Category Archives: History of Medicine

Bingham Center, Franklin Research Center, Hartman Center, History of Medicine, Travel Grants

Congratulations to our 2014-2015 grant recipients!

The Rubenstein Library’s three research center annually award travel grants to undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and independent scholars through a competitive application process. Congratulations to this year’s recipients, we look forward to working with all of you!

Courtney Thompson will use materials related to phrenology such as this small ivory bust in her research.
Courtney Thompson will use materials related to phrenology such as this small ivory bust in her research.

History of Medicine

Cali Buckley, Pennsylvania State University, Department of Art History, for dissertation work on, “Women of Substance: The Materiality of Anatomical Models and the Control of Women’s Medicine in Early Modern Europe.”

Alicia Puglionesi, Johns Hopkins University, Institute of the History of Medicine, for dissertation work on “The Astonishment of Experience: Americans and Psychical Research, 1885-1935.”

Courtney Thompson, Yale University, Department of the History of Science and Medicine, for dissertation work on “Criminal Minds: Medicine, Law, and the Phrenological Impulse in America, 1830-1890.”

 

John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History

FOARE Fellowship for Outdoor Advertising Research

Craig Lee, Department of Art History, University of Delaware, “Letter Building: Signage, Supergraphics, and the Rise of Semiotic Structure in Modern American Architecture”

Daniel Towns, Department of History, Stanford University, “The View and the Value: Historical Geography of Signs in San Francisco”

 

John Furr Fellowships for JWT Research

Lisa Haushofer, Department of History, Harvard University, “Edible Health: ‘Health Foods’ in Science, Industry, Culture in Britain and the United States, 1884-1950

 

Alvin A. Achenbaum Travel Grants

Dr. Cynthia Meyers, Department of Communications, College of Mount Saint Vincent, “Advertising Agencies and the Decline of Sponsorship in the Network Era of Television”

Dr. Cristina Ziliani: Economics, University of Parma, Italy, “Premium Sales Promotions: A History of Practice and Research, 1890-1990”

Cara Fallon, Department of History, Harvard University, “The Emerging Concept of Healthy Aging in the United States, 1920-1990”

Catherine Hennessey Wolter, Musicology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, “Sound Conversions in Print: A Cultural History of the Player Piano and Early Radio in America Through the Lens of Print Media”

Kelly Jones, History of Medicine, State University of New York – Stony Brook, “’New Hope for Headache Sufferers’: Pain and its Control in Advertisements for Headache Remedies, 1950s-1970s

Daniel McKay, Independent Scholar, “Trading Fears: Marketing the ‘Japan Brand’ to American Tourists and Consumers”

 

John Hope Franklin Research Center 2014-15 Travel Grant Awardees

Emilye Crosby, State University of New York-Geneseo Topic: “Anything I Was Big Enough To Do: Women and Gender in SNCC”

Paul Grant, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Topic: “Unimagining the Christian Nation: Alienation, Memory, and German-African Reciprocity in Akropong, Ghana 1835-1938”

Nicole Maurantonio, University of Richmond, Topic: “Ombudsman for Humanity: Chuck Stone, Mediation, and the Graterford Prison Hostage Crisis”

Gilet Rosenblith, University of Virginia, Topic: “Low Income African American Women in the South and the Carceral State”

Nicholas Syrett, University of Northern Colorado, Topic: “American Child Bride: A History of Minors and Marriage in the United States”

Adam Wolkoff, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Topic: “Possession and Power: A comparative social and legal history of capitalist social relations in the late nineteenth-century United States”

 

Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture Mary Lily Travel Grants

Dr. Georgina Colby, linguistics and cultural studies, University of Westminster, for a book on Kathy Acker combining philosophical analysis with literary and critical theory, exploring connections between feminist theory, Acker’s use of philosophy, and her experimental writing practices.

From the Kathy Acker Papers

Dr. Donna Drucker, civil and environmental engineering, Technische Universität Darmstadt, for a journal article on sexual behavior and the science of contraceptive testing in the mid-twentieth century United States.

Sara Mameni, Ph.D. candidate, visual arts, University of California, San Diego, for dissertation research on Iran-US relations in the 1960s and 1970s—leading up to Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979—through the lens of queer theory, feminist theory, and postcolonial studies.

Ivy McIntyre, Ph.D. candidate, history, St. Louis University, for dissertation research on South Carolina families in times of personal crisis in the early Republic.

Andrew Pope, Ph.D. candidate, history, Harvard University, for dissertation research on radical social movements and the New South in Georgia from 1968-1996.

Dr. Jason Scott, Dr. Annalisa Castaldo, and Jennifer Lynn Pollitt, for an edited collection of essays looking at how kink identities, behaviors, and lifestyles are represented in popular and cultural studies.

