"The Gross Clinic" Restored and on Exhibition

"An Eakins Masterpiece Restored: Seeing The Gross Clinic Anew" is an exhibition currently on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that will run through January 9, 2011. It features Thomas Eakins' famous painting of 1875, Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic), which has recently undergone a major restoration effort.

The large-scale painting (measuring 8' by 6'6") was purchased by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with the support of over 3,500 donors in 2007 after its previous longtime owner, the Jefferson Medical College (Dr. Gross' alma mater), proposed its sale to museums outside Philadelphia.

The Museum's web site provides much detailed technical and historical information about the painting's conservation treatments over the decades, and dramatically documents the painting's evolving appearance. The image depicted here reflects its current state.

HSL Special Collections and Social Media

:: Special Collections at UNC Health Sciences Library

— Special Collections Website
— About Special Collections
— Exhibitions
— Digital Collections
— Historical Collections
— Archival Collections
— Oral History
— Donor Collections
— Highlights
— Guide to Research Resources
— Search Library Catalogs
— UNC Health Affairs History
— Friends of HSL

:: The Carolina Curator

— The Carolina Curator Blog
— The Carolina Curator on Delicious
— The Carolina Curator on Facebook
— The Carolina Curator on Flickr
— The Carolina Curator on Twitter

:: The Bullitt Club

— Bullitt History of Medicine Club
— Bullitt Lectures on iTunes [navigate to School of Medicine] [direct link]

:: Mobile

— Mobile Options for UNC
— Mobile for UNC Libraries
— Mobile for National Library of Medicine

Note: The image above was created using the image utility at Wordle.

UNC Health Sciences Library Awarded Digitization Grant

Special Collections at UNC Health Sciences Library has recently been awarded $42,675 for year two of a three-year NC ECHO digitization grant project for the creation of the North Carolina History of Health Digital Collection. Funded by the State Library of North Carolina through the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA), the 2010-11 awards were announced June 10, 2010 and totalled $4.9 million for statewide library projects; the complete list of awards, including others at UNC, is available at the LSTA web site.

Work on the North Carolina History of Health Digital Collection commenced with a pilot project over two years ago, and through year one of the grant project (FY 09-10), over 130,000 pages of core journals and books in medicine, public health, dentistry, pharmacy, and nursing from 1849 to the present have been digitized. The digital collection will eventually grow to over 800 volumes and approximately 300,000 pages. This material thoroughly documents the development of health care and the health professions within North Carolina and is thus a significant part of the state’s cultural heritage and history.

While digitized content is also being made available via the Internet Archive, the project is actively developing an integrated web site that will provide consolidated online access and advanced searching functionalities. The digital collection will moreover provide historical context for the resources in the various health disciplines and K-12 educational materials for selected content. A glimpse of public health images from the digital collection is available via Flickr.

Daniel Smith, Special Collections Librarian at UNC Health Sciences Library, is the principal investigator and project manager, and has directed each phase of the grant. Partners in the project include the Carolina Digital Library and Archive, the UNC Library, and Learn NC.

Note: The image above is from the Health Bulletin (1927), v. 42, n. 2, p. 1, published by the North Carolina State Board of Health.

New Prints & Photographs Catalog at Library of Congress

The Library of Congress' extensive Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) now has a new look and exciting new features. A dynamic redesign offers clean and visually inviting pages, with easy-to-use features for searching, browsing and sharing.

PPOC offers access to 1.25 million digital images and to more than 600,000 records describing the collections in the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division (P&P).

"The new features are wonderful," said Helena Zinkham, acting chief of P&P. "People seeking specific subjects, or just wanting to explore what’s available, can interact more easily with the picture collections. They now have the tools they’ve come to expect from other websites, like a variety of viewing options and simple sharing of what’s found, plus improved keyword access and more indexes to browse."

