Historical Library News
Jul 24, 2015
Image from Nada Iveljić, We go to the doctor. Zagreb, 1974. This exhibit, on display for a final week in the Medical Historical Library, features books and other publications written for children about medical topics. Story books, pamphlets, coloring books, and comic books are published by various groups as a way to teach children about illness, medical care, and health topics at an age-appropriate level. The exhibit was organized by Charlotte Abney, graduate student in the Program in the History of Science and Medicine. For young children, picture books introduce the ideas of doctors,... Read More
Jul 24, 2015
(By Melissa Grafe) You can now request locked Medical Historical Library books through Orbis, instead of emailing staff at the Historical Library. Please do this when you want access to our locked stacks materials, for use in our Historical Library Office/reading room, or any events, sessions, or classes that you may be holding. For classes or other events, please email Melissa Grafe at melissa.grafe@yale.edu to discuss scheduling and support. From Orbis, in the Holdings area: The first time you “Request for Use in the Medical Historical Library,” you will... Read More
Jun 5, 2015
Medical Historical Librarian Melissa Grafe is featured in the latest issue of Yale Medicine: Now, Grafe pursues her interests in medical education and the history of medicine at work every day. As director of the Medical Historical Library, she helps students and scholars navigate its collections, housed within the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library. She curates exhibits that showcase materials from the library’s more than 140,000 volumes, as well as thousands of manuscripts, drawings, prints, incunabula, and other items spanning every era of medical history. Recent exhibits range from the... Read More
Jan 20, 2015
The Historical Library of the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University is pleased to announce its eighth annual Ferenc Gyorgyey Research Travel Award for use of the Historical Library. The Medical Historical Library, located in New Haven, Connecticut, holds one of the country’s largest collections of rare medical books, journals, prints, photographs, and pamphlets. Special strengths are the works of Hippocrates, Galen, Vesalius, Boyle, Harvey, Culpeper, Priestley, and S. Weir Mitchell, and works on anesthesia, and smallpox inoculation and vaccination. The Library... Read More
Jan 8, 2015
An image from the Teratology exhibit There are 3 upcoming exhibits opening this month in the Rotunda, Hallway, and Foyer, in addition to Harry Potter! Please join us for an exhibit tour for the Teratology and Prodigies exhibits on Wednesday, January 28th, at noon. "Teratology: The Science and History of Human Monstrosity," in the Rotunda of the Medical Library Opening Jan. 22 at the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library Dates: January 22nd-May 15th, 2015 Curated by Courtney Thompson, doctoral candidate in the History of Science and Medicine, and Melissa Grafe, Ph.D, John R. Bumstead Librarian... Read More
Sep 12, 2014
(Post authored by Terry Dagradi) Cushing operating at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital Photo by Dr. Walter Willard Boyd 1928-32 On October 1, 1926 at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, Harvey Cushing performed an operation—removal of a mass from a patient’s head -- using the first commercial electrosurgical generator developed by to William T. Bovie [1], an engineer employed at Harvard University. The Bovie unit passed high frequency alternating current into the body, allowing the current to cut or coagulate. The device drastically reduced the complications of bleeding... Read More
Apr 8, 2014
Happy 145th Birthday Harvey Cushing! Harvey Cushing, born on April 8th in Cleveland in 1869, was the last of ten children of Henry Kirke and Betsey Maria Cushing and descended from a long line of Cushing doctors. A brief list of his accomplishments include: He considerably improved the survival of patients after difficult brain operations for intracranial tumors. In clinical medicine, he was an early advocate of x-ray and blood pressure determination. He developed techniques to control bleeding from the scalp and promoted decompression for relief of pain in cases of inoperative... Read More
Feb 7, 2014
The Perfect Man recently acquired by the Historical Library on view in the Cushing Rotunda Join us for an exhibit tour of selected acquisitions with curator Susan Wheeler Wednesday, February 19, at 12 noon In 1895, the original bodybuilder Eugen Sandow was proclaimed “the perfect man” by Dudley Sargent (YMS 1878). In 1827, former slave Belfast Burton was paid tribute by his patients and mentor in a rare broadside testimonial circulated in Philadelphia. In 1871, J.J. Woodward shared the first micrographs taken in sunlight with the Surgeon General. In 1891, Victor Emile Prouvé... Read More