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The Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière (1876-80), a landmark publication in medical photography, is on view in the Rotunda of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library through November 15th, 2013. This collection of texts and photographs represents the female patients of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière hospital and asylum during the years of his tenure as director. The patients, diagnosed primarily with hysteria or epilepsy, were treated at the asylum even as they acted as experimental subjects for Charcot’s development of the hysteria diagnosis. This collection represents a transformative moment in the history of the diagnosis, treatment, and representation of mental illness. The exhibit was organized by Courtney Thompson, doctoral student in the Program in the History of Medicine, and Susan Wheeler, Curator for Prints and Drawings at the Medical Library. 

The Medical Historical Library’s digital collection includes School of Medicine photographs, portraits of 16th Century anatomist Andreas Vesalius, Harvey Cushing, and others, medical and surgical instruments, prints, posters, and drawings, and much more!  Recently, thousands of medical works from the 19th and early 20th centuries have been added to the Medical Heritage Library, an online resource of free and open historical resources in medicine.  This exhibit, on view in the Medical Library Rotunda, Hallway, and Foyer, showcases a selection from the thousands of items currently available online, and describes the process of digitization, bringing medical history to users throughout the world with a few simple clicks.  On view April 11 to July 5, 2013

Howard Scott U.S.A. 1902-1983 We Still Have a Big Job to Do! 1943 U.S. Government Printing Office for the U.S. Navy, Industrial Incentive Division Purchased through the John F. Fulton Fund 2012 During World War II, the Industrial Incentive Division of the U.S. Navy sought to improve morale among workers in U.S. industrial plants by emphasizing the importance of the plant’s products in the overall war effort. The morale initiative, begun in May of 1943, employed audio interviews and other messages piped in through speaker systems in the workplace;  exhibited combat action photographs, specially commissioned posters and combat motion pictures in the workplace; and arranged for returned combat personnel to visit the plants engaged in war production. This recently acquired poster, created to boost the morale of defense industry workers during World War II, is on view through April 12, 2013  

Robert A. Butcher, Co. H, 82nd Infantry, Pennsylvania Robert A. Butcher was 21 when he enlisted in H Company 82nd Infantry Pennsylvania. Before the war, he was living with his mother, father, brother and sister in Philadelphia. His head was struck by a sabre on April 6th 1865 at Burkes’ Station, Virginia and he suffered two major cuts across the top of his head. He was admitted to Harewood Hospital on April 16th and, although the wounds healed rapidly, he began complaining of severe headache and intolerance to light. His anterior head wound re-opened a month later and began discharging unhealthy pus. After the wound opened, his headache gradually subsided and the wounds healed again. Physicians discharged him on June 9th and listed him as “nearly well.” Robert moved through three different homes for disabled veterans over the course of the next sixty years until he died in 1933. The first was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the second was in Grant, Indiana, and the third was in Chesapeake, Virginia. He varied from being listed as an inmate to being listed as a mental patient. He is buried in Hampton National Cemetery. On view now, the Medical Historical Library explores Civil War medicine through the haunting photographs of wounded soldiers in an exhibit, "Portraits of Wounded Bodies: Photographs of Civil War Soldiers from Harewood Hospital, Washington, D.C., 1863-1866." Selections from a set of 93 photographic portraits, including Robert Butcher's, from Harewood Hospital, Washington D.C. are on display in the Rotunda of the Medical Library. In the foyer of Sterling Hall, the exhibit expands to include a larger discussion of Civil War medicine and surgery, including hospitals and nurses, using images and materials from the Medical Historical Library. On view until April 1st, 2013.  An online version of the Harewood Hospital photographs is available in the Digital Library.

Medicine at Work: A Selection of Instruments and Materials from the Medical Historical Library September 22nd, 2012-January 13th,2013 Medicine at Work, on view beginning September 22nd in the Rotunda of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library and foyer of Sterling Hall, exhibits instruments, prints, catalogs, fee bills, and books describing and depicting a variety of medical work. Surgical operations and tools, trepanation, electrotherapy, anesthesia, bandaging, and dissection and toxicology are a sample of some of the medical work that happened in the past, and continue today. This exhibit will use selections for the collections of the Medical Historical library to provide context for the tools and materials used in medicine and surgery.  Among its significant collections, the Medical Historical library has approximately 600 medical and scientific instruments and over 7000 prints, posters, and drawings.