PPOC is a heavily used resource, with more than 16 million searches conducted in 2009. The catalog provides access through group or item records to P&P’s holdings, which consist of more than 14 million pictures, including the 1.25 million digitized images.

For more information about the Prints and Photographs Division, visit the division's web site; the division's catalog is also accessible online.

Read more . . .

Marjorie Howard Futcher Digital Photo Collection

The Osler Library of the History of Medicine and the McGill University Library are pleased to announce the launch of the online Marjorie Howard Futcher Photo Collection. This is a series of close to one thousand images arranged in two albums dating from 1890 to 1910 by Marjorie Howard Futcher (1882-1969), daughter of the former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Osler’s mentor R. Palmer Howard.

The site contains a number of photographs of medical people, including Sir William Osler (1849-1919), Dean of McGill Medicine Francis Shepherd (1851-1929), and even Dr. John McCrae (1872-1918), later famous for his poem In Flanders Fields. It also illustrates the social life of a young, well-connected Montreal woman during the period, including school days in England and Germany, and vacations in the lower St Lawrence area of Metis-sur-Mer, England, Scotland, Paris and Italy. The site provides an insight into the intersection of the worlds of elite medicine and wealth.

Viewers can virtually flip through the photo albums, replicating the experience of examining the originals and also seeing each picture in its larger context.

The original albums were donated to the Osler Library by Mrs Futcher’s son, Dr Palmer Howard Futcher of Baltimore, in 1998. We are grateful to the McGill Faculty of Medicine Class of 1978, whose generous class gift helped make this possible, and to those who contributed to this project.

For more information, please contact the Osler Library at osler.library@mcgill.ca or 514-398-4475, ext 09873.

Note: The image above (#FUT1_002-001_P) is from the Osler Library collection, and depicts Majorie Howard Futcher in 1900 at Métis-sur-Mer (Québec).

Bullitt Club Lecture on John Collins Warren: "Gentlemen, This Is No Humbug"

The Bullitt History of Medicine Club will be meeting Thursday, February 18, 2010 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us from 12 to 1pm for light refreshments and lecture. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Alexander Toledo, Assistant Professor of Surgery at UNC, will be speaking on: "John Collins Warren: 'Gentlemen, This Is No Humbug.'"

Dr. Warren was one of the great figures of American surgery of the nineteenth century. This lecture will focus on the pedigree, career, and contributions of Warren, with special consideration for the birth of anesthesia.

Dr. Toledo works in the Division of Abdominal Transplant Surgery in the UNC Department of Surgery. He received his undergraduate and medical education at the University of Michigan, followed by a residency in general surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center and a fellowship in transplant at Northwestern University. Among his specialties are solid organ transplant, pediatric transplant, living-related organ donation, and adult and pediatric intestinal transplant.

For further information about the Bullitt Club, including the schedule for 2009-10 and mp3 recordings of past lectures, please visit the organization's web site.

Image source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Scene above is believed to be a re-enactment of the demonstration of ether anesthesia by W.T.G. Morton on October 16, 1846. Mr. Holman with surgeons: John Mason Warren, George Hayward, Solomon D. Townsend, John Collins Warren and James Johnson around man on operating table.

A Gift of Books

What does a world-famous neurosurgeon get a prominent epidemiologist for the holidays? Well, if the year is 1915 and you are Dr. Harvey Cushing [1869-1939], then the gift of choice for Dr. Milton Rosenau [1869-1946] is a copy of the two-volume work, The Life of Edward Jenner, M.D. . . . with Illustrations of His Doctrines, and Selections from His Correspondence, by John Baron, M.D., F.R.S. Published in 1838, Cushing's presentation copy to Rosenau is among the holdings of Special Collections at the Health Sciences Library.

Pasted in on the bottom portion of the inside front cover of volume one is the following handwritten note on Cushing's letterhead from The Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston:

Dear Rosenau,

You and Jenner and John Baron will find each other congenial company
I trust. I present them to you with my sincere Christmas Greetings.

