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Treasures from the Rare Book Room: The Caracalla Medal

In addition to the many exquisite rare books in the Falk Library Rare Book collection, there are a number of valuable non-literary items. As objects, they can sometimes speak to us more strongly than text, since they appeal not only to our intellect but also to our senses. Among the artifacts is the Civil War Post-Mortem Surgical Set, which was described in detail in a December 2010 HSLS Update article. Another interesting collection is the commemorative medals associated with the field of medicine. These medals consist mostly of 19th and 20th century specimens, though there are a few that date as far back as the 15th century.

One medal in the collection commemorates the Roman emperor Caracalla. It was struck in Venice, Italy, in 1466. The design is loosely copied from a coin and is attributed to the Venetian artist, Giovanni Boldù, who was active from 1454-1477. It is a large medal (90 mm in diameter) struck in bronze. The obverse has an image of the Roman emperor Caracalla as a boy done in high relief. The youth’s bust facing left is circled by the name ANTONINVS PIVS AVGVSTVS (Antoninus Pius Augustus). The reverse side of the metal pictures the artist seated naked with his head in his hands; before him there is the Genius of Death, resting on a skull; above him, the inscription IO SON FINE; and below him, the date MCCCCLXVI (1466).

As commissioner of a large public bath house (thermae) in Rome, Caracalla fits the pattern of men accomplished in the field of medicine. The building that housed the bath house was constructed during his reign between 212 and 216 AD. It was heated by the ancient hypocast system of under-floor heating, and supplied with water by the Aqua Marcia Aqueduct. The bath house consisted of cold and hot rooms, a pool, gyms, and two libraries. It was free, open to the public and in use until the 6th century, when the hydraulic installations were destroyed. While in use, it provided a place where Romans could bathe and possibly receive health benefits from the baths. Today the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla are a tourist attraction in Rome.

This medal can be viewed in the Rare Book Room by appointment.

~ Gosia Fort

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Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Early Chinese Books

Most of the hidden treasures in the Falk Library collection were contributed by donors. One of these generous people was Lieutenant Colonel J.A. Mendelson, a World War I veteran, who was a member of the United States Military Mission to China, and at one time an assistant professor of Military Science and Tactics at the University of Pittsburgh. During his years in China, Burma, and India, he collected interesting objects related to the cultures of the countries where he served. Many of the swords, daggers, and knives from his collection are housed in the Smithsonian Institute. He also brought home early Chinese medical texts that he gave to Pitt’s School of Medicine’s library during the summers of 1943 and 1944.

These early Chinese books are now housed in Falk Library’s Rare Book Room. The collection includes rare books by Chen Shigong (1617), Dou Hanqing (1717), Li Shizhen (1784), and two 19th century texts by Gao Wenjin (1856) and Chen Huichou (1878) covering the subjects of surgery, blood circulation, blood vessels, Chinese herbal medicine, and acupuncture. One outstanding title is Bencao Gangmu (本草綱目), also known as the Compendium of Materia Medica, written during the Ming Dynasty. This 18th century reprint from the original 1590 edition is regarded as the most complete and comprehensive medical book ever written on the history of traditional Chinese medicine. It lists all of the plants, animals, minerals, and other items that were believed to have medicinal properties. The oldest book in the group, Xin kan Wai ke zheng zong (外科正宗), published in 1617, is a compendium on external diseases in traditional Chinese medicine. According to the Chinese Rare Book Catalog (中國古籍善本書目), there are only four known copies of the book in China. WorldCat, the global catalog of library collections, shows two copies in the United States.

All of the books are illustrated. They are also examples of traditional woodblock printing. This method was developed in China for printing on silk, rather than paper, and better suited for Chinese character set than movable type. The books are thread-bound, a predominant binding format in traditional Chinese books, and are enclosed in a cloth-covered case which is enforced with wooden boards, and closes with loops and pegs.

The books can be viewed in the Rare Book Room by appointment.

We gratefully acknowledge the help of Zhang Haihui, Chinese Studies Librarian at the University Library System’s East Asian Library, for her guidance and assistance in cataloging these rare Chinese books.

