Medical Historical Library News

Post by curator Renata Nagy, Ph.D. Candidate, History of Art and Renaissance Studies, Yale University Explore our newest online exhibition: “Natural Interactions in the Book as Art and Making Knowledge” When readers call up early printed books in libraries, they expect to see clean copies. It is a fair belief, for most rare library collections include books with the least signs of wear, which were often cherished by collectors. In addition, a lot of used books either perished over the centuries or remained in private collections. This falsely gives the impression that books were barely used in the past. Books were widely engaged with in Europe between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. This was especially true for books about nature. Readers at the time interacted with their books and created art in them in an attempt to better understand nature and produce knowledge about it.  In Spring 2022, art history Ph.D. candidate and GSAS Professional Experience (GPE) fellow Renata Nagy conducted extensive research into the Library’s holdings. She uncovered books that readers engaged with in relation to their studies about nature. Rich and diverse, the Library’s collection allows for a better understanding of how people thought about natural specimens in the early modern period. Renata curated and authored the exhibition with the generous help of the Library’s colleagues, particularly the John R. Bumstead Librarian for Medical History and Head of the Library, Melissa Grafe. Featuring over seventy images from fifteen different books from the Medical Historical Library’s collection, the exhibition showcases how elite collectors, interested laymen, artists, and naturalists shaped the book as an active work of art and a site of knowledge production about nature via various reading and learning practices. Illustrations of richly colored flowers, book collections of pasted dried plants, translations of wobbly annotations about the rose root plant, and videos of unfolding the oversized microscopic flea in Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1665) demonstrate the variety of ways in which users processed information and invented new ones about natural specimens. We invite you to explore “Natural Interactions in the Book as Art and Making Knowledge,” which is a safe platform to browse the often fragile pages of these remarkable materials.     

The Medical Historical Library is delighted to announce two new gifts detailing student and patient health care activism starting in the 1960s. Dr. Michael Charney, YSM class of 1972, donated his papers related to student activism in his Yale career. Charney was an editor of the Yale Medical Center Newsletter, a student activism newsletter for Yale School of Medicine produced in the late 60s and early 70s.  Charney also donated materials related to his activism for Ralph Nader and the health rights of workers in New Haven and other places; The Organizer’s Manual, which he was involved in producing as part of a multi-university student strike; and publications from other groups, including the Black Panthers and The Medical Committee for Human Rights. The Charney papers provide insight into healthcare activism at Yale and in other parts of the country, highlighting links between the various student, political, and community activist groups. The Medical Historical Library also received the papers of Lyme disease activist Polly Murray, as a gift from her family. Murray lived in Lyme, CT., and alerted the CT State Department of Health and Yale – particularly doctors Allen Steere and Stephen Malawista—to the outbreak of symptoms that included herself, her family, and other members of the Lyme community. Steere and Malawista investigated beginning in 1975, and by 1977 Lyme arthritis (now Lyme disease) was first identified as a new infection spread by ticks bites.  Murray was a layperson integral to the early investigation, and published an account of her experiences with Lyme disease in her book The Widening Circle: A Lyme Disease Pioneer Tells Her Story (1996). Her papers include correspondence with Malawista and others; the original handwritten list of people in town/symptoms that she showed to Steere in 1975; scrapbooks containing Lyme disease publications including newspaper articles; and other material. This gift complements the Stephen Malawista papers already held in the Medical Historical Library collection. Both gifts are currently unprocessed, so please contact the Medical Historical Library at historical.library@yale.edu for access and further information. Initial records for the Michael L. Charney papers and Polly Luckett Murray papers are in the library catalog and Archives at Yale.

The Historical Library, in coordination with the Department of Pediatrics, is helping to celebrating 100 years of Pediatrics at Yale through a new physical exhibition in the Medical Library’s Rotunda.  Founded in 1921, Yale Pediatrics has always been on the forefront of research and clinical practice. The exhibition features material on some of the department’s initiatives, including: Dr. Ruth Whittemore and the first pediatric rheumatic fever and cardiac clinic in New England in 1947 Development of Dr. Edith Jackson’s pioneering Rooming-In Program at Grace New-Haven Hospital from 1946 to 1953 Creation of the first Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) by Dr. Louis Gluck in 1960 Today, Pediatrics has thirteen subspeciality sections, with 87 residents, 47 clinical fellows, 207 full-time faculty and 73 clinical faculty from the community. The department’s mission can be distilled into three words: heal, innovate, and collaborate. This exhibition was organized by Kaiulani Shulman and Jennifer DeSantis, with assistance from Melissa Grafe, Ph.D, Head of the Medical Historical Library, and contributions from various members of the Department of Pediatrics and Medical Library staff (Kelly Perry, Chris Zollo, Melissa Funaro, Dana Haugh, Kaitlin Throgmorton, Melanie Norton, and Terry Dagradi). Some materials displayed are on loan from Manuscripts and Archives, the Medical Historical Library, and Yale New-Haven Hospital archives.  Several labels were adapted from previous exhibitions curated by Toby Appel, Ph.D, and Susan Dee, Archivist, Yale New Haven Hospital. 