Yours,

Harvey Cushing

Dec. 25, 1915

The gift is a fitting one as Dr. Jenner [1749-1823] was of course a pioneer of the smallpox vaccine (see An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the variolae vaccinae . . . (1798); the print volume is housed in Special Collections), and his life story would have been both familiar and of great interest to Rosenau, who himself was the author of the first comprehensive public health text, Preventive Medicine and Hygiene (1913), and was the first head of Harvard's Department of Preventative Medicine and Epidemiology. Upon retiring in 1935, Rosenau came to the University of North Carolina, and served as Director of the Division of Public Health (1936-1939) and then as Dean of the newly created School of Public Health (for more information on the School's history, visit HSL's online exhibition).

Dr. Cushing's achievements as a surgeon and educator were many, and include the development of a variety of surgical techniques for the brain. He discovered the endocrinological basis for what is known as Cushing's Disease, and introduced the sphygmomanometer to North America, which greatly promoted the measurement of blood pressure as a vital sign. He was also a biographer in his own right, and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1926 for The Life of Sir William Osler.

Bullitt Club Lecture on the Fear of Premature Burial

The Bullitt History of Medicine Club will be meeting Thursday, December 10, 2009 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us from 12 to 1pm for light refreshments and lecture. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Chris Dibble, MD/PhD student at UNC, will be speaking on "The Dead Ringer: Medicine, Poe, and the Fear of Premature Burial."

Chris' presentation is based on his winning entry for the 2009 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine, an essay competition sponsored by the Bullitt History of Medicine Club, which honors Dr. William McLendon and Dr. Colin Thomas, Jr. and recognizes scholarly excellence in the history of the health sciences.

The essay competition is now accepting submissions for the current academic year, and is open to all UNC-Chapel Hill students in the health sciences: medicine, pharmacy, public health, dentistry, nursing, and allied health sciences. The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2010. For further information, please see the competition guidelines.

For further information about the Bullitt Club, including the schedule for 2009-10 and mp3 recordings of past lectures, please visit the Bullitt web site.

Note: The image above is a 1848 daguerreotype in the photograph collection of the American Antiquarian Society.

The MacKinney Collection of Medieval Medical Illustrations

Dr. Loren C. MacKinney [1891-1963] was a professor of medieval history who specialized in medieval medical history. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1925, and joined the UNC-Chapel Hill faculty in 1930. "Recognized internationally as an outstanding authority in the history of medicine, particularly for his studies of pre-Renaissance illuminated medical manuscripts, it has been said Dr. MacKinney has set medical history forward at least 150 years," observed The Bulletin of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in 1957.

MacKinney authored several books, including Early Medieval Medicine (1937), The Medieval World (1938), Bishop Fulbert and Education at the School of Chartres (1957), Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts (1965), and numerous articles on medical themes. A key part of his research was the photographic documentation of medieval medical illustrations that he studied during research trips to libraries and archives around the world. MacKinney predominantly used Ektachrome slide film, which is significantly more prone to deterioration than Kodachrome, and during his life MacKinney expressed concerns about the preservation of his unique collection.

Professor Michael McVaugh, a medievalist who joined the UNC History Department in 1964, was instrumental in the safekeeping and eventual digitization of MacKinney's collection. A master set of slides was transferred to the National Library of Medicine, and a duplicate set was maintained at UNC. In 2007, the slides at UNC--which number over 1000--were digitized and now form the MacKinney Collection of Medieval Medical Illustrations.

Further information about MacKinney himself and the processing of the collection is also available online. The collection is keyword searchable and can be browsed in its entirety. A finding aid for the collection is also available online, which describes MacKinney's archives of microfilm and photostats; subject files and research notes; and glass negatives.

Note: The image above is from the MacKinney Collection; it depicts a cesarian delivery and dates from the 14th century, with text in Arabic.