Mairead Sullivan, Ph.D. candidate, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, Emory University, for dissertation research on questions of breastedness in feminist and queer theory.

Hope Tucker, independent scholar, for an artist’s video on the fragility of reproductive rights in the American South, as seen through the work of those who documented and labored for these rights in the second half of the twentieth century.

Archive of Documentary Arts, Bingham Center, Franklin Research Center, Hartman Center, History of Medicine, Human Rights Archive, News and Features, University Archives

@rubensteinlib Joins Twitter!

Our first tweet!
Our first tweet!

Dearest readers, do you ever feel that there’s not enough Rubenstein Library in your social media day? True, we’re on Facebook, and we have this wonderful blog, and many of our collecting centers also have extensive social media presences (check out the list in the right-hand column) . . . but what if you could follow our every rare-book-and-manuscript action on Twitter?

Well, do we have good news for you! We’ve joined the twitterverse! Come follow us @rubensteinlib, let us know about your research projects and your latest special collections discoveries, and get a behind-the-scenes look at how we spend our working days (and sometimes our non-working days).

See you in 140 characters or less!

Events, History of Medicine, News and Features, Readings and Talks

Trent History of Medicine Lecture Series Presents Dr. Edward C. Halperin

Date: Monday, March 31, 2014
Time: 5:30 p.m.
Location: Room 102, Duke Medical Center Library
Contact: Rachel Ingold, rachel.ingold@duke.edu or 919-684-8549

Dr. Edward C. HalperinPlease join the History of Medicine Collections for our spring Trent History of Medicine Lecture Series event. We are pleased Dr. Edward C. Halperin, M.D., M.A., will be presenting, “A Defense of the Humanities in Medical Education.” In his lecture, Dr. Halperin will distinguish between medical humanism and the medical humanities, discuss the role of the medical humanities in medical education with particular emphasis on the role of medical history, and provide some specific examples of the value of the humanities in the education of physicians.

Dr. Halperin was on the faculty at Duke from 1983 to 2006. He was the LR Prosnitz Professor of Radiation Oncology and the RJ Reynolds Professor of Medical Education. From 2006 to 2012 Dr. Halperin was dean of the School of Medicine, Ford Foundation Professor of Medical Education, and professor of radiation oncology, pediatrics, and history at the University of Louisville and university vice provost.

Dr. Halperin’s research has focused on pediatric cancer and the history of racial, religious, and gender discrimination in higher education. He is the co-author/editor of the first five editions of the textbook Pediatric Radiation Oncology and of the fifth and sixth editions of Principles and Practice of Radiation Oncology. He has published more than 200 articles in the peer-reviewed scientific, historical, education, and ethics literature.

Dr. Halperin is currently Chancellor for Health Affairs and Chief Executive Officer at New York Medical College and Professor of Radiation Oncology, Pediatrics, and History as well as Provost for Biomedical Affairs at Touro College.

Bingham Center, Do Your Research, Franklin Research Center, Hartman Center, History of Medicine, Travel Grants

Time to Travel!

Trying to find a way to visit the Rubenstein Library to use our collections? You’re in luck! The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library is now accepting applications for our 2014-2015 travel grants.

The reference room for the General Library, now known as the Gothic Reading Room.
Want to be as cool as these gentlemen? Apply for a travel grant and come visit us!

This year are pleased to add another collecting area to our list of travel grant programs. The History of Medicine Collections joins the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture, and the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History in offering travel grants of up to $1,000 for researchers whose work would benefit from access to our holdings.

The grants are open to undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, independent scholars, artists, and activists who live more than 100 miles from Durham, NC, and whose research projects would benefit from access to collections held by one of the centers and collecting areas.

The deadline for applications is January 31, 2014. Announcement of grant recipients will be no later than March 28, 2014. Travel grants must be used between April 2014 and June 2015.

Another change this year – our application process is now online. You can find more details including the online application on our travel grant website.

Events, Hartman Center, History of Medicine, Readings and Talks

Jeremy Greene to Lecture on History of Pharmaceutical Trademarks

faculty-jeremy-greene blogsizeDate: Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Time: 5:30 p.m.
Location: Room 217, Perkins Library, Duke University
Contact: Rachel Ingold, (919) 684-8459 or rachel.ingold(at)duke.edu

Join the History of Medicine Collections for our fall Trent History of Medicine Lecture Series event to be held on Wednesday, October 23, 2013, in Room 217 of Perkins Library on Duke University’s West Campus. Jeremy Greene, M.D., Ph.D., will be presenting “The materiality of the brand: Form, function and the pharmaceutical trademark.”