~ Gosia Fort and Liping Song

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Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Joseph Hodgson’s A Treatise on the Diseases of Arteries and Veins, Containing the Pathology and Treatment of Aneurisms and Wounded Arteries

Joseph Hodgson (1788-1869) was a British physician who practiced at Birmingham General Hospital and St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London during the first half of the 19th century. He is best known for describing the aneurismal dilation of the aorta, later named after him as “Hodgson’s Disease.” He described this condition in his book, A Treatise on the Diseases of Arteries and Veins, published in London in 1815. His work was accompanied by an atlas titled Engravings Intended to Illustrate Some of the Diseases of Arteries. Author Leslie Morton claims these are “the best illustrations of aneurysms and of aortic valvular endocarditis.”1 The atlas includes eight plates with 23 illustrations accompanied by explanations. All illustrations were drawn by Hodgson himself and engraved by either J. Stewart or G. Shury.

Falk Library’s copy is an example of a beautiful half leather and marble paper binding, with marbled edges. The accompanying volume of illustrations has a slightly less exciting cloth binding, but both are in a good condition and make a valuable contribution to the wealth of Falk Library’s historical collections.

The book belonged to a noted British surgeon, Edward Robert Bickersteth, supporter of Lister’s antiseptic treatment of fractures and author of ‘”Remarks on the Antiseptic Treatment of Wounds” published in Lancet. His son, Robert Alexander Bickersteth, also a surgeon, presented the book to the Liverpool Medical Institution in 1923. How it wandered from Liverpool to Pittsburgh one can only guess. The book was then presented to Falk Library by the members of the Minutemen of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in honor of Alexander Hunter Colwell, MD, former faculty member at the School of Medicine and past president of Allegheny County Medical Society.

  1. Leslie T. Morton, A Medical Bibliography. 3rd ed. London, 1970, p.327.

~ Gosia Fort

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Treasures from the Rare Book Room: William Harvey’s Anatomical Treatise on the Movement of the Heart and Blood

William Harvey (1578-1657), physician to the English kings James I and Charles I, is best known for his work, Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis, published in Frankfurt in 1628. This book is considered to be one of the most important texts in the history of medicine. Physiologists before Harvey knew that blood is not a stationary fluid, but it was Harvey who clearly demonstrated for the first time that blood is pumped by the heart and moves in circular fashion.

The Falk Library collection includes a pocket-sized edition of this famous work published in the Netherlands in 1648. The book is only 12 cm tall and easily fits in the palm of your hand. It is bound in plain white vellum and has a brief handwritten title on the spine.

It is a beautiful example of the bookbinding method called limp vellum. With this method, a text block is laced into folded vellum covers made from a single piece of smooth and durable animal skin. Vellum, unlike leather, is bleached and not subjected to any tanning processes. In the 17th century, it was a simple and popular way of binding functional books. Though viewed with disdain by historians and called “cheap and temporary,” this style of binding attracted new appreciation after Christopher Clarkson, a book conservator working on books damaged by flooding in the city of Florence in 1966, discovered that books bound in vellum not only survived the flood better, but vellum also provided much better protection to the text block than leather binding.

Vellum is best stored in a stable environment with controlled temperature and humidity, such as that in Falk Library’s Rare Book Room.

Provenance of this book is unclear. The last traceable owner was James D. Heard, who purchased the book in 1893 and brought it to Pittsburgh when he joined the faculty of the School of Medicine around 1909 until his retirement in 1953.

The book can be viewed in the Rare Book Room by appointment.

~ Gosia Fort

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Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Photography and Medical Books, Part 4

The fourth and concluding part of this series on the use of photography in medical books explores Richard Barwell’s On the Cure of the Club-Foot without Cutting Tendons and on Certain New Methods of Treating Other Deformities (1865). This edition features early photographs known as albumen prints.

Albumen prints were developed by Désiré Blanquart-Evrard in 1850. Because they were easy to use by professionals and amateurs alike, they quickly became the print medium of choice. They were printed from Collodion (wet) negatives, which dominated photography in the second half of 19th century, and were set in wooden printing frames exposed to direct sunlight. The print was then removed from the frame and processed in a lit room.