Sheldon Lecture in Anatomy, History, and Society

All interested students, faculty, and staff are invited to attend the second annual George F. Sheldon Lecture in Anatomy, History, and Society on Monday, October 19, 2009 at 8:30am.

Dr. Sheldon himself will be delivering the lecture, which is entitled: "Anatomy, Medicine, and Social Policy." Dr. Sheldon is Zack D. Owens Distinguished Professor of Surgery at UNC, and was Chair of the Department of Surgery from 1984-2001. He is also the director of the Health Policy and Research Institute of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and Editor-in-Chief of e-Facs.org, a web portal of ACS.

The lecture will be held on the UNC campus in Room G-202 of the the Medical Biomolecular Research Building (MBRB).

New Exhibit at UNC Health Sciences Library

Learned in Science, Explored in Art: An Exhibit of Paintings by Wolfgang Ritschel

September 21 to December 31, 2009
UNC Health Sciences Library

Gallery Talk & Reception: Wed., October 14, 2009, 5-6:30pm

In this collection of 35 paintings, Wolfgang Ritschel explores the world of medicine through the media of visual art. Although Ritschel had formal training in painting at a young age, he went on to pursue a successful career in pharmacology and medicine before returning to art full time. Ritschel is emeritus professor at the University of Cincinnati. The paintings are displayed on the 1st and 2nd floors of the Library.

For more information about the artist and his work, please visit the exhibit webpage. An exhibition catalog is also available online [PDF].

The travelling exhibit was organized by the University of Cincinnati Libraries.

Hugh Morton Collection Now Online

The Photographic Archives of the North Carolina Collection in Wilson Library has recently mounted a new digital collection, the Hugh Morton Collection of Photographs and Films. At present approximately 1500 images are available online, which represents only a small fraction of the many tens of thousands in the Morton collection at UNC. A View to Hugh is an award-winning blog that has documented the processing of this collection, and the posting announcing the digital collection also solicits input from users as the project develops further. As described on the project web site:

The Hugh Morton Collection of Photographs and Films (Collection P081, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, Wilson Library) documents Hugh MacRae Morton's career covering eight decades (1930s-2000s) as a prominent North Carolina businessman, political figure, tourism booster, conservationist, environmental activist, sports fan, and prolific image-maker. The still images and motion pictures in the collection cover aspects of Morton's various involvements: as a photojournalist; a soldier in the Pacific Theater during World War II; the owner and operator of the Grandfather Mountain tourist attraction in Linville, N.C.; a well-known figure in state government and friend of many North Carolina politicians, entertainers, and media personalities; an alumni, booster, and frequent sports-event attendee of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and an ardent admirer of nature and lover of travel.

The Morton digital collection is searchable by keyword and browseable by name, location, subject, and decade. Morton's lens ranged over a wide range of subjects, and although the digital collection will be greatly increasing in size as additional images are processed, there are already images in the following health-related categories under Browse by Subject:

-- Health care facilities
-- Hospitals
-- Medical aspects of war
-- Medical equipment and supplies
-- Nurses
-- Nursing homes

A finding aid to the Morton collection is also available online.

The image above is from the Morton Collection (#P081). Entitled "WW2 Medic Helps Injured Man," it was taken during Morton's WWII service with the 161st Signal Photography Corps in the Pacific Islands.

Information on other digital collections at UNC Libraries and the Health Sciences Library is available in the Digital Collections section of the HSL Special Collections web site.

Winner of 2009 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine

Chris Dibble, a third-year MD/PhD student in the UNC School of Medicine, is the winner of the second annual McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine essay competition sponsored by the Bullitt History of Medicine Club. Funded by UNC alumni S. Gregory Boyd (MD '03, JD '04) and Laura Boyd (JD '02), the McLendon-Thomas Award honors Dr. William McLendon and Dr. Colin Thomas, Jr. and recognizes scholarly excellence in the history of health sciences.

