Post contributed by Baylee Staufenbiel, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Florida State University.
During my recent research visit to the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, I had the opportunity to work with the Duke University’s extensive holdings on medieval and early modern medicine. The highlight of my trip was Latin MS 182, a copy of the Pantegni Practica, a foundational medical text traditionally attributed to Constantine the African. The Pantegni is particularly significant as it one of the most comprehensive and well-known texts to synthesize Greco-Roman and Arabic medical knowledge. The Practica is interesting as it was never completed by Constantine. Various copies appeared, but current scholarship is unsure of the provenance of the additional chapters. The Rubenstein’s copy has some of these chapters that may have been compiled or written by his pupil Joannes Afflacius, who’s attribution is given to the accompanying treatise Liber Aureus. Figure One shows the table of contents of the Rubenstein’s Practica (33r).
Figure One: Pantegni Practica, 33r, Latin MS 182, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
As I worked with the Pantegni Practica, I really began to think about the roles of translators, manuscripts, prints, and productions. Constantine’s contribution to the spread of Arabic texts is undeniable. I have begun to think locations like Monte Cassino and Salerno as more than places of translation and transmission of texts. They are nodes for the establishment of epistemic authority. The texts, knowledges, and individuals that came from these locations constructed what would become medical and anatomical practice throughout the medieval and early modern periods.
The reliance on authoritative voices continued with my exploration of early modern sources. For example, in “On the Liver” (Sec. A Box 183, 1654-1677, England), I saw a compelling look at how seventeenth-century physicians balanced classical authority with contemporary anatomical findings. A Latin paragraph detailing liver striation was followed by an extensive English letter discussing Hippocrates, Galen, and early modern physicians’ beliefs about the structure and function of the liver. Shown in Figure Two, this text demonstrates the enduring influence of ancient medical models, even as new anatomical observations complicated long-held theories. The discussion of Rufus of Ephesus (70-110 CE) and Schenckius (likely Johannes Schenck von Grafenberg, 1530-1598) reinforced how early modern practitioners continued to situate their work alongside pre-existing medical authorities. The letter references humoral theory mentioning the relative temperature of the liver as well as the questions about its role in conception (notably Galen saw the liver, heart, and brain as the seat of the natural, animal, and vital souls respectively). As my research is focused on perceptions of the uterus, reading a meditation on the function of a specific organ further suggests that understandings of the internal body were constantly in flux, even for a well discussed structure like the liver.
Figure Two: “On the Liver,” David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University
My time at the Rubenstein Library was an incredible privilege. The collection provided invaluable access to texts that shaped medieval and premodern understandings of medicine and the body. Engaging with these manuscripts firsthand enriched my assessment and evaluation of these texts in my current research project. I am deeply grateful to the Rubenstein staff, curators, and archivists who made this trip possible.
Please join us for our next Trent History of Medicine Event, a symposium celebrating Remarkable Stories of American Black Surgeons in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries.
Speakers include:
Jill L. Newmark, “Without Concealment, Without Compromise: Black Civil War Surgeons”
Margaret Humphreys, “Searching for Dr. Harris”
Todd L. Savitt, “Entering a ‘White’ Profession: African American Physicians in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries”
Jill L. Newmark is an independent historian and former Curator and Exhibition Specialist at the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. She has curated numerous exhibitions and written several articles on African American medical personnel who served during the American Civil War.
Margaret Humphreys is the Josiah Charles Trent Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine in the School of Medicine at Duke University, as well as Professor of History, Professor of Medicine, and affiliate with the Duke Global Health Institute. A specialist in the history of science and medicine, she has focused her research and publications primarily on infectious disease in the U.S. and the American south, as well as the history of medicine during the American Civil War.
Todd L. Savitt is an historian of medicine with a particular interest in African-American medical history. He is professor in the Department of Bioethics and Interdisciplinary Studies in the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University.
There is no registration required. The event will be recorded.
Sponsored by Duke University History Department, the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine, and the History of Medicine Collections in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
Archive of Documentary Arts Sidney Gamble Travel Grants
Doris Duke Foundation Research Travel Grants
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Travel Grants
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)
Anyone whose research would be supported by sources from the Rubenstein Library’s research centers is eligible to apply. We encourage applications from students at any level of education; faculty and teachers; visual and performing artists; writers; filmmakers; public historians; and independent researchers.