Richard Barwell (1827-1916) was an assistant surgeon at the Charing Cross Hospital in London and was mostly interested in orthopaedic surgery. He presented a method for treating foot deformities as an alternative to tenotomy to the Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1861. The second edition of his work On the Cure of the Club-Foot without Cutting Tendons and on Certain New Methods of Treating Other Deformities, was rewritten, expanded and illustrated with 20 woodcuts and 28 photographic plates. Barwell took pictures of his patients himself. He admitted in the preface that the quality of some could have been better had he had the luxury of waiting for the perfect shooting conditions. The photographs illustrate six cases as described in the book. The patients are identified by initials. The photographs capture and illustrate the patients’ medical condition better than any written description.

The photographs are mounted on ten leaves of plates, two per page in most cases, but three plates have three, five, and six small photographs per page. The book was rebound and bears Falk Library markings, but the block of the book and photographs are almost in perfect condition.

The book has an interesting Pittsburgh provenance. Its first owner, Dr. A. G. Walter, built a private hospital in the 1850’s at the site known as Boyd’s Hill. The Spiritans, founders of Duquesne University, bought the building from Walter’s heirs and moved it to another location. The small former hospital structure became the first campus building of the Duquesne University.

The book was donated to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s library by Oskar Klotz (1878-1936), Canadian pathologist who was professor of pathology and bacteriology at the University of Pittsburgh from 1909-20. It is now located in the Rare Books Room at Falk Library and can be viewed by appointment.

Part 1 of this series appeared in the October 2011 HSLS Update and explored the first applications of photography in medicine; while Part 2, in the December 2011 issue, examined photography in the service of medical advertisement; and Part 3, in the February 2012 issue, focused on an atlas of stereoscopic images for studying hernia.

~ Gosia Fort

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Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Photography and Medical Books, Part 3

The third part of this series on the use of photography in medical books continues to explore outstanding examples from the Falk Library historical collection. This issue features an exquisite atlas of stereoscopic images for studying hernia, titled Stereoskopbilder zur Lehre von den Hernien by Eugen Enderlen and Emil Gasser, published in 1906.

Stereoscopy is a technique for creating depth in an image by presenting two offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. In 1838, Charles Wheatstone showed that the illusion of depth can be created from flat pictures that differed only in horizontal disparity. Stereoscopy became popular after 1849 with the invention of the prism stereoscope by David Brewster. Photography popularized stereograms (side-by-side pictures) even more. Since objects could be experienced in 3-D, stereoscopic images became widely used in books about geography, history, and medicine, among other subjects.

 Sterreoskopbilder zur Lehre von den Hernien is an example of the cooperation between surgeon Eugen Enderlen and anatomist Emil Gasser. It includes photographs of dissected preparations that illustrate the anatomy of hernias. They come from what is known today as the Gasser-Strahl collection in the Anatomical Institute at the Philipps University in Marburg, Germany. The atlas consists of 72 pages of text and 17 cardboard slide holders which contain 72 side-by-side photographs. Each pair of images is matched with a corresponding description on the opposite page. For purposes of clarity, some of the photographs were enhanced with color. The same color code was used throughout the atlas: red for arteries, blue for veins, and yellow for nerves. When adding color was superfluous, the images were left unchanged. As intended by the authors, the atlas can be viewed using any standard stereoscope. However the naked eye can be trained to perceive the depth of stereoscopic pictures and give the user the illusion of a 3-D image without the use of a stereoscope.

The book is located in the Rare Books Room at Falk Library and can be viewed by appointment.

Part 1 of this series appeared in the October 2011 HSLS Update and explored the first applications of photography in medicine; while Part 2, in the December 2011 issue, examined photography in the service of medical advertisement.

~ Gosia Fort

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Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Photography and Medical Books, Part 2

Part 1 of this article appeared in the October issue of the HSLS Update, and gave a brief overview of the history of photography and medical books. Part 2 explores the fascinating ties between art and medicine with a look at photography in the service of medical advertisement.