Chris' winning essay was entitled, "The Dead Ringer: Medicine, Poe, and the Fear of Premature Burial," and he will be delivering a presentation to the Bullitt Club on December 10, 2009. Chris was also the winner of the inaugural McLendon-Thomas Award for his paper on Edward Trudeau Livingston's work on tuberculosis; a recording of his Bullitt lecture on Livingston is available online, along with all other lectures for 2008-9.

The essay competition is now accepting submissions for the current academic year, and is open to all UNC-Chapel Hill students in the health sciences: medicine, pharmacy, public health, dentistry, nursing, and allied health sciences. The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2010. For further information, please see the competition guidelines.

:: Greg and Laura Boyd live in New York City, where he is an attorney with Davis & Gilbert LLP and she is a legal recruiter with SJL Attorney Search. Greg considers the history of medicine to be one of the most important aspects of his medical education and and Drs. McClendon and Thomas among the best role models possible. They both strongly believe that the history of medicine represents a critical perspective and focus on the art of medicine that are necessary for training the best possible physicians, health care executives, and policy makers.

:: Dr. William W. McLendon served from 1973-1995 at UNC as Director of the Hospital Clinical Laboratories and as Professor and Vice-Chair of Pathology. Since his retirement in 1995 he has been Professor Emeritus of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. An MD graduate of UNC in 1956, he and Bob Whitlock (MD '57) were the student co-founders in 1954 of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club. Dr. McLendon is the co-author, along with the late Drs. William Blythe and Floyd Denny, of the recently published Bettering the Health of the People: W. Reece Berryhill, the UNC School of Medicine, and the North Carolina Good Health Movement.

:: Dr. Colin G. Thomas, Jr. joined the faculty of the UNC School of Medicine in 1952, and is currently Byah Thomason-Sanford Doxey Professor of Surgery. From 1966-1984 he served as Chair of the Department of Surgery, and from 1984-1989 as Chief of the Division of General Surgery. Dr. Thomas was one of the early faculty members of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club, and is the co-author, along with Mary Jane Kagarise, of the 1997 history, Legends and Legacies: A Look Inside: Four Decades of Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1952-1993.

For more information on the Bullitt Club and events for 2009-10, please visit the Bullitt Club website.

Have a Cool Home Library?

Have a cool or otherwise esthetically pleasing home library you would like others to know about? If so, Chapel Hill Magazine is soliciting leads on libraries to appear in a feature article later this year or early next. Inquiries can be emailed to Andrea Griffith, an editor at the magazine. Andrea requests that folks respond by October 1, 2009, and that attaching a representative digital image or two would also be helpful. And, as pictured in the image here, a home library with a fireplace would be of especial interest to the magazine.

Exhibitions at UNC Health Sciences Library

There are a variety of physical and online exhibitions to check out at UNC Health Sciences Library at the start of the 2009-10 academic year. In the first-floor lobby display cases are the following three exhibits:

:: Great Minds, Great Finds: Explore Library Collections -- A survey of historical texts, images, instruments, and artifacts drawn from Special Collections at the library, representing the five professional schools in UNC Health Affairs: Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Public Health

:: New Books in the History of the Health Sciences -- A selection of recent acquisitions, including such titles as The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy, Pioneers of Cardiac Surgery, Frontier Medicine, Sex, Sin and Science: A History of Syphilis in America, and Medicine under Canvas: A War Journal of the 77th Evacuation Hospital, among others. All are available in the library for check-out from the circulating collections or for perusal in the Special Collections Reading Room.

:: The Sam W. Hitt Medicinal Plant Garden at UNC Health Sciences Library -- Mr. Hitt served as library director from 1976 to 1986 and the medicinal plant garden in his honor is located at several locations around the library building. There is also on online exhibit of the garden, which includes a photo gallery and descriptions of its many growing plants.