For assistance determining the eligibility of your project, please contact AskRL@duke.edu with the subject line “Travel Grants.”
Eligibility
Applicants must reside beyond a 100-mile radius of Durham, N.C., and may not be current Duke students or employees.
Information Session
An online information session will be held Wednesday, January 15, 2025, 2-3 pm 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.
Timeline
The deadline for applications will be Friday, February 28, 2025, at 6:00 pm EST.
Decisions will be announced by the end of April 2025 for travel during May 2025-June 2026. Awards are paid as reimbursement after completion of the research visit(s).
Post contributed by Madeline Huh, Trent History of Medicine Intern, MSLS student at UNC Chapel Hill.
I’ve been working as the History of Medicine intern at the Rubenstein Library for a little over a month now, and in my short time working here, I’ve had the opportunity to look at some truly remarkable materials–from the gorgeous illustrations of Elizabeth Blackwell’s A curious herbal, to handwritten notebooks by nineteenth-century Japanese physicians, to an atlas of midwifery from 1926. And, of course, I’ve also had the chance to look at fascinating historical artifacts like the 16th century Scultetus bow saw, an 18th century trephination kit, and a very intriguing little box of pills labeled as “female pills.”
One of my favorite books I’ve encountered so far has been the Gynaeciorum, an encyclopedia of obstetrics and gynecology compiled in the 16th century by Conrad Gessner and Hans Kaspar Wolf. It is the first gynecological encyclopedia to be published, and I was surprised to discover that an entire book was dedicated to this topic in the 16th century. The Gynaeciorum combines the works of several different ancient and medieval medical authors who wrote about women’s health. A few of these include Trota, a twelfth-century female physician and medical writer; Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn ʻAbbās al-Zahrāwī, one of the great surgeons of the Middle Ages; and Muscio, the author of a treatise on gynecology from ca. 500 CE.
The subject matter of the book often goes beyond what we generally think of as the realm of gynecology and obstetrics, exploring neonatal and pediatric inquiries as well. One section asks, “What should be the first food that we give to an infant?” The provided answer is, “Something like bread–that is, crumbs poured into honey-wine, preserved fruit, or milk, or perhaps a drink made of spelt, or porridge” (Gynaeciorum, 79–translation from Latin is my own). Other inquiries discuss menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum health.
I was also very intrigued to find the first printed edition of Muscio’s Gynaecia at the back of the book, printed in Greek no less, which struck me as unusual. In medieval Europe, it was more common for Greek works to be translated and disseminated in Latin, rather than the other way around. Literacy and interest in Greek in the west decreased during this period before a revival of interest in Hellenistic culture and language occurred during the Renaissance. I did a little research on the medieval manuscript transmission of Muscio, and what I discovered was a very convoluted story of translation, retranslation, and misattribution.
According to Monica Green, a historian of medieval medicine and women’s health, Muscio (who is also known as Mustio in some places–not to be confused with Moscion, who is another ancient medical writer entirely) originally wrote a treatise on gynecology in Latin around 500 CE known as the Gynaecia. This was probably a translation and paraphrase of the Greek Gynaikeia by the physician Soranus of Ephesus who was active around 100 CE. Muscio’s work was copied into several manuscripts in western Europe during the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries, and his work was popularized later in the Middle Ages, eventually being translated into French, English, Dutch, and Spanish. But intriguingly, Muscio’s treatise on gynecology was also translated into Greek within the Byzantine Empire. Finally, in 1793, the Greek translation was retranslated back into Latin by Franz Oliver Dewez! I can only wonder how close (or far) Dewez was to Muscio’s original language and phrasing.