In a new hallway exhibition, Scenes from the Great Depression and its aftermath are presented in the works of recent immigrants and others for the Federal Art Project and the Works Progress Administration.  Works include: The Relief Station, 1938, Lithograph by Oscar Van Young b. Viena 1906 d. U.S.A.1991,  "The Relief Station," a realistic and not uncommon scene in art of the period, reflects the despair and patience of families who could no longer feed themselves without assistance. After coming of age in Russia during the civil war, Oscar was sponsored by influential American diplomats to settle in the United States. In the U.S. Oscar studied painting and became well known. His works were widely exhibited.   Gladys, 1936, Lithograph by Will Barnet "Gladys" was published by the U.S. government's Works Progress Administration, soon after the program's creation.  Its purpose was to create government jobs for the nation's many unemployed in all types of work including the arts. Barnet enjoyed a long career of painting, teaching, and exhibiting his art. He was awarded a National Medal of Arts in 2011 presented by President Obama in a White House ceremony.     Charlie Parker Going to Wash Dishes, 1984, Photo-etching on Rives paper by Sue Coe, born 1951 England, active in the U.S.A. 1972 --present  To pursue music, Charles Parker left his home in Kansas City and hitched to New York where he looked for opportunities to play his alto saxophone. To make ends meet, Parker washed dishes at Jimmies Chicken Shack in Harlem.  He would become a major innovator in jazz when, with Dizzy Gillespie, he created "bebop."  

         The Medical Historical Library is the new home for a large collection of approximately 3,800 short published works on topics related to child welfare used by Arnold Gesell and the staff of the Yale Child Study Center as a reference collection. Topics include children and the war; day care centers; education; infant mortality; juvenile delinquency; intellectual disability and the eugenics movement; mental health; mental illness; nurseries; and nutrition. A portion of collection materials documents organizations and conditions relevant to child welfare in New Haven and Connecticut. Materials in the collection include pamphlets, reprints, newsletters, newspaper clippings, and reports published between 1886 and 1958, with the bulk of materials published between 1910 and 1950. Multiple publications in the collection were authored by Arnold Gesell and Yale School of Medicine faculty and staff.  The collection, the Yale Child Study Center reference collection (Pam Coll 11), is open for research in the Medical Historical Library, and searchable in the online finding aid, down to the title of each published work. The Yale Child Study Center was founded in 1911 by Arnold Gesell. At that time Gesell had completed a PhD in psychology and was working towards an MD at the Yale School of Medicine, which he completed in 1915. Gesell obtained the use of a room in the New Haven Dispensary to continue his previous work with children with disabilities and created the Yale Clinic of Child Development. Gesell became known for his studies of child development at the clinic. Using one-way mirrors to photograph and film researchers interacting with children, he documented developmental milestones for children from infancy through adolescence. Gesell was a prodigious writer, publishing numerous articles and more than a dozen books about his findings for the scientific community and the general public. His most famous work, An Atlas of Infant Behavior, contains 3,200 photographs captured from sessions at the clinic. Dr. Gesell was the director of the clinic until his retirement in 1948. Today, the Yale Child Study Center is a department of the Yale School of Medicine dedicated to improving the mental health of children and families, advancing understanding of their psychological and developmental needs, and treating and preventing childhood mental illness through the integration of research, clinical practice, and professional training. The center serves as the Department of Child Psychiatry for the Yale School of Medicine and Yale New Haven Hospital; is a center for basic neurodevelopment research on the earliest neurodevelopment and behavioral problems troubling children; and provides services in clinics, community settings, homes, and pediatric practices. The center’s faculty are engaged in domestic and international policy making; provide trainings in child psychiatry, social work, child psychology, research, specific intervention and prevention approaches, and in special areas of children’s mental health; and are engaged in research on the genetic and neurobiological basis of childhood psychiatric disorders.