In the new exhibition cases located near the User's Services desk are two additional exhibits, which are described in entries on this blog:

:: Operation Coffee Cup and Socialized Medicine

:: The Bicentennial of Louis Braille [1809-1852]

Other exhibits that are available online include the following:

:: UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health: Meeting the Public Health Challenges of the 21st Century -- This exhibit highlights both current initiatives and the history of School, and features audio, video, and photographic images.

:: History of the Health Sciences Library and UNC Health Affairs -- This exhibit traces the development of the library as well as the five Health Affairs schools.

Information about a number of other exhibitions at HSL and at UNC & UNC Libraries is available in the Exhibitions section of the Special Collections web site.

The images above are from the Hitt Medicinal Plant Garden online exhibit; the plants, from left to right, are: Garden Coreopsis (also called Moonbeam); Bee-Balm; Catnip; and Eastern Purple Coneflower. Lynn Eades, HSL Web Development Librarian, photographed all the plants.

Chang and Eng Bunker, the Original Siamese Twins

One-hundred-eighty years ago, on August 16, 1829, two eighteen-year-old males, Chang and Eng, arrived in Boston from Siam aboard the Sachem. The Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C.) reported in its August 22, 1829 issue that "It was one of the greatest living curiosities that we ever saw," as the two were conjoined, "connected by a cartilaginous substance about seven inches in circumference and four in length." Despite this congenital condition, the newspaper notes that "They appear to be in good health, and apparently contented with their confined situation."

The original "Siamese twins," as they became known, Chang and Eng toured widely, giving lectures and exhibitions, and were one of P.T. Barnum's most popular "curiosities." The twins added the surname Bunker when they become American citizens in 1839; their first names apparently meant left (Chang) and right (Eng). They enjoyed great notoriety and financial success, but eventually retired to Wilkes County, North Carolina in the late 1830s where they purchased a farm as well as slaves. They married the sisters Sarah and Adelaide Yates in 1843 and together had 21 children. They died on January 17, 1874, and are buried in the White Plains Baptist Church cemetery.

UNC University Library holds many materials related to Chang and Eng, including the Chang and Eng Bunker Papers in the Southern Historical Collection, and printed material and original photographs in the North Carolina Collection. The library also has an online digital collection, Eng & Chang Bunker: The Siamese Twins, that contains photographs, engravings, letters to and by the twins, account books, and published works.

The image above is from the North Carolina Collection Gallery. It is a watercolor on ivory, and was painted by an unknown French or Dutch artist in Paris circa 1835-6.

Operation Coffeecup and Socialized Medicine

Health care reform is today foremost in the minds of the public and politicians alike. It is, however, not a new concern, as evidenced by a new exhibit at the UNC Health Sciences Library which features the American Medical Association’s 1961 campaign, Operation Coffeecup. Led by the Woman’s Auxiliary to the American Medical Association, Operation Coffeecup was “an all-out effort to stimulate as many letters to Congress opposing socialized medicine and its menace as proposed in the King bill (HR 4222).”

Identical versions of the bill were introduced by Cecil King (D-CA) in the House of Representatives and Clinton Anderson (D-NM) in the Senate, and the bill was the latest in a series of legislative attempts to create a Medicare-type program. All were defeated until the Social Security Act of 1965 was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on July 30, 1965. President Truman was a guest at the ceremony and was presented with the first Medicare card (below); a video clip is available online.

Operation Coffeecup’s main tool of persuasion was a 33-1/3 rpm record entitled, “Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine,” a copy of which was recently acquired by Special Collections at the Health Sciences Library. It contains two tracks: the title piece, delivered by Reagan, and “Socialized Medicine and You”; several documents were also inserted into a pocket in the album that were intended for the use of discussion leaders, including printed transcripts of the record's two tracks. Ronald Reagan [1911-2004] was a registered Democrat when this record was produced, though he switched his affiliation to the Republican Party in 1962 and had been a strong supporter of Dwight Eisenhower in the presidential campaigns of 1952 and 1956 and Richard Nixon in 1960.

