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The Movable archives has in fact moved and we are now blogging on the Legacy Center's website: http://archives.drexelmed.edu/blog/. Do visit!

Schamberg's Well-Known Kissing Party: Mistletoe, syphilis, and other holiday hazards

During the 1920s and 1930s, 4th Year students of Woman's Medical College (WMC) were required to write a thesis for their Hygiene and Preventative Medicine class. I've been looking at some patterns running through these theses and found that between 1928 and 1932, six WMC students wrote papers focusing on the different aspects of syphilis.

A line in one of these syphilis theses caught my eye and intrigued me. Student Adele Cohn's 1931 paper makes a reference to "Schamberg's well-known kissing party."

"Schamberg's well-known kissing party" is a phrase chosen by Adele Cohn as a reference to Jay F. Schamberg's 1911 article "An Epidemic of Chancre of the Lip from Kissing" (Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 57 p. 783, September 2, 1911). Jay F. Schamberg, M.D., was Professor of Diseases of the Skin at the Philadelphia Polyclinic and College for Graduates in Medicine.

A good summary of Schamberg's "kissing party" article is found in a 1930 article on syphilis by Marion Craig Potter:

"The most common of all extragenital lesions are on the lips, from the use of common cups, the interchange of cigarettes, and kissing. Schamberg reports an epidemic of chancres from kissing following a Christmas mistletoe party. 'The source was a young man who had a chancre of the lip. Six young women kissed by him developed chancres on the lip. Another young man developed a chancre on the lip, apparently, from the virus deposited on the lip of one of the young women. In addition, a young woman who was kissed by the offender at a third social affair was inoculated, making, in all, eight labial chancres from one source; and later Schamberg was consulted by another girl who had acquired a chancre of the cheek from a kiss from one of the aforementioned young women.' Many babies in the cradle are infected in this manner. Kissing is dangerous!"
(from "Venereal Diseases: Part I: Syphilis" by Marion Craig Potter, The American Journal of Nursing, Vol. 30, No. 2, Feb 1930, pp. 155-160 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/3409971)

While Marion Craig Potter concludes that "kissing is dangerous" and Adele Cohn chooses the wonderful phrase "Schamberg's well-known kissing party," they are not alone in their appreciation for the case study. Another source mentions that "The kissing party reported by Schamberg has become classic" (see Preventive Medicine and Hygiene, 4th ed., edited by Milton J. Rosenau, 1921 p. 61).

The particulars of kissing under the mistletoe are described in detail in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable: "The correct procedure, now rarely observed, is that as the young man kisses a girl under the mistletoe he should pluck a berry, and that when the last berry is gone there should be no more kissing." I haven't yet found any discussions of this berry-limiting, portion-controlled approach to minimizing disease transmission, but it may be an area ready for research.

I did find further discussion of mistletoe-related infections in a 1952 feature called "Any Questions?" in the The British Medical Journal (BMJ, Vol. 2, No. 4799, Dec. 27, 1952, pp. 1431-1432, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25394763). After a discussion of technique, comparing the "dutiful or chaste kiss" to the "full-blooded passionate kiss," the author moves on to the topic of infection transmission.

In regard to spreading syphilis through kissing, "certain very delicate micro-organisms ... can certainly be transmitted directly, notably those of Vincent's infection [aka "trench mouth"] and syphilis." The author does put things in perspective, saying that many mouth-bourne bacteria have no problem living outside the mouth, therefore "it is of course worse to be sneezed or coughed at, and the probability is ... that a kiss would be preferable to either of these experiences."

It goes on to warn, "Don't assume you know where your family members' lips have been" (my paraphrasing). The author then follows through on this familial warning with a tongue-in-cheek, washing-my-hands-of-the-situation comment: "This discordant and unpleasant note is introduced only for the sake of scientific completeness." Right.

But there's more to holiday parties than extragenital disease transmission. Seasonal social gatherings are beset with unforeseen physiological mechanisms and their repurcusions. This section in BMJ includes a Q&A for other holiday hazards, including:

• Does mulled claret and punch make you drunk faster if it is served hot or cold?
• What are the botulism risks of imported canned meat?
• Should a bowel purgative be used after a heavy Christmas dinner?
• What are the poisoning risks for holly and mistletoe berries?
• Will one's drunkenness feel worse after a person ventures out into the cold?
• How does one sterilize his or her bagpipes?
• What are the risks of handling radioactive isotopes?