All of this was fascinating to learn. Looking at the edition of Muscio in the back of the Gynaeciorum, we see that Gessner and Wolf, who were working in the 16th century, have chosen to present it in its Greek form. I wonder, then, did Gessner and Wolf know about the manuscript transmission of this text and that it was originally written in Latin? I assume they did, based on the fact that we see a Latin preface to Muscio’s Gynaecia included at the very beginning of the Gynaeciorum. So did Gessner and Wolf include the Greek version in the book to appeal to contemporary interest in Greek language and literature, or for another reason? And what information about women’s health and childbirth has been lost or misinterpreted in the process of translation and retranslation? My deep dive into Gessner, Muscio, Soranus, and the transmission of gynecological texts has left me with even more questions than I started with.
Sarah Bernstein is our 2023-2024 Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Intern.
Tell us a little about yourself.
My name is Sarah and I am currently a student in the dual degree program, pursuing both a M. A. in public history at North Carolina State University and a M. S. in library science at the UNC School of Information and Library Science. My background is in the sociology and history of medicine, studying unorthodox and fringe medicine in the United States and England to gain insight into the creation of medical legitimacy and establishment of medical authority. I currently research the ethics of human remains on display in medical collections, museums, and related contexts.
What do you find interesting about working in libraries, especially our History of Medicine Collections?
As someone who studies the history of medicine, I was thrilled for an opportunity to work closely with the History of Medicine Collections at the Rubenstein Library! The idea of being able to hold, teach with, and introduce others to the manuscripts, materials, and artifacts that I have read about and researched was incredibly exciting.
I changed from a history career track to libraries and archives because I was interested in making history come alive and more accessible to people and the public. As a history student, I have always enjoyed research and working with archival materials, and working in libraries and archives felt like the natural next step. The fact that working in libraries enables me to be around a variety of materials, both those related to my interests and especially those that I would not have sought out myself, is a bonus.
What is a memorable experience from your internship?
Title page of Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica
My first time pulling and handling the first edition De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius was especially memorable. This title is considered a major advance in the history of anatomy and reflects a deep connection between medicine and art. The illustrations in the book are not only impressive because of their anatomical accuracy, but also because of the minute details which were produced by the artists and printers involved. It was incredibly cool to be in the same room as such a historically significant object that I had learned about in my previous coursework.
The entire experience of curating an exhibition for the Trent History of Medicine Room has also been memorable, and I will never be able to look at a display, exhibition, or museum the same way again. It has been an invaluable learning opportunity to work with Rachel Ingold, curator of the History of Medicine Collections, Meg Brown, the head of Exhibitions Services and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundations Exhibits Librarian, and Yoon Kim, Senior Library Exhibition Technician, on the exhibition and they all were incredibly helpful as I navigated tasks like creating a cohesive narrative for the items to writing exhibition text.
Here is one of my favorites from the collection: an art nouveau bookplate for Dr. Emil Simonson that was designed by the illustrator and printmaker Ephraim Moses Lilien. The bookplate includes a woman who holds a bowl with vapor rising from it, leaning on a staff with one snake wrapped around (likely an allusion to the Staff of Aesculapius, Greek god of medicine). Lilien incorporated Hebrew above and below the image in the border. The top text is Psalm 137:5 while the bottom reiterates that it is Dr. Emil Simonson’s property using his Jewish name, Aliyahu ben Aire Zimon.
Although I chose a rectangular black and white bookplate for this post, the collection includes numerous sizes, shapes, colors, and styles. The medical bookplate collection contains over 450 medically related bookplates and I have had such a great time going through the binders and seeing the various styles that are represented and how the same symbols of medicine and death are portrayed in both similar and different ways.
The Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2024-2025 travel grants. Our research centers annually award travel grants to students, scholars, and independent researchers through a competitive application process. We extend a warm congratulations to this year’s awardees. We look forward to meeting and working with you!
Archive of Documentary Arts
Elizabeth Barahona, Ph.D. candidate, Northwestern University, “Black and Latino Coalition Building in Durham, North Carolina 1980-2010.” (Joint award with the Human Rights Archive)
Diana Ruiz, Faculty, University of Washington, Seattle, “Apprehension through Representation: Image Capture of the US-Mexico Border.” (Joint award with the Human Rights Archive)
Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture
Mary Lily Research Travel Grants
Taylor Doherty, Ph.D. candidate, University of Arizona, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, “Minnie Bruce Pratt’s Anti-Imperialist Lesbian Feminist ‘Longed-for but Unrealized World.’”
