A Conversation with Oliver Smithies: The Complete Video

On March 30, 2009, the UNC Health Sciences Library hosted "A Conversation with Dr. Oliver Smithies." The event was moderated by Dr. Tony Waldrop, UNC Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development, and featured a conversation with Smithies, 2007 Nobel Laureate in Medicine or Physiology, and a lengthy question-and-answer with the audience, which was composed of numerous students, researchers, staff, and faculty, as well as members of the public. While a previous blog entry included video excerpts of his presentation, the present posting includes the complete video [1:19:28].

For other Smithies-related postings on the Carolina Curator blog, click here; for a collection of Smithies' Nobel-related materials, visit the Highlights section of the HSL Special Collections web site. The text of Smithies' 2002 Norma Berryhill Distinguished Lecture, "Fifty Years as a Bench Scientist," is also available online.

UNC maintains a channel for university-related YouTube videos, which can be accessed at the YouTube site; a playlist for Health & Medicine videos is also available. In addition, UNC Health Care and the School of Medicine maintain a YouTube channel, with playlists for news, grand rounds, and more.

Bullitt History of Medicine Club Lecture Series Online

The entire 2009-10 lecture series for the Bullitt History of Medicine Club is now accessible online. Lectures have been digitally recorded since September 2008, and are available as mp3s on the Bullitt Club web site and as podcasts via Carolina on iTunes (navigate to School of Medicine section or click direct link). A listing of lectures for 2008-9 and 2009-10 follows below. For further information on the activities of the Bullitt Club, visit the organization's web site.

2009-2010 Bullitt Club Lectures

Dr. Carol Otey, Associate Professor of Cell & Developmental Biology, UNC School of Medicine
Oral Contraception: From Ancient Plant Extracts to the Birth of the Pill
:: April 22, 2010 [download mp3 -- 26 MB -- 52:25]

Dr. Margaret Humphreys, Josiah Charles Trent Professor in the History of Medicine, Duke University
The South's Secret Weapons: Disease, Environment and the Civil War
:: March 30, 2010 [download mp3 -- 30 MB -- 1:03:27]

Dr. Alexander Toledo, Assistant Professor of Surgery, UNC School of Medicine
John Collins Warren: "Gentlemen, This Is No Humbug"
:: February 18, 2010 [download mp3 -- 24 MB -- 51:02]

Chris Dibble, MD/PhD student, UNC School of Medicine
Winner of 2009 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine
The Dead Ringer: Medicine, Poe, and the Fear of Premature Burial
:: December 10, 2009 [download mp3 -- 22 MB -- 46:25]

Dr. Michael McVaugh, Professor Emeritus of History, UNC
Arabic into Latin (Or, Why Medical Schools Got Started)
:: November 10, 2009 [download mp3 -- 31 MB -- 1:06:12]

Dr. Janna Dieckmann, Clinical Associate Professor of Nursing, UNC School of Nursing
Home-Visiting by Nurses, Physicians, and Physical Therapists in North Carolina, 1950-1965
:: October 19, 2009 [download mp3 -- 44 MB -- 47:16]

Dr. Barbara Clowse, Historian and Author
Dr. Frances Sage Bradley: Her Biographer's Dilemma
:: September 29, 2009 [download mp3 -- 42 MB -- 44:38]

Dr. Philip Klemmer, Professor of Medicine, UNC School of Medicine
Jack London's Mysterious Malady
:: September 15, 2009 [download mp3 -- 42 MB -- 44:35]


2008-2009 Bullitt Club Lectures

Dr. Sue Estroff, Professor of Social Medicine, UNC School of Medicine
Blemished Bodies and Persons: An Historical Perspective on Stigma
:: April 14, 2009 [download mp3 -- 75 MB -- 1:20:15]

Lisa Wiese, Second-Year Medical Student, UNC School of Medicine
Washington, D.C.: Understanding the Poverty-Health Link from an Historical Lens
:: April 6, 2009 [download mp3 -- 48 MB -- 51:22]

Dr. Todd Savitt, Professor of Medical Humanities, East Carolina University
Entering a "White" Profession: Black Physicians in 19th- and 20th-Century America
:: February 10, 2009 [download mp3 -- 59 MB -- 1:03:22]

Dr. Aldo Rustioni, Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, UNC School of Medicine
The Neuron Doctrine of 1891 and the 1906 Nobel Award for Physiology or Medicine
:: January 21, 2009 [download mp3 -- 55 MB -- 59:32]