I don't know about that last question, but evidence suggests that the holidays are a bloody minefield.

I have a yearly ritual -- as soon as Thanksgiving is over, I start listening to Christmas music. Since starting this research, all I now hear are clandestine death threats. Whether it's Burl Ives trying to poison me with his "Holly Jolly Christmas" or Andy Williams wishing me lip sores and an unspecified cardiac condition: "There'll be much mistletoe-ing / And hearts will be glowing." Maybe Andy is trying to warn us, I can't tell. And a montage from some sort of Martin Scorsese film reels through my head when I hear Frank Sinatra insinuate: "Oh, by gosh, by golly. It's time for mistletoe and holly. Fancy ties an' granny's pies, an' folks stealin' a kiss or two. As they whisper, Merry Christmas to you." I'm starting to think that Grandma had it lucky when she got run over by that reindeer. At least she went quickly.

So, from the safety of my basement archives bunker, I wish everyone a Happy Holiday Season. I'm still deciding whether to light a candle or curse the darkness, but either way I hope to see you in the New Year.

Open for Interpretation: Squeezing more use out of our collections

We've been preparing for three exhibits, one opened last week and two others are fast approaching:

September 24: Parallel exhibits on the early history of American Medical Women’s Association and American Women’s Hospital Service, developed through the hard work of excellent intern Alex Miller -- that's Alex setting up the case in the photo. Exhibit in our lobby.

October 6: Changing the Face of Medicine, a traveling exhibit put together several years ago by the National Library of Medicine (online exhibition at NLM) that uses a lot of our collection material. We'll be supplementing the traveling component with a couple exhibit cases of original items.

October 21: Kickoff event and exhibit associated with the conference for the far-reaching Vision 2020 gender equality initiative. At the National Constitution Center in Philly.

"Interpretation," if you aren't familiar with it, is a term most often used by museum folks. That's an understatement: Interpretation is the word that drives museum folks. It refers to selection of artifacts and archives to illustrate a certain theme or story.

Interpretation is the process that uses a story to connect the stuff to the audience.

Two different groups of archival materials could be used to illustrate the same story. Or one group of materials could illustrate multiple stories.

As an archivist, I love interpretation:

1. Interpretation creates use: We're not waiting for the researchers to come to us, we're getting out into the physical and online communities to bring the stories to them. The wonderful thing is that interpretative cycles back onto itself -- the increased awareness leads to more researchers becoming interested and can even result in new donations of archival materials.
2. Interpretation creates a story: People love stories about people and events. And our collections are full of stories of people who have the grit and gumption (dagnabbit) to actually inspire people. Exhibits and other outreach efforts make these stories relevant to people's lives.
3. Interpretation is creative: It is challenging and fun to create something that tells a story, uses historical documents and artifacts, and appeals to a wide audience. Interpretation allows us to be partial and to tell a story from a certain point of view. Haha! Take that, objectivity!

As I understand it -- I'm new here by the way -- this sort of exhibit development is not something we've been intensively involved in until recently. But as of late, we're all about interpretation. In addition to these three exhibits, we have our upcoming planning grant to use online archives in Grades 6-12 (more about this is a previous post).

I love researchers, they're probably my favorite part of the job, but I think interpretation, outreach and education are the direction archival repositories need to go to really be valuable to society. For every 10 researchers who use our collections in-depth, we might have hundreds or thousands of users of our exhibits or teacher materials. The wonderful thing is that this isn't an either-this-or-that calculation, we can do both. We should do both. And both feed into each other: Use begets use.

Want to see these exhibits? Well you've got me there...you'll have to visit the places they're installed. Or you can wait until we get our online exhibit space up and running (using Omeka, for those of you who are interested).

Job Opening at the Legacy Center

We have begun our search for a new archivist to replace the recently vacated Assistant Archivist position. This position is being re-titled "Archivist."

The position scope covers reference and outreach and the Archivist provides both public and technical support in the overall management of the archives. This is a full-time, year-round position reporting to the Center's Director, working closely with other senior staff and providing some supervision to student workers. The Legacy Center is located on the Queen Lane campus in East Falls.