Dr. Greene’s talk will explore the limits of patents and trademarks in the sphere of pharmaceutical intellectual property, and illuminate a century of controversy over the clinical, public health, and financial value of “look-alike drugs,” generic drugs that imitated their brand-name counterparts down to exact parameters of size, shape, and color. His historical analysis addresses thorny questions about which qualities of a brand-name drug are considered private property and whether parts of a drug other than its active ingredients (e.g., pill color) can affect its clinical function.

Dr. Greene is Associate Professor, Elizabeth Treide and A. McGehee Harvey Chair in the History of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for the History of Medicine. His broader research interests focus on the history of disease, the history of global health, and the relationship between medicine and the marketplace. Dr. Greene also practices internal medicine at the East Baltimore Medical Center and the Johns Hopkins University Hospital. He has published on a wide variety of topics and his most recent book with Elizabeth Siegel Watkins is, Prescribed: Writing, Filling, Using, and Abusing the Prescription in Modern America, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.

Please note Dr. Greene will also be giving a talk at noon on October 23 on Imitation and Innovation: A Brief History of ‘Me-Too’ Drugs. This talk will be held from 12:00-1:00 pm in the Great Hall of the Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans Center for Health Education at the Duke University Medical Center.

Sponsored by the History of Medicine Collections, the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, and the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine.

History of Medicine

Vesalius and Football

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As Curator for the History of Medicine Collections, I never thought I’d type the words “Vesalius and Football” together. But last week I had the opportunity to showcase De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543), Andreas Vesalius’s landmark atlas of the human body, in a Sports Illustrated photo shoot featuring Duke football player Kenny Anunike. I wonder how many of my colleagues working in historical medical collections have had collection material featured in SI?!?

Behind the scenes during the SI photoshoot
Behind the scenes during the SI photoshoot

Kenny, a senior biological anthropology and anatomy major and Duke defensive end, will be featured in the upcoming college football preview issue of SI in a story highlighting academically-renowned universities that experienced a resurgence in football last year, such as Duke, Stanford, and Northwestern.

As I pulled out our eighteenth-century dissection kit, Kenny talked about some of the dissections on human legs he performed in class. While the photoshoot entailed books rather than instruments, the illustrations in these phenomenal texts detail dissection and other aspects of anatomy quite vividly. The book that Kenny is holding was actually published in 2005, reprints from the original work of J.M. Bourgery’s Atlas of Human Anatomy and Surgery. The History of Medicine retains the nineteenth-century work by Bourgery that contains these highly detailed, stunning, and graphic illustrations. And for those of you unfamiliar with Vesalius’s work, I recommend the National Library of Medicine’s Turning the Pages site, in which they have digitized portions of De Humani Corporis Fabrica. We are so fortunate to retain this amazing book from the sixteenth century in our Collections.

Kenny with the Athletic Department's skeleton
Kenny with the Athletic Department’s skeleton

And the skeleton? Unfortunately not part of the History of Medicine Collections. It belongs to the Athletics Department and is used in their health and fitness training of student athletes. But we like to think of it as a symbol of Kenny’s “bonified” academic and athletic success.

Post contributed by Rachel Ingold, History of Medicine Curator 

 

History of Medicine, New at the Rubenstein Library

New Acquisitions: Unique Depictions of the Human Body

In June and July we’re celebrating the beginning of a new fiscal year by highlighting new acquisitions from the past year. All of these amazing resources will be available for today’s scholars, and for future generations of researchers in the Rubenstein Library! Today’s post features a new collection in the Library’s History of Medicine Collections. Check out additional posts in the series here.

fugitive sheet female

The History of Medicine Collections has acquired two anatomical fugitive sheets, elevating our holdings to now include ten of these magnificent items. Anatomical fugitive sheets are single sheets, similar to broadsides, that are printed on one side. Illustrations of the human body accompany text that was written in Latin, and later in the vernacular. Dating from the sixteenth century, this pair of fugitive sheets, titled Viscerum hoc Est Interiorum Corporis Humani Partium Descriptio and published in Antwerp in the sixteenth century, includes hand colored illustrations with accompanying text in Latin.

Besides being incredibly rare—these are the only known copies of these sheets—the sheets are noteworthy for many reasons, including the depiction of the human body using three-dimensional flaps that lift to reveal internal organs, as the title suggests.  This particular pair of fugitive sheets has lost most of its flaps. While the male figure only retains a fragment of one flap, the female figure retains one full flap of the inner organs in entirety. Such loss is common since most of these fugitive sheets date to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and were printed as single sheets.

Theories abound as to who would own such items. Were they created for physicians, barber surgeons, or the lay person wanting to know more about the human body? Were they hung in apothecaries, medical university classrooms, or the gentleman’s library? Any sheets that remain today are incredibly rare and worthy of study and analysis. These appeal not only to the medical student who wants to see what inaccuracies exist, but to those interested in the history of science, printing history, and art history.