Falk Library’s historical collection includes a portfolio of 32 reproductions titled Sutures in Ancient Surgery, published circa 1931. The illustrations belong to a larger series of tableaux vivants [living pictures] created by Lejaren à Hiller for the company Davis & Geck, an American manufacturer of surgical sutures. Hiller worked on them between 1927 and 1950. It’s not certain how many prints he created overall, but the original illustrations were donated to the Art Institute of Chicago. Some of the illustrations appeared in Surgery through the Ages, published in 1944; others were issued in portfolios similar to the one in Falk Library; some were reproduced in medical journals; and many adorned walls of hospitals and physicians’ offices across the country.

When Lejaren à Hiller accepted the Davis & Geck order, he had already worked for major companies on their advertising campaigns. He had years of experience as an illustrator and photographer and had time to experiment and perfect new photographic techniques. Hiller used his own studio’s elaborate sets with dramatic lighting and fancy backdrops to stage costumed actors and models in narrative scenes depicting significant events in the history of surgery. He photographed a staged scene, then resized it, retouched it using transparent oil paints of his own formulation, and then re-photographed again to achieve the desired effect. His images communicated a sense of emotion and excitement that appealed to advertisers and earned Hiller the label “creator of American photographic illustration.”

The portfolio is located in the Rare Books Room at Falk Library and can be viewed by contacting the Falk Library Main Desk at 412-648-8866 or e-mail medlibq@pitt.edu.

Those wishing to explore this genre further will be interested in a book from Falk Library’s circulating history of medicine collection, titled Search and Research: A Pictorial Portfolio of Scenes and Characters in the Drama of Medicine and Medical Progress [call number f R131 A131 1939]. This book, published in 1939, provides an example of similar photographic work by Valentino Sarra.

~ Gosia Fort

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Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Photography and Medical Books, Part 1

The 19th century invention of photography captured the attention of the medical profession. This new technology offered physicians a more objective and accurate tool to record medical conditions and observations than the illustrations they used in the past.

The first application of photography in medicine was in 1840 when Alfred Donné took successful images of bones and dental tissue, shortly after the public presentation of daguerreotype as a new technique.1 The first medical book illustrated with photographs was the Album de Photographies Pathologiques, published in 1862.2


Falk Library owns the impressive Anatomy in Its Relation to Art by George McClellan, published in Philadelphia in 1901, which is a fascinating example of photography used for illustrative medical purposes.

George McClellan (1849-1913) was the founder of Jefferson Medical College and an artist as well as a physician and teacher. He is best-known for his Regional Anatomy in Its Relation to Medicine and Surgery, for which he not only performed the dissections and wrote the text, but also photographed and hand-colored the original images for reproduction. Anatomy in Its Relation to Art is a lesser-known but equally interesting book. It is a study of the influence of skeleton and muscles on the surface form of a figure in motion and at rest, illustrated by 338 original drawings and photographs made by the author. It showcases McClellan’s skill as both an artist and a physician. The book was donated to the library in 1932 by the estate of Stewart LeRoy McCurdy, AM, MD, professor of anatomy, oral and general surgery and one of the founders of Pittsburgh Dental College.

The book is located in the Rare Book Rooms at Falk Library and can be viewed by appointment.

1Tobin, W. “Alfred Donné and Léon Foucault: The First Applications of Electricity and Photography to Medical Illustration,” Journal of Visual Communication in Medicine, 29 no.1 (2006):6-13.

2Duchenne, G.B. Album de Photographies Pathologiques Complémentaire du Livre Intitulé D’Électrisation Localisée. Paris: Bailliére, 1862.

~ Gosia Fort

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Treasures from the Rare Book Room: 27th General Hospital in New Guinea

In the Forward to the Quarterly History, Volume 1, Lt. Colonel George L. Beatty writes: “It is our hope that this history may be of some interest, and possibly of some small value to other medical installations in the future.” Beatty’s hope was unfulfilled from 1945 until today, when Falk Library staff have provided detailed information about Beatty’s works and mounted selections on the Web.