Dr. Vanessa Northrington Gamble, University Professor of Medical Humanities, George Washington University
"Without Health and Long Life All Else Fails": A History of African-American Efforts to Eliminate Racial Disparities in Health and Health Care
:: December 10, 2008 [download mp3 -- 60 MB -- 1:04:24]

Chris Dibble, MD/PhD Student, UNC School of Medicine
Winner of 2008 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine
Edward Livingston Trudeau: The First American Physician-Scientist and the Fight against Tuberculosis
:: November 17, 2008 [download mp3 -- 49 MB -- 52:38]

Dr. Elizabeth Fenn, Associate Professor of History, Duke University
Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82
:: October 21, 2008 [download mp3 -- 61 MB -- 1:05:18]

Wendy Moore, Freelance Journalist and Author (England)
The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery
:: September 23, 2008 [download mp3 -- 58 MB -- 1:02:02]

Ansley Herring Wegner, Research Historian, North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryPhantom Pain: North Carolina's Artificial Limbs Program for Confederate Amputees
:: September 17, 2008 [download mp3 -- 34 MB -- 36:32]

Note: Bullitt Club lecturers maintain individual copyright in online presentations.

Symposium for The First White House Library

The Library of Congress will by hosting a one-day symposium on May 7, 2010 to celebrate the publication of The First White House Library: A History & Annotated Catalogue. [For a detailed program, click here].

At the beginning of the day, visitors may choose one of two optional tours in the Library of Congress. Mark Dimunation, Chief of Rare Book and Special Collections, will give a tour of the new exhibition of Thomas Jefferson’s library [see also the digitized catalog of Jefferson's library; his books on medicine and anatomy are described in volume 1 at pp. 395-455], and John Cole, Director of the Center for the Book, will lead a tour that features the iconography, quotations, and inscriptions of the Library’s Jefferson Building.

The symposium program begins officially at 10:00 a.m. with a plenary address by Catherine M. Parisian, the editor of The First White House Library, followed by the presentation of copies of the book to the National First Ladies’ Library and the White House.

Other conference sessions will focus on books and reading in the White House. Douglas L. Wilson, Co-Director, Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College, and Jean Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln’s biographer, will discuss President and Mrs. Lincoln. Other featured speakers on the topic of First Ladies and reading will include the noted first ladies historian Carl Anthony; William G. Allman, Curator of the White House; Nancy Beck Young, biographer of Lou Henry Hoover; and Abigail Fillmore’s biographer Elizabeth Thacker-Estrada. The program will conclude with a plenary address by distinguished historian and author Sean Wilentz. A closing reception will follow.

RSVP: This event is free and open to the public. To assist with preparations, we ask those planning to attend to RSVP to Stacyea Sistare-Anderson, Center for the Book, (202) 707-5221, stsi@loc.gov.

The symposium is sponsored by the Bibliographical Society of America, the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, and the National First Ladies’ Library.

The Raw and the Cooked – and the Rare

On April 15, 2010 treasures will come out of the stacks at the Rare Book Collection in UNC's Wilson Special Collections Library. In a free public program at 5:45 p.m., Claudia Funke, curator of rare books, will speak about the concept of rarity and the role of libraries in collecting and making rare books available. For her talk, titled "The Raw and the Cooked – and the Rare," Funke will showcase some of the collection's recent gifts and purchases. Participants will have the opportunity during a reception beginning at 5 p.m. to view additions to the Rare Book Collection from the past two years. Items will range in date from the 17th to the 21st centuries. Read more . . .

The reception will be held in the Wilson Lobby, with the book viewing in Rare Book Collection Reading Room; the lecture will be held at in the Pleasants Family Assembly Room.

Trent Society Lecture: Pathology at Duke

Conference on Poetry and Caregiving at Duke

Life Lines: Poetry for Our Patients, Our Communities, Our Selves
A Conference Examining the Place of Poetry in Caregiving

May 21-23, 2010
Duke University
Sponsored by Duke Medicine

Program and Schedule
Speakers and Panelists
Registration

What are the challenges and benefits of offering poetry to patients? Can the sharing of poetry expand the vision of practitioners and students in healthcare professions? What is the role of poetry in community treatment programs? In shelters? In prisons? What can caregivers gain from writing and reading poetry?