Thalia Ertman, Ph.D. candidate, University of California, Los Angeles Department of History, “U.S. Feminist Anti-Nuclear Activism and Women’s Bodies, 1970s-1990s.”
Samuel Huber, Faculty, Yale University, Department of English. “A World We Can Bear: Kate Millett’s Life in Feminism.”
Alan Mitchell, Ph.D. candidate, Cambridge University, Faculty of Art History and Architecture, “Redefining Phoebe Anna Traquair through the lenses of historicism and intersectionality.”
Emily Nelms Chastain, Ph.D. candidate, Boston University, School of Theology, “The Clergywoman Question: The International Association of Women Preachers and Ecclesial Suffrage in American Methodism.”
Ana Parejo Vadillo, Faculty, School of Creative Arts, Cultures and Communications, Birkbeck, University of London, “Bound: The Queer Poetry of Michael Field.”
Carol Quirke, Faculty, American Studies, SUNY Old Westbury, “Feminism’s ‘Official Photographer:’ Bettye Lane, News Photography and Contemporary Feminism, 1969-2000.”
Paula Ramos, Independent Researcher, “Spatiality and gender: spatial circumstances of the creative process of feminist artists in the 1970s and 1980s.”
Dartricia Rollins, Graduate Student, University of Alabama, School of Library and Information Studies, “‘You Had to Be There:’ Charis’ 50-Year History as the South’s Oldest Independent Feminist Bookstore.”
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Research Travel Grants
Ipek Sahinler, Ph.D. candidate, University of Texas Austin, “A Portrait of Young Women as Proto-Queer Thinkers: Eve Sedgwick vis-à-vis Gloria Anzaldúa.”
David Seitz, Faculty, Harvey Mudd College, “‘No Less Realistic’ but with ‘Different Ambitions’: Reparative Reading, Human Geography, and a Return to Sedgwick.
Doris Duke Foundation Travel Grants
Olivia Armandroff, Ph.D. candidate, University of Southern California, “Volcanic Matter: Land Formation and Artistic Creation.”
Cameron Bushnell, Faculty, Clemson University, Department of English. “‘The Invisible Orient’ in Orientalism Otherwise: Women Write the Orient.”
John Hope Franklin Center for African and African American History and Culture
Thomas Blakeslee, Ph.D. candidate, Harvard University, History Department, “Domestic Disturbances: The Resistant Masculinity of Black Fatherhood from Anti-Slavery to Civil Rights.”
Mara Curechian , Ph.D. candidate, School of English, University of St Andrews, “Acting Like Family: Performing Kinship in the Literature of the Civil War and Reconstruction.”
Michelle Decker, Faculty, Scripps College, English Department, George Washington Williams’s and Amanda B. Smith’s Appalachian Origins and African Explorations.”
Timothy Kumfer, Postdoctoral Fellow, Georgetown University, 2023-2024 Mellon Sawyer Seminar, “Counter-Capital: Grassroots Black Power and Urban Struggles in Washington, D.C.”
Hunter Moskowitz, Ph.D. candidate, Northeastern University, “Race and Labor in the Global Textile Industry: Lowell, Concord, and Monterrey in the Early 19th Century.”
Summer Sloane-Britt, Ph.D. candidate, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, “Visions of Liberation: Gender and Photography in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 1960-1970.”
Mila Turner, Faculty, Clark Atlanta University, “Bridging Histories: Connecting the Atlanta Student Movement with College Student Activism throughout the Southeast”
Harry H. Harkins T’73 Travel Grants for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History
Kadin Henningsen, Ph.D. candidate, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Walt’s Companions.”
Julie Kliegman, Author, book-length exploration of transgender pioneers.
John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History
John Furr Fellowship
Hannah Pivo, Ph.D. candidate, Columbia University, Department of Art History and Archaeology, “Charting the Future: Graphic Methods and Planning in the United States, c. 1910-60.”
Lewis Smith, Faculty, Brunel University London, Brunel Business School, Division of Marketing, “Marketing the State”: J. Walter Thompson Company and the Marketing of the Public Sector in Britain.”