The collection is from the 27th General Hospital in New Guinea for which Beatty was the commanding officer from August 1944 to July 1945. Contained in the collection are two bound volumes of reports, articles, illustrations, charts, graphs, and photographs along with 33 glass plate slides. Volume one contains three quarterly reports that describe the activities in the hospital, including detailed medical reports that discuss types and numbers of operations, numbers of patients, incidence of wounds and mortality percentages from them, and detailed discussions of treatment for non-surgical patients. Dental and psychiatric services are included. The volume is illustrated with photographs (from the glass slides) and hand-drawn sketches. Volume 2 includes surgical reports, papers written by staff doctors on various medical procedures or treatments, and 28 detailed autopsy reports (with patients identified by name).

 Of special interest to medical historians may be the articles written by staff doctors, a few of which were also published in medical journals. One unpublished article is “Anesthetic Procedures used in a General Hospital in the Communication Zone with Analysis of 2,000 Anesthetics” by Captain Leonard M. Monheim of the Dental Corps. In another article, written by Captain Thomas N. Meredith, “Penicillin Therapy at the 27th General Hospital,” the author stated: “No fundamentally new concepts were discovered, but penicillin was used widely for a great variety of conditions, and considerable experience as to its possibilities in topical and local administration was gained.” This unknown article gives further evidence of the vital role played by penicillin in World War II as it became widely used.

Library staff does not know how this collection came to Falk Library. However, Lt. Colonel James R. Watson was Chief of Surgical Service at the Hospital, and he, Captain Monheim, and Captain John J. McAleese were affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh.

An online exhibit of the collection is available. Further information about the collection can be found in the finding aid. The bound volumes can be viewed in the Rare Book Room by appointment.

~ Leslie Czechowski

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Treasures from the Rare Book Room

The Diseases Incident to Armies: With the Method of Cure, translated from the original of Baron Gerard van Swieten, was published for the use of military and naval surgeons in America.

The Disease Incident to Armies: With the Method of CureThe original English translation of van Swieten’s work on the hygiene of troops and diseases impacting the military was published in London in 1762, and the first American edition printed by Robert Bell appeared in Philadelphia 14 years later. Thus, the information derived from foreign experiences in military hygiene was made available to young surgeons in the War of Independence. Swieten’s text was enhanced by the addition of several chapters, including “Some Brief Directions to Be Observed by Sea Surgeons in Engagements” by William Northcote (extracted from The Marine Practice of Physic and Surgery, 1770) and, “The Nature and Treatment of Gun-Shot Wounds” by John Ranby (extracted from The Method of Treating Gunshot Wounds, 1744).

The Falk Library copy is bound with another interesting voice in the campaign to improve soldiers’ well-being: the 2nd edition of John Jones’s Plain Concise Practical Remarks on the Treatment of Wound and Fractures, to Which is Added an Appendix on Camp and Military Hospitals Principally Designed for the Use of Young Military and Naval Surgeons in North America, published in 1776.

The added work is noteworthy for several reasons. The original edition, published a year earlier, was the first textbook of military hygiene written by an American author. The target audience was army surgeons who had little, or no, formal medical education. According to European tradition, surgeons did not need a deep knowledge of medicine since they were working under the direction of physicians. The text is also significant because it was written by America’s first full professor of surgery. Jones delivered his lectures in surgery in the King’s College Medical School in New York City from the beginning of his appointment in 1767, until 1777 when he joined the American forces as a surgeon for the 10th Massachusetts Regiment.

The book also has an interesting provenance. It belonged to Jacob Ehrenzeller Jr., who is considered to be America’s first medical intern. He apprenticed as apothecary in Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia in the years 1773–1777 and was rewarded a certificate of medical competency. Later, he served as a surgeon at the battle of Monmouth, and after the war established a practice in Goshen, Illinois. There he was able to live comfortably on his physician income, which was not the case for many doctors at that time. The Falk Library copy is signed by J. Ehrenzeller Jr. and has three handwritten notes with corrections to the suggested measurements used in Swieten’s recipes, and a comment on the use of sauerkraut in the English Navy as a remedy for the scurvy (proving that his apprenticeship was well spent).