This conference is designed for those who have an interest in examining the place of poetry in caregiving. Three panels of poets and health practitioners will present perspectives on the ways poetry can play a part in caring for our patients, our communities and our selves. Through discussion sessions, participants will have an opportunity to share experiences, to dialogue, to develop techniques, and to gain a deeper appreciation for poetry in the art of healing. Highlights of the conference include Friday and Saturday evening talks by poets David Whyte and Jane Hirshfield. Ms. Hirshfield will also offer a master class in poetry writing on Sunday morning. Join us as we hear from physicians, therapists, and poets and discuss the practicalities and possibilities of poetry in health care.

Registration is limited to 150, to allow lots of time for conversation and dialogue amongst those attending. Those who cannot make the whole conference might well be interested in the evening lectures by David Whyte on Friday ($20/$10 students) and Jane Hirshfield (free to public).

For more information about LIFE LINES: Poetry for Our Patients, Our Communities, Our Selves please contact: Grey Brown, Literary Arts Director, Health Arts Network at Duke, Duke University Medical Center (brown097@mc.duke.edu), or Dr. Frank Neelon of the Conference Planning Committee (919-618-1757).

Bullitt Club Lecture on History of Oral Contraception

The last meeting of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club for 2009-10 will be Thursday, April 22, 2010 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us from 12-1pm for light refreshments and lecture. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Carol Otey, Associate Professor of Cell and and Molecular Biology at UNC, will be presenting a lecture entitled, "Oral Contraception: From Ancient Plant Extracts to the Birth of the Pill."

The evolution of contraceptive practices from ancient times to the present will be discussed, within the context of the legal and social forces at work in human populations during different historical periods. The emphasis will be on plant-based contraception, including ancient herbal medicines, the development of rubber-based barrier methods (starting from raw plant sap), and the genesis of birth control pills in plant-based organic compounds.

Dr. Otey earned degrees in cell biology at Trinity University (BS) and UCLA (PhD), before pursuing post-doctoral work at UNC. She worked as Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia from 1993-1998, and joined the UNC faculty in 1998.

For further information about the Bullitt Club, including mp3 recordings of past lectures, please visit the organization's web site.

Book Event for New Biography on Hugh Williamson [1735-1819]

The Bullitt History of Medicine Club will be hosting a book event for Dr. George Sheldon, author of the first full-length biography of Hugh Williamson [1735-1819], an illustrious figure in both American and North Carolina history. Entitled Hugh Williamson: Physician, Patriot, and Founding Father, the book recounts the remarkable life of Williamson, who among many other accomplishments was a signer of the U.S. Constitution.

The event will begin at 5:30pm on Thursday, April 15, 2010 in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527) at the UNC Health Sciences Library. Dr. Sheldon will make a brief presentation and entertain questions on Williamson's place in history. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing. Light refreshments will be served and all are welcome. In addition, a small display will be on view in the exhibition cases on the first floor of HSL.

Dr. Sheldon is the Zack D. Owens Distinguished Professor of Surgery and Professor of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also the Director of the Health Policy Research Institute of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and Editor-in-Chief of e-FACS.org, the web portal of ACS. From 1984-2001 he served as Chair of the Department of Surgery at UNC.

See related post: New Biography on Hugh Williamson, Physician and Patriot.

Bullitt Club Lecture: "The South's Secret Weapons: Disease, Environment, and the Civil War"

The next meeting of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club will be Tuesday, March 30, 2010 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us at 5:30pm for light refreshments followed by the lecture at 6pm. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Margaret Humphreys, the Josiah Charles Trent Professor in the History of Medicine at Duke University, will be presenting a lecture entitled, "The South's Secret Weapons: Disease, Environment, and the Civil War."

Dr. Humphreys received her PhD in the History of Science (1983) and MD (1987) from Harvard University. She is the author of Yellow Fever and the South (1992) and Malaria: Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States (2001), books that explore the tropical disease environment of the American South, and its role in the national public health effort. She teaches the history of medicine, public health, and biology at Duke University, where she also edits the Journal of the History of Medicine. Her current research concerns the impact of the Civil War on American Medicine. The first book to emerge from that project, Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War, appeared in 2008.

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.

Anesthesia History Association to Meet in North Carolina

The Anesthesia History Association (AHA), in conjunction with the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, will be holding its 16th Annual Meeting on April 8-10, 2010, at the Brookstown Inn in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The featured speaker will be Dr. K. Patrick Ober, Professor of Internal Medicine at Wake Forest University and author of Mark Twain and Medicine: "Any Mummery Will Cure."

Annual meetings are held in various parts of the United States, and a brief interim meeting and dinner is held annually during the ASA Annual Meeting. Annual Meeting programs include plenary sessions devoted to targeted subject relative to anesthesia history or the teaching of history. "Free Papers" are devoted to historical events, trends, biography, etc related to medicine and to anesthesia.