“The Problem,” as described by Operation Coffeecup on the album's inside cover, was:

The legislative chips are down. In the next few months Americans will decide whether or not this nation wants socialized medicine . . . first for its older citizens, soon for all its citizens. The pivotal point in the campaign is a bill currently before Congress. The King bill (HR 4222), another Forand-type bill, is a proposal to finance medical care for all persons on Social Security over 65, regardless of financial need, through the social security tax mechanism. Proponents admit the bill is a “foot in the door” for socialized medicine. Its eventual effect—across-the-board, government medicine for everyone!

The section "How Operation Coffeecup Works" enumerates the following headings as action items:

— Listen, Look
— Put on the Coffeepot
— Invite an Audience
— Talk about What You Heard
— Spur Action
— Don’t Stop Now

“Each letter you help send off is a step along the way toward stopping socialized medicine. So join the Coffeecup Corps today!”

Related online resources include an essay, “Operation Coffeecup: Ronald Reagan’s Effort to Prevent the Enactment of Medicare,” and a YouTube recording of the text “Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine” (note that the first two paragraphs of Reagan's text are not included on this particular recording).

In addition, the American Medical Association Historical Archives contains a Medicare Campaign collection (record group MDC), which includes materials related to Operation Coffeecup and other AMA public relations efforts from 1960-1965; the collection is described as follows:

History Note: The Medicare public relations campaign constitutes the AMA's efforts in response to the proposed passage of the King-Anderson bill in Congress since 1960. The AMA staged numerous public relations efforts to amend passage of the bill before Congress. Congress passed the bill in 1965, creating Medicare.

Scope Note: Many of the highlights in the AMA's history are documented here, such as excerpts from Operation Coffee Cup featuring Ronald Reagan, the nationally televised script of AMA president Dr. Annis speaking before Madison Square Garden in 1964 and other interviews. Also included are files and newsletters related to the AMA's position on the bill and about socialized medicine.

Infomation on how to use the AMA Historical Archives is available online. Only AMA members have access to the archives, with the exception of the Historical Health Fraud Collection, which may be used by non-members on a fee-for-service basis. A descriptive summary of more than 50 collections is available for download.

Former Duke University Librarian Nominated To Be Archivist of the United States

On July 28, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated David Ferriero to be the next Archivist of the United States. As Archivist, Mr. Ferriero would lead the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which is the official United States repository for government documents and records. Mr. Ferriero is currently Director of the New York Public Library, and prior to that served as University Librarian at Duke University. Further details are available from the White House blog.

NARA was established in 1934 and is currently celebrating its 75th anniversary; a photo gallery of its history as an institution is available online. Among the many millions of documents that it preserves are the Charters of Freedom: the Declaration of Independence; the Constitution of the United States; and the Bill of Rights. A sense of the scope of other holdings can be had from the online subject index. Although its holdings are vast, only an estimated 1-3% of government records are held by NARA, and of these records, only a fraction is available in electronic form.

Agency-specific collections include, among many others: Records of the National Institutes of Health; Records of the Health Resources and Services Administration; Records of the Environmental Protection Agency; Records of the Food and Drug Administration; Records of the Public Health Service; and Records of the Indian Health Service.

The picture above shows President Herbert Hoover on February 20, 1933 at the ceremony for the laying of the cornerstone of the National Archives Building. The ceremony was accelerated to ensure that Hoover, who had just two weeks remaining in his term, would have his name on the cornerstone.

Microforms at the Health Sciences Library Can Now Be Digitized

The UNC Health Sciences Library has recently upgraded its microform reader to permit the easy digitization of both microfilm and microfiche. Located in the Audiovisual / Microforms section in the basement of the library, the new equipment (at right) can quickly create high-resolution scans of any microform document (see image below). Digitized files can be copied to flash drives, CDs, or emailed. The new digital option replaces the previous microform printer, and there is no charge for scanning.