The Disease Incident to Armies: With the Method of CureThe book, The Diseases Incident to Armies Including Plain Concise Practical Remarks on the Treatment of Wound and Fractures, comes from the collection of our notable donor, the late Dr. Mark M. Ravitch, and is located in the Rare Book Rooms at Falk Library. It can be viewed on Mondays and Wednesdays from noon–3 p.m., and other times by appointment.

~ Gosia Fort

This information is over 2 years old. Information was current at time of publication. This information is over 2 years old. Information was current at time of publication.

Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Civil War Post-Mortem Surgical Set

The library has no documents tracing the origin of the post-mortem surgical set found in our collection. How did it get here? Who donated it? To whom did it belong earlier? Though we don’t have the answers to these questions, we are grateful to the unknown benefactor who donated this precious artifact.

SurgicalSet1The instruments were produced by Hermann Hernstein & Son. There are three key factors that identify the set as belonging to the Civil War era: (1) the mark of H. Hernstein & Son, which was used from 1862 to 1865, when the company was selling directly to the military under contract; (2) Herstein & Son’s address from 1855 to 1867, 393 Broadway in New York City, is engraved on the instruments; and (3)SurgicalSet2 the wooden case contains a single sliding latch not found on any civilian instrument sets of the period.

The set is in almost perfect condition. It comes in the original wooden case with cast brass corners, a burgundy velvet lining, and a removable partition dividing two layers of instruments embossed with the Hernstein logo and eagle.

Inside the case are two layers of instruments. The upper compartment includes a chisel, a rachitome chisel, scissors, bowel scissors, a lifting back bone saw, dissecting forceps, and a blow-pipe used to inflate arteries. The bottom layer holds a costotome (hammer), a full set of scalpels, and a tenaculum with ivory handles, cartilage knives, and sutures with a curved heavy cloth holder for needles, suture thread, tissue forceps and retraction chain hooks in a small covered compartment.

We do not know whether the set was used during the Civil War or whether it came from the company’s surplus. Nearly all manufacturers over-produced at the end of the war, even though the U.S. Army cut military surgical set orders. The set is a beautiful piece of medical history located in the Rare Book Rooms at Falk Library. It can be viewed on Mondays and Wednesdays from noon–3 p.m., and other times by appointment.

~ Gosia Fort

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Treasures from the Rare Book Room: The New Gospel of Health

The New Gospel of Health: A Series of Lectures on the Value of the Urine in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Diseases is a unique book written by Pittsburgh physician John F. Shafer. It was published in the first decade of the 20th century to advertise the medical practice of Dr. Shafer, a self-styled “urine specialist,” and to guide patients in their choice of physicians.

IMG_0913aThe book includes descriptions of 100 cases illustrating Shafer’s use of urine analysis in the diagnosis and treatment of many illnesses. The catalog of cured ailments ranges from gall stones and jaundice, to ailments such as “tobacco heart.” He assembled these cases with one goal in mind: to share tributes from his patients about the benefits of his diagnostic method. He claimed that the only measurable proof of physician success is a cured patient willing to give testimony about a doctor’s effectiveness. Long before HIPAA regulations protecting patient privacy, Shafer managed to secure his patients’ permission to publish their testimonials to prove his claim. Therefore, all the described cases include detailed observations leading to diagnosis and treatment, and the patients’ testimonials with full names and addresses, so they could be contacted to verify the printed word.

Dr. Shafer advertised himself as a founder of “urinopathy,” a term he coined in 1891 to describe a new method of diagnosis and treatment by urine based on his own research and discoveries. He promoted this new technique as a more effective way of reaching diagnosis than the traditional method that looked at symptoms and not causes. His practice was based in Pittsburgh, where he offered office consultations and the services of the Shafer Pathological Laboratory. He also advertised the availability of his services to all who wanted to send their urine through the mail, and receive analysis, diagnosis and treatment of their ailment.

Because most of the cases were from Pittsburgh and vicinity, the book is also of interest to local researchers, as an interesting portrayal of health problems in this area a hundred years ago.

The Falk Library Rare Books Collections contain over 4,000 rare books in the health sciences dating back to 1496. All of the books can be located in the PITTCat for the Health Sciences by author or title.

~ Gosia Fort