustration of the mutation of economics from “political economy” to “economic science.”

Abstract drawing done in black ink
One of the smaller drawings by Hurwicz

2023-2024 Research Travel Grants Open

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library is now accepting applications for our 2023-2024 research travel grant program. Our program is open to all kinds of researchers– artists, activists, students, and scholars—whose work would be supported by sources from the Rubenstein Library’s research centers.

Research travel grants of up to $1500 are offered by the following Centers and research areas:

Archive of Documentary Arts
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Travel Grants
Harry H. Harkins T’73 Travel Grants for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History
History of Medicine Collections
Human Rights Archive
John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture
John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History
Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture (Mary Lily Research Grants)

Each grant offering is specific to the associated subject area and collection holdings, and our archivists can help you determine eligibility for your project. We encourage applications from students at any level of education; faculty and teachers; visual and performing artists; writers; filmmakers; public historians; and independent researchers. Applicants must reside beyond a 100-mile radius of Durham, N.C., and may not be current Duke students or employees. Awards are paid as reimbursement after completion of the research visit(s). The deadline for applications will be Friday, February 24, 2023, at 6:00 pm EST. Recipients should be announced by the end of April 2023, and grants will be for travel during May 2023-June 2024.

An online information session will be held Thursday, January 19, 2023, 1-2 EST.  This program will review application requirements, offer tips for creating a successful application, and include an opportunity for attendees to ask questions. This program will be recorded, and posted online afterwards.  Register for the session here. Further questions may be directed to AskRL@duke.edu with the subject line “Travel Grants.”

[An earlier version of this post had the incorrect date for the info session. It will be held Thursday, January 19.]