This year's meeting will begin on Thursday, April 8, with a tour of Old Salem and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts. The educational sessions will begin at 8 a.m. on Friday and conclude at 11 a.m. on Saturday.

Additional information regarding the 2010 AHA spring meeting is available from Robert Strickland, M.D., rastrick@wfubmc.edu, (336) 716-4498, or Sherri Stockner, sstockne@wfubmc.edu, (336) 716-2712; the AHA web site also provides further information.

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.

2010 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine

The American Association for the History of Medicine's next annual meeting will be held April 29 to May 2, 2010 in Rochester, Minnesota, and a preliminary program is now available online (pdf). Local presenters and moderators include Prof. Michael McVaugh (UNC History), Sian Hunter (University of North Carolina Press), Dr. Jeffrey Baker (Duke) and Dr. Margaret Humphreys (Duke).

Dr. Keith Wailoo of Rutgers University, who will be speaking to the Bullitt Club on January 19, 2010, will be delivering the AAHM's annual Fielding H. Garrison Lecture on "The Politics of Pain: Liberal Medicine, Conservative Care, and the Governance of Relief in America since the 1950s."

Registration details for the annual meeting will be made available later on the AAHM web site. President W. Bruce Frye in a President's Message invites participants to Rochester and gives a history of the renowned Mayo Clinic. The Rochester Art Center will also be hosting a major exhibition, "Five Centuries of Medicine and Art," to coincide with the annual meeting.

Membership in AAHM is $85/year for individuals and $25/year for students.

The AAHM has recently published new issues of both its Newsletter (October 2009) and Bulletin of the History of Medicine (Vol. 83, No. 4, Winter 2009).

Researcher James Hansen to Speak on Global Climate Change

James Hansen, internationally recognized as a leading expert on global climate change, will speak at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, February 1, 2010.

Hansen will discuss “Global Climate Change: What Must We Do Now?” He comes to UNC as the Frey Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences. His lecture, at 7 p.m. in Memorial Hall, is free to the public and no advanced tickets are required.

A public reception and book-signing will follow the lecture. Hansen’s new book is Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.

In 2006, Time magazine named Hansen one of the world’s most influential people. Former vice president Al Gore said about the climatologist: “When the history of the climate crisis is written, [James] Hansen will be seen as the scientist with the most powerful and consistent voice calling for intelligent action to preserve our planet’s environment.”

Hansen is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. He is best known for his Congressional testimony on climate change in the 1980s — an early scientific voice that helped raise broad awareness of global warming. He created one of the first models of climate change about 30 years ago and has used it to predict much of what has happened since.

Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1995, he has been an active researcher in planetary atmospheres and climate science for nearly 40 years, with the last 30 years focused on climate research.

In addition to numerous testimonies given to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, Hansen twice made presentations to former President George W. Bush’s Climate and Energy Task Force.

The Frey Foundation Professorship was established in 1989 to bring to campus distinguished leaders from government, public policy and the arts. David Gardner Frey chairs the foundation established by his parents, Edward J. and Frances Frey of Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1974. He earned bachelor’s and law degrees at Carolina in 1964 and 1967, respectively.

Hansen's visit is also in conjunction with the Curriculum for the Environment and Ecology, the Department of Marine Sciences, the Department of Public Policy, and the Institute for the Environment.

Parking for the lecture is available in commercial lots on Rosemary Street. For more information on the lecture, call (919) 843-6339 or e-mail deereid@unc.edu.

Bullitt Club Lecture on the History of Pain Medicine

The next meeting of UNC's Bullitt History of Medicine Club will be Tuesday, January 19, 2009 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us at 5:30pm for light refreshments followed by the lecture at 6pm. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Keith Wailoo, Professor of History at Rutgers, will be presenting a lecture entitled, "Over-Prescribed / Under-Medicated: The History and Cultural Politics of Pain Medicine in America."

Dr. Wailoo is Director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity and Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University. During 2009-10 he is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Princeton University. His work focuses principally on health care politics, the ethnic and racial relations of medicine, and the ways scientific and technological understandings have interacted with politics, society, and culture to shape health experiences, disease disparities, and social responses to disease in the 20th century and into the 21st century.

Dr. Wailoo is also an award-winning author and editor of several books, including The Troubled Dream of Genetic Medicine: Ethnicity and Innovation in Tay-Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis, and Sickle Cell Disease (2006), A Death Retold: Jesica Santillan, The Bungled Transplant, and Paradoxes of Medical Citizenship (2006), Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health (2001), and Drawing Blood: Technology and Disease Identity in Twentieth-Century America (1997).