Alvin Achenbaum Travel Grants
Warren Dennis, Ph.D. candidate, Boston University, “Hard Power Paths: Gender and American Energy Policy, 1960-2000.” (Joint award with History of Medicine with support from the Louis H. Roddis Endowment)
Dan Du, Faculty, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Department of History, “U.S. Tea Trade and Consumption after the American Revolution.”
Will Mari, Faculty, Louisiana State University, Manship School of Mass Communication, “Selling the computer to women media workers: gendered ads during the Cold War.”
Janine Rogers, Ph.D. candidate, University of California Los Angeles, Theater Department, “Performance, Militarization, and Materialisms: Canned Goods in Asian America”.
Foare
Jonathan MacDonald, Ph.D. candidate, Brown University, Department of American Studies, “Psychology Hits the Road: Driving Simulators, Billboards, and Hypnosis on the Highway.”
History of Medicine Collections
Warren Dennis, Ph.D. candidate, Boston University, “Hard Power Paths: Gender and American Energy Policy, 1960-2000.” (With support from the Louis H. Roddis Endowment; Joint award with the Hartman Center)
Ava Purkiss, Faculty, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, “After Anarcha: Black Women and Gynecological Medicine in the Twentieth Century.”
Baylee Staufenbiel, Ph.D. candidate, Florida State University, Department of History, “The Seven-Cell Uterus: De Spermate and the Anatomization of Cosmology.”
Brian Martin, Ph.D. candidate, University of Alabama, History Department, “Racial Theory and African American Medical Care in the U.S. Civil War.”
Human Rights Archive
“Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride” flyer, September 30, 2003, illustrates one area of coalition building in Durham, NC, as described in Elizabeth Barahona’s dissertation research proposal. From the Joan Preiss Papers, Box 27.
Elizabeth Barahona, Ph.D. candidate, Northwestern University, “Black and Latino Coalition Building in Durham, North Carolina 1980-2010.” (Joint award with the Archive of Documentary Arts)
Diana Ruiz, Faculty, University of Washington, Seattle, “Apprehension through Representation: Image Capture of the US-Mexico Border.” (Joint award with the Archive of Documentary Arts)
Kylie Smith, Faculty, Emory University. School of Nursing, Department of History, “No Place for Children: Disability, Civil Rights, and Juvenile Detention in North Carolina.”
Harrison Wick, Faculty, Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) Special Collections and University Archives, “Examination of Primary Sources related to Social Justice and Latin American Immigration in the Human Rights Archive.”
Post contributed by Sarah Bernstein, Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Intern.
As someone who studies unorthodox and fringe medicine, I was incredibly pleased to find the large arrangement of unorthodox, fringe, strange, and frankly “quack” medicine within the Rubenstein Library. While the rich History of Medicine Collections includes classics of Western medicine like a first edition of Andreas Vesalius’ De Humani Corporis Fabrica, a memento mori in carved ivory, and various microscopes (on permanent display in the Trent Room), I am glad to share that there are also patent medicine bottles, advertisements, and numerous writings and publications on alternative and unorthodox medicine. George Starr White’s My Little Library of Health is one such series of advice from a so-called “quack,” or an illegitimate and opportunistic, doctor.
The 1928 “little library” by White is a series of 28 books whose length ranges from 20–48 pages. While small, I would say that calling them “thumb-nail” editions is a little misleading; the books measure at 4.5 inches in height and near 3.5 inches across (3 ⁷⁄₁₆ to be exact) is far from what is considered a miniature book or thumbnail sized. The advertisement at the back for each book boasted that each book contained illustrations, sometimes in color, and provided White’s sound advice on “health building by natural living.” Each book could be purchased for 25 cents (now somewhere near $4.50) or, for 5 dollars prepaid (around $90 for us today), one could score for the entire set.
White was a proponent of chromotherapy, light therapy, and heat therapy. In My Little Library of Health he informed his readers about his research and strong belief in the healing properties of Ultra-Red Rays. Although White’s belief in chromotherapy began by viewing sunlight through oak leaves, based on his account in volume 27, his tests had revealed to him that artificial lights from electric lamps still produced healing effects. In fact, some electric lamps worked better than others. Why? Ultra-Red Rays, that White describes as “the ‘thermal’ Rays upon which all life depends,” more commonly known as infrared light. Based on these beliefs, White developed the “Filteray Pad,” a heat pad which generated Ultra-Red Rays and was meant to be applied to the affected area. The price for this cure-all device? A cool $35 (~$620-30 in 2024).