Post contributed by Rachel Ingold, Curator, History of Medicine Collections.

Events, Exhibits, History of Medicine

The Henkel Physicians Exhibit at the Medical Center Library & Archives

Dates: July 15, 2013-August 24, 2013 (NLM exhibit); July 15, 2013-October 31, 2013 (MCLA/Rubenstein exhibit)
Location: Medical Center Library & Archives (see below for details)
Online Exhibit Companion: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/digicolls/henkel/
Contact Information: Jolie Braun, jolie.braun[at]duke.edu; Beverly Murphy, beverly.murphy[at]duke.edu

Advertisement for products sold by the Henkel physicians, from the Shenandoah Valley newspaper, 7 September 1877.
Advertisement for products sold by the Henkel physicians, from the Shenandoah Valley newspaper, 7 September 1877.

The Medical Center Library & Archives is excited to announce its new exhibit, “The Henkel Physicians: A Family’s Life in Letters.” Produced by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the exhibit traces the daily lives of a family of physicians in the Shenandoah Valley during the nineteenth century, serving in their community, on the battleground, and in the nation’s courts of law. 

The Medical Center Library also collaborated with the Rubenstein Library on an exhibit to complement the NLM display. “From the Rubenstein Collections: The Henkel Family Physicians” features rare books and manuscripts along with materials from the History of Medicine Collections.  It includes letters written by the Henkels, books and broadsides published by the Henkel Press, and nineteenth-century medical instruments and artifacts.

The NLM Exhibit will be on display through August 24th on Level 3 of the Medical Center Library & Archives. The Medical Center Library and Rubenstein collaboration will available through October on Level 1. To learn more about the Henkel family and nineteenth-century medicine, visit the NLM’s digital companion to the display.

History of Medicine, Technical Stuff

A Long and Happy Life

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In Amsterdam, in the year 1775, on Sunday, the 6th of August, will be interred the body of Hermanus van Cleeff; in high old age, 104 years, shall finally this MAN be put into his grave; he was once lifeless, in dire need, but revived; and acquired after that event the nickname of Death.

Thus begins a burial announcement that found its way into the History of Medicine Collection Picture File, an assembly of posters, cartoons, engravings, and caricatures all relating to the practice of medicine. The collection is currently being arranged and described, and there are some interesting finds throughout.

In actuality there are three pieces to this funerary group, which was purchased from the Shuman family – rare book and manuscript dealers from whom Dr. Josiah Trent, surgeon and Duke Medical School faculty member, acquired most of his rich collection in medical history.

van kleef 5

The first two items – the printed burial notice, and its English translation on University of Chicago letterhead – are intriguing enough.  But the third piece captivates the imagination: a lively self-portrait of an old man with a cane, allegedly the centenarian himself, fashioned from colored paper and finished off with a real lock of white hair (ostensibly human).

van kleef 3

The English translation to the caption under the silhouette states that “Hermanus van Kleef, nicknamed Death, has cut out his picture with his own hand, made it look like his own person, provided it with a lock of his hair. One hundred years old and lived yet four years thereafter…”

van kleef 4

I haven’t been able to discover who Hermanus van Kleef (or Cleeff) was – he may have been an ancestor of the famous Jewish family that later founded the jewelers Van Cleef and Arpels. As I gaze at this little figure triumphantly standing his ground, I congratulate him for cheating death through this wonderful piece of self-expression!

Post contributed by Paula Jeannet Mangiafico, Senior Processing Archivist in Rubenstein Technical Services.

From Our Collections, History of Medicine, Students and Interns, Technical Stuff

Feasting from The History of Medicine Collection

As we sit down to our Thanksgiving dinners, I leave you with a few images from a recent acquisition of thirty-four medical prints collected and donated by William H. Helfand. The posters date mainly from 18th century Paris, but the earliest dates to 1695 (the Kospter poster below) and the latest to 1991. They are all beautiful prints–heavy with political satire and caricatures, quack doctors and alchemy. But they also serve as wise reminders to eat in moderation this season. Happy Thanksgiving from the Rubenstein Library!

Maleuvre, “La Ribotte a nos chants”, color lithograph, Paris 1823
Cheret, J., “Kola Marque,” color lithograph, Paris, c. 1895
Dusort, Cornelius, “Hopster,” engraving, Holland, 1695
Grandville and Forest, “Memento Homo Quia Pulvis…”, hand color lithograph, Paris, 1833
Langlumé, “L’indigestion” from Album Comique, color lithograph, 1823

Post contributed by Joanne Fairhurst, Technical Services Intern and doctoral candidate in the Classical Studies Dept.