Historical Library News
Mar 4, 2020
Thirty years ago, the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law, prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities in all areas of public life, including employment, schools, transportation, and public spaces. This exhibition explores disability and disability activism leading up to the passage of the ADA in July 1990. At a local level, the exhibition discusses disability activism at Yale today, focusing on multiple groups advocating for change across Yale's system. On display in the Cushing Rotunda March 5th - December 2020
Jan 17, 2020
The Medical Historical Library announces the availability of Ms Coll 67 The Bert Hansen Collection of Medicine and Public Health in Popular Graphic Art, which includes over 1200 images and items produced between 1850 and 2010 with additional reference materials. The collection is a gift of historian Bert Hansen, Ph.D., whose goal was to document the visual record of medical practice and research and public health in America. Over a period of thirty years, Hansen selected materials produced for the general public (not medical or public health professionals) that use medical imagery as an... Read More
Aug 30, 2019
The Medical Historical Library is pleased to announce the addition of a new collection to our archives: The Hall-Benedict Drug Company Logbooks and Ledgers (Ms Coll 66), a collection of seventy-five volumes and six boxes, that documents the history of one of the oldest independent drug stores in Connecticut. The collection includes bound prescription logbooks and bound and loose financial ledgers from the Hall-Benedict Drug Company, which was in operation from 1909 to 1998 in the East Rock neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut. The collection contains an almost continuous record of the... Read More
Aug 19, 2019
Grant Wood’s American Gothic Repurposed and Several Anti-Smoking Acquisitions on view now at the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library. “American Gothic” is one of the best known works by an American artist. Iowa native Grant Wood was inspired by the small town Iowan home in Gothic Revival style and asked his sister and his dentist to pose for the painting as father and daughter residents of the well kept property. To many viewers of “American Gothic” the scene was, and is, interpreted as a satire on rural life, but Wood avowed that the painting portrayed traditional American values,... Read More
Mar 1, 2019
The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library is pleased to announce that our medieval and Renaissance manuscript collection is now online! The effort to digitize the manuscripts and make them freely available worldwide was generously funded by the Arcadia Fund. The manuscripts contain early medical and scientific knowledge on a variety of topics, including surgery, gynecology, medicine, herbs and remedies, anatomy, healthful living, astronomy, and mathematics. They are handwritten in Latin, Italian, Greek, German, and English. Some are illustrated, like MS18, De herbis masculinis et feminis [and... Read More
Feb 27, 2019
Our first 2018-19 Ferenc Gyorgyey fellow, Jaipreet Virdi, Ph.D., shares an aspect of her research on disability technology through photographs and postcards, with little help from Twitter… Picturing Disability Technology Written by Jaipreet Virdi* In a 2014 article, historian Katherine Ott expressed: “Both the artifacts owned and used by people with disabilities and those that are used upon them or that are encountered in life create possibilities, impose limits, assert political and ideological positions, and shape identity.”[1] This statement has guided my research on the material... Read More
Aug 6, 2018
We are delighted to share a report on the work of our first Simbonis intern, Emma Brennan-Wydra, who joined the staff in the Medical Historical Library at the end of May 2018. Emma offered the following glimpses into her life and experiences as our intern: I graduated from Yale College in 2015 with a double major in Chemistry and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, focusing on the multiple intersections of science, education, gender, bodies, and power. During my time at Yale, I also played flanker for the Yale Women's Rugby Football Club, designed lighting for theater and dance... Read More
Jul 5, 2018
Want to learn more about the smart and dedicated women who supported the work of our namesake, Harvey Cushing? Explore our newest exhibition, curated by Emma Brennan-Wydra, Stanley Simbonis Intern for the Medical Library, and now on view in the Cushing Center! Throughout his career, Dr. Harvey Cushing employed a team of women who assisted him as secretaries, typists, medical artists, operative photographers, laboratory technicians, and more. Cushing's female associates referred to themselves jokingly as his “harem,” but they were far more than that. These working women were indispensable... Read More