HSL holds significant microform collections, including Early American Medical Imprints, 1668-1820, a set of 1,680 important titles (click here to browse) in the history of medicine that was acquired by Special Collections. The collection, which includes books, pamphlets, theses, and broadsides, is based on the 1961 bibliography by Robert B. Austin, and contains most but not all of the works therein. In addition, a number of periodical titles have been included that were selected from Myrl Ebert's article, "The Rise and Development of the American Medical Periodical, 1797-1850," published in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 40:243-76, July 1952.

This article was also the title of Ms. Ebert's master's thesis at Columbia University, and she become the librarian for UNC's Division of Health Affairs Library in 1952. Ms. Ebert served in this capacity until 1976, and further information about her tenure can be found in an online exhibition; a brief audio clip is also available online.

Other microform collections at HSL include:

:: History of Nursing: The Adelaide Nutting Historical Nursing Collection [browse titles]
Includes more than 1400 monographs and documents concerning the history of nursing, medicine and hospitals, from the 15th through the early 20th centuries; publication dates range from 1603 to 1937, with the bulk having been issued in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

:: Calendar of the Letters of Florence Nightingale

See also nine letters in HSL Special Collections that have been digitized and made available online.

:: Primary Sources for the History of Pharmacy in the United States [browse titles]

Contains 85 titles covering the entire spectrum of pharmaceutical literature, including laws, lectures, textbooks, drug and equipment catalogues, formula books, and botanical and herbal materials.

:: Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (1793)

:: Quarterly Summary of the Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (1841-1844)

:: Summary of the Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (1844-1874)

:: Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (1875-1937)

:: Transactions & Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (1938-1971)

:: UNC Theses and Dissertations [browse titles on microfiche]

Theses and dissertations by UNC students are available in multiple formats, including bound volumes, microforms, and electronic files. A guide to researching UNC and other theses and dissertations is available online; information on those found in the Health Sciences Library is available here.

Since 2006, the majority of theses and dissertations at UNC have been published electronically, and are accessible online. In addition to being searchable by title, author, and keywords, these texts are also browseable by school or department, discipline, and faculty advisor.

Pictured below is a broadside from the Early American Medical Imprints, 1668-1820 microfilm collection (Austin 755). Entitled "Progess of Vaccination in America," it lists the number vaccinated and the number of tests for small-pox by state between 1802 and 1815. A manuscript note states: "February 1816, Plymouth, Mass."

The Man on the Moon and Doctor Bills

July 20, 2009 marked the 40th anniversary of the momentous occasion of humans first walking on the moon. Upon setting foot on lunar soil, Neil Armstrong uttered, with a slight glitch (either technical or grammatical), the immortal words: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."

Of course, the Sixties in America were an especially tumultuous period of social protest by many constituencies, so it is not too surprising that the moon landing itself was also the subject of criticism. Indeed, no less a figure than the highly accomplished space scientist Dr. James Van Allen [1914-2006] of the University of Iowa objected throughout his career to the vast resources that were expended on manned space flight as opposed to other more economical and efficient means of exploration and research.

On the cultural front, poet, musician, and activist Gil Scott-Heron in 1970 composed and recorded the song, "Whitey on the Moon," which contrasts the poverty and medical expenses of the song's protagonist to the fact that astronauts are now going to the moon. The lyrics raise poignant questions about how society allocates limited resources to fundamental needs such as health care. And in what is perhaps a reference to the air mail stamp that was issued in 1969 to commemorate the moon landing (pictured above), the song concludes: "I think I'll send these doctor bills, airmail special (to Whitey on the moon)." Various versions of this song, as well as Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" are available on YouTube.

The last man on the moon (and all twelve NASA astronauts that walked on the moon were male--and white) was Eugene Cernan, who commanded the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972. His parting words as the lunar module left the celestial body closest to Earth were: "We leave as we came and, god willing, as we shall return, with peace, and hope for all mankind."

See also: Man on the Moon -- Part II.