Figure of the Filteray Pad in Volume 28, page 14, of My Little Library of Health (1928).
White would go on to develop other light-based therapies and medical systems. In 1929, White was unflatteringly covered in the “Bureau of Investigation” section of The Journal of the American Medical Association (volume 92, number 15) for his dubious claim of medical schooling and his career in patent medicines. The article lambasted White and all of his medicines and cures. Along with the “Filteray Pad” there was “Valens Essential Oil Tablets” (sold during the 1918 Flu Epidemic for “Gripping the Flu out of Influenza”) and his methods of “Bio-Dynamic-Chromatic (B-D-C) Diagnosis” and “Ritho-Chrome Therapy” (light-based diagnosis and cure using multiple colored rays that were similar to other forms of chromotherapy; the “Electronic Reactions of Abrams” by Albert Abrams and Dinshah Ghadiali’s “Spectro-Chrome” device respectively).
The Bureau of Investigation (formerly the Propaganda for Reform Department) was created as an outgrowth from the Council on Chemistry and Pharmacy to specifically investigate, disprove, and inform the public about fraudulent nostrums and patent medicine. The effort was headed by Dr. Arthur J. Cramp, a passionate doctor who was highly critical of nostrums, patent medicines, and the lax regulations which enabled proprietors to label and advertise their products as legitimate medicines.
George Starr White was just one of many quacks that Dr. Cramp and The Journal of the American Medical Association investigated and denounced, and who are represented in the Rubenstein Library’s collections. While I would not advise anyone to turn to White for medical advice today, I would encourage people to think about illegitimate medical professionals like White—and the world that they operated in—in contrast to medicine and the medical system today. These quacks from the past can provide insight into how medicine is legitimized, the rise of the medical profession, and continuous efforts throughout history to seek and provide unorthodox care.
Page with a portrait of George Starr White signed “Youthfully yours” at the end of each My Little Library of Health (1928) book.
Date: Tuesday, January 23, 2024 Time: 5:30 p.m. Location: Rubenstein Library Room 153, Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Duke University (the event will be recorded) Contact: Rachel Ingold (rachel.ingold@duke.edu or 919-684-8549)
Dr. Kylie Smith
Please join us on Tuesday, January 23, for our next Trent History of Medicine Lecture Series event. Kylie Smith, Ph.D., will present “Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South.”
The Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s sought to end racial segregation in all U.S. public institutions, including hospitals. Psychiatric hospitals became political battlegrounds over segregation and patients’ rights, setting the scene for disparities that continue today.
“Jim Crow in the Asylum” explores the process of desegregation and deinstitutionalization in state psychiatric hospitals in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. It draws on original records, court cases, and personal testimony to expose the racist ideas that underpinned the treatment of African Americans with mental illness and saw psychiatric hospitals used as dumping grounds for some of the South’s most vulnerable people.
Kylie Smith is Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Healthcare History and Policy in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, and Associate Faculty in the History Department, at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She earned her PhD in the history of psychiatry in Australia, and is the author of the award winning book Talking Therapy: Knowledge and Power in American Psychiatric Nursing published by Rutgers University Press in 2020. Her new book entitled Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South will be published by UNC Press early in 2025 and is supported by the G13 Grant from the US National Library of Medicine.
This event is sponsored by the History of Medicine Collections in the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library and the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine. The Trent Center is holding another talk by Professor Smith on Wednesday, January 24, at noon
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
Cover of Duke Football Program, 1953
Duke Football Program, 1953
A Psychiatrist’s Outlet
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.
Dr. Karnosh in 1940
“Self-portrait of a psychiatrist”
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 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).
Illustration by Karnosh from “A Psychiatrist’s Anthology”
Illustration by Karnosh from “A Psychiatrist’s Anthology”
Illustration by Karnosh from “A Psychiatrist’s Anthology”
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
Harry H. Harkins T’73 Travel Grants for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History
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