connections-from-historical-collection

Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion

On June 9, 1862, Surgeon General William Hammond issued a decree that the government would collect data and specimens from the sick and wounded soldiers of the Civil War for the purpose of study and presentation. This decision led to the creation of the Army Medical Museum and the publication of The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. The History of Health Sciences collection at Falk Library contains original printings of all six volumes. Each volume is two to three inches thick and weighs about ten pounds.

The 6,000 pages are a systematic and statistical compilation of the types of injuries and diseases that were common for military doctors in the Civil War from 1861-1865. The ambitious project took advantage of the hierarchical military structure to require doctors to submit certain data about every patient. There are even reports about the treatment of Confederate soldiers. Can you imagine sorting and analyzing data of this magnitude without a computer?! It took authors John Brinton, George Otis, and J.J. Woodward over 23 years to finish, although they published circulars based on sub-sets of data during the war. This data-based approach to medical problems was new. Before the war, most physicians in the United States had private practices and there were few hospitals outside large cities. Access to this amount of data was a unique occurrence.

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Connections to the History of Health Sciences: Art and Anatomy in 3D

Last month, the University’s Institute for Bioethics hosted a lecture by Dr. Jessica Dandona from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design about 19th-century flap anatomy books. While she was in Pittsburgh, she had some research time to review flap anatomy books from the Falk Library collection, which helped me identify some titles with these distinctive illustrations. Several of these books are on display near the Main Desk through December.

In these books, multiple layers of paper can make a 2-D book represent a 3-D object in an engaging way as users must fold back each layer to uncover the next image. It is difficult to create these layers, and it often requires a strong partnership between a talented artist and book printer. Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder is credited with the first use of layered flaps to show human anatomy in 1538. The idea for this format in early printed anatomies might have been related to sliding circular charts called “volvelles” that were used in astronomy and geometry books (Valeria and Rippa-Bonati, Animated Anatomies: The Human Body in Anatomical Texts from the 16th to 21st centuries).

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American Ingenuity in the Health Sciences

A book lying open. The left page features a watercolor painting of a gate followed by buildings. The right page is the title page. Text reads "27th General Hospital in New Guinea - Surgical Reports."
Title page and watercolor illustration showing the main entrance to the 27th General Hospital, c1945.

To celebrate the United States’ 250th anniversary, the History of Health Sciences collection presents “American Ingenuity in the Health Sciences,” an exhibit that highlights major contributions by American health professionals through unique materials. Their work, individually and collaboratively, significantly advanced their professions and solved major problems in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The exhibit starts with a plain, leather-bound book from the Revolutionary War era that was the first book on military medicine written by an American doctor. Dr. John Jones wrote Plain Concise Practical Remarks on the Treatment of Wounds and Fractures in 1775. The Philadelphia publisher combined Jones’ work with other brief writings about military and naval medicine to “preserve the lives of many of those valuable citizens of America, who are now contending for the mighty prize of freedom.” Also from this period is a book written by the only physician to sign the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush.

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Connections from the History of Health Sciences Collection: Unknown Worlds

In 1665, Robert Hooke published a book that introduced a whole new realm of the living world that was too small to see with the naked eye. His book Micrographia: or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses, with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon contained 38 copperplate illustrations of the specimens he examined, including an ant, moth, fly, louse, mold, flea, mite, seeds, cork, and sponge. Readers were fascinated with the details of life on such a small scale. Hooke had been a painter, and he closely oversaw the engraving of the plates so that they matched what he saw through the microscope lens. His engravings are surprisingly similar to images of the same specimens taken with modern microscopes. Many of the engravings are so large that they needed multiple folds to fit inside the book. For some of the illustrations, he included the circular shape of the eyepiece to make the image even more engaging.

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The Mothers of Psychoanalysis

A book bound in yellow with dark blue text that reads "Anna Freud. Einfuhrung in die Technik der Kinderanalyse"
Introduction to the technique of Child Analysis [Einführung in die Technik der Kinderanalyse] by Anna Freud.
When Sigmund Freud introduced his new psychiatric therapy method called psychoanalysis in the early 1900s, it drew broad interest from people in the fields of medicine and social sciences and from the public. Although his theories emphasized the father as a central figure in childhood and portrayed women as dependent and passive, the interpersonal and empathic nature of his “talking cure” lent itself to success for many female psychoanalysts. In fact, from 1914 to 1945, women played a strong role in the development of psychoanalysis. They earned advanced degrees, conducted research, joined professional societies, and published influential books. A new exhibit in the Falk Library Rare Book Room window spotlights some of these women and their publications.

One of the most influential women of this early period was Helene Deutsch (1884-1982). She was one of the first women to earn a medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1912. She was also the first female psychoanalyst to publish a book; it was the first book devoted to the psychology of women. She was the Director of the Training Institute of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Her second book, Psychoanalyse der Neurosen [Psychoanalysis of the Neuroses], was a collection of her lectures published in 1930. It became a standard teaching text for psychoanalysis. Also in the exhibit is her two-volume text The Psychology of Women (1943), which is a detailed collection of women’s lived psychological experiences from adolescence through menopause.

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Connections from the History of Health Sciences Collection: Peter Panum’s Study of Measles, 1846

You may have heard people talking about measles in the news recently. The United States is experiencing a resurgence of measles cases even though endemic transmission was considered eliminated in 2000.

The History of Health Sciences collection has several items related to the early study and treatment of measles. One that caught my eye was a typed manuscript translation of Peter Panum’s report of a measles outbreak on the Danish islands of Faroe in 1846. This study greatly contributed to our modern understanding of the epidemiology of infectious disease. The unique copy at Falk Library is part of the “Uncovering the Mystery of Measles” exhibit on the Main Floor of the library with other books dating from 1676 to 1907.

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Surgical Illustrations in Late Renaissance Europe

Falk Library’s copy of the 1564 book “Dix livres de la chirurgie” by Ambroise Paré, a French barber-surgeon who wrote about his experiences treating soldiers and kings, including images of the surgical instruments he invented.

Surgery was generally something to be feared in Renaissance Europe. Without anesthesia, antiseptics, or antibiotics, it was dangerous, painful, and often deadly. Yet surgeons were also among the most populous and valued medical practitioners at the time, and they took their jobs seriously. On November 11, the C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society lecture, titled “The Skillful Surgeon: Expertise, Authority, and Surgical Illustrations in Late Renaissance Europe,” will examine surgeons’ efforts to highlight their skill and competency, focusing on illustrated writings by surgeons who conducted elective surgeries: couching for cataracts, removing bladder stones by lithotomy, and operating on inguinal hernias. In the German-speaking regions of the 16th and 17th centuries, several specialist surgeons compiled ornately illustrated documentation of their expertise. In a bid to raise the status of specialists, historian Alisha Rankin argues, these upwardly-mobile surgeons used both text and images to celebrate their significant skill and portray these elective surgical operations as reliable and routine. Continue reading →