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

2009 Norma Berryhill Distinguished Lecture by Dr. Jeffrey Houpt

Dr. Jeffrey Houpt delivered the 2009 Norma Berryhill Distinguished Lecture entitled, "What We're Like When We're at Our Best and Today's Realities," on September 30, 2009. Dr. Houpt is Dean Emeritus of the UNC School of Medicine.

The two volumes of collected Norma Berryhill Lectures covering the period 1985-2008 have recently been made available online.

UNC Forum on Health Care Reform and Electronic Medical Records

The UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and Accenture, LLC, are sponsoring the forum, Toward Health Care Reform through Electronic Medical Records, to discuss the use of electronic medical records and its impact on the the U.S. health care system.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010 -- 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM (reception to follow)
Michael Hooker Research Center, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation Auditorium, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

Registration is available online.

Presenters include:

Jonathan Oberlander, PhD
Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, and Associate Professor of Social Medicine, UNC School of Medicine

Tim Carey, MD, MPH
Director of the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research and Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Medicine and Social Medicine, UNC School of Medicine

Deniese M. Chaney, MPH
Partner, Accenture Health and Public Service

* * *
FREE PARKING will be available in the McCauley Deck beneath the FedEx Global Education Center on Pharmacy Lane off of McCauley St. near Pittsboro St. (Map/Directions).

Digital Publishing at UNC Press

The program for the December meeting of the UNC Scholarly Communication Working Group will be "What's New with Digital Publishing at UNC Press." Dino Battista, Senior Director of Marketing at UNC Press, will describe some ongoing and new publishing programs at the press, such as ebooks, bringing out-of-print books back into print as print-on-demand titles, large-print editions, and audio books.

When: 12:00 noon - 1:00 p.m., Thursday, December 10, 2009

Where: Room 214, Davis Library

The Scholarly Communication Working Group is sponsored by the Odum Institute. For more information about the group, visit their web site.

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.

Susan Dimock and the Company She Kept

Dr. Elizabeth Barthold Dreesen, Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery at UNC-CH, will be presenting a James A. Hutchins Lecture on "Susan Dimock and the Company She Kept," on Tuesday, November 17, 2009, 4:00pm - 5:30pm in the Royall Room at the George Watts Hill Alumni Center on the UNC Campus. The Hutchins Lecture series is sponsored by the Center for the Study of the American South.

Washington, North Carolina native Susan Dimock became the first woman member of the North Carolina Medical Society in 1872. When she died three years later at age 28, she was already a well-respected surgeon, author and medical educator. She merited a New York Times obituary and pallbearers drawn from the luminaries of Harvard Medical School.

Dimock's life was one of liminality--a Southerner who moved to Massachusetts in the middle of the Civil War, an American student in a Swiss medical school, a woman surgeon in orthodox male medicine. Dreesen's exploration of Dimock's life sheds light on women's education in antebellum North Carolina, the entry of women into medicine, and the rise of nursing education, public health, and anti-sepsis procedures.

Note: Additional information on Dimock, as well as her dissertation on puerperal fever, written in German, is available online as part of the International Theses Collection at the UNC Health Sciences Library.

For further information on the event, contact Lisa Beavers (919-962-0503) at the Center for the Study of the American South.

Bullitt Club Lecture on Medieval Medical Education

The next meeting of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club will be Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us at 5:30pm for light refreshments followed by the lecture at 6pm. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Michael McVaugh, Professor Emeritus of History at UNC, will be presenting a lecture entitled, "Arabic into Latin (Or, Why Medical Schools Got Started)."

In medieval Europe medicine was a craft, not a subject that could be studied from books, until the twelfth century, when Latins discovered in Arabic manuscripts this new source for medicine knowledge, translated them into their own language, and made them the basis for a new invention, the medical school, with a set curriculum, examinations, and degrees.

Dr. McVaugh received his education at Harvard (AB, 1960) and Princeton (PhD, 1965). He has been on the UNC-Chapel Hill faculty since 1964 and is presently William Smith Wells Professor of History (Emeritus). His books include Medicine before the Plague: Practitioners and Their Patients in the Crown of Aragon, 1285-1345 (Cambridge, 1993), The Rational Surgery of the Middle Ages (Florence, 2006), and he is a member of the editorial commission for the Arnaldi de Villanova Opera Medica Omnia (12 vols. published since 1975).

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.