The Legacy Center contains the records of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, Hahnemann Medical College, and their predecessor and successor institutions, including Drexel University College of Medicine. The Special Collections comprise materials documenting the history of women in medicine, women’s health and homeopathy. The Center is a core program of the College of Medicine’s Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership.

RESPONSIBILITIES

The Archivist is the key responder to reference requests and is charged
with establishing positive relationships with users and providing
productive research experiences:

• works on-site and remotely with researchers to provide professional reference service;
  
• oversees scanning and photocopying requests;
• manage rights and reproductions for requested collection materials;
• improves and maintains work flows.

The Archivist develops and maintains projects designed to broaden and
increase usership:

• maintains the Archives blog;
• utilizes electronic information and networking tools;
• develops and maintains physical and electronic exhibits or oversees such projects;
• supports history outreach efforts related to the Institute for Women's Health and Leadership;
• represents the Center at local, regional and national meetings.

The Archivist contributes to physical and electronic collections
management:

• accessions incoming materials;
• retrieves new collection material;
• works with team in decision-making regarding processing collections;
• works with team in establishing electronic records protocols;
• assists in supervision of student workers.

QUALIFICATIONS
Master's degree in Library and Information Science, History or Public
History or other appropriate degree, with an archives concentration
preferred. A minimum of two years archival experience is required.
Experience is necessary in conducting reference work in an archives or
library setting and in implementing archival description standards,
procedures and best practices.

Deft command of desktop computing skills and strong technical
orientation are necessary; demonstrated experience or familiarity with
various information systems and services including the application of
social networking tools in an archival setting is highly desirable. Experience blogging is also a welcomed asset.

The successful candidate will demonstrate initiative, excellent organizational skills, strong interpersonal and communication skills and be able to lift 40 lb. boxes.

SALARY: $40,000 - $44,000

TO APPLY
Please send letter of interest, resume and 3 references to Margaret Graham, mgraham@drexelmed.edu

This announcement can also be viewed at www.drexelmedjobs.com – click search postings – and choose 'Archivist' from Job Title drop down box.

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Good-bye

It's true - we made it through each part of the move, including leaving the old building, getting into the new building, moving collections from two off-site facilities and remediating the worst of the Iron Mountain failures - but the economy is driving our team apart.

I'm off to new adventures of a non-archival nature; finances compel me to resume my previous IT career.  The archival profession as a whole should have an open discussion about why a career that requires at least one (and often more) advanced degrees and a high degree of technical skill typically pays so poorly; hopefully, at some point in the future, that will change.

While that will not happen soon enough for me, I can say unreservedly that I've had a blast in this profession, and especially here at Drexel - how many jobs combine detective work, fun with history, techie buzz and all-around camaraderie with an amazing team? 

And my work will stay with me - when last in Seattle, I noted places where Amy Kaukonen (WMC 1915) had lived and worked in that city, and I can answer just about any question you might pose about the evolution of women in medicine (or at least point you to someone who might know where else to look for details - why not start with The Chaff?).  When looking for pet names, my first impulse is now to honor an early woman doctor - it's no doubt a modern manifestaiton of Jeremy Bentham naming his cat The Reverend Sir John Langbourne, DD (perhaps this happens to other UCL alums as well?) - although I would maintain that Anna M. Longshore-Potts, MD, is much easier to remember.

It's also been interesting to see how many search results we get from middle schools, especially those looking for information on women doctors during the civil war, such as Mary Edwards Walker, and those looking for Rebecca Cole and Eliza Grier.  It's especially encouraging in light of the planning grant we recently received to develop more content (and context) for this age group - something I'll be keeping tabs on from afar.

I look forward to a future blog post when the Correspondenzblatt der Homoeopathischen Aerzte goes online - while I may be moving on, this blog will be in the extremely capable (if very busy) hands of other members of the department, so do continue to follow along.  Hopefully, there will be a new hire announcement in the near future (and I'll try not to leave anything too strange for that person in my soon-to-be-former office - we've got enough of that sort of thing in the stacks).

And here are a few other takeaways –

• Someone should research and write a real biography of Emeline Horton Cleveland (pictured).
• Planning to move your archives is nearly as hard as actually moving your archives.
• Nineteenth-century medical theses are fascinating – especially this one.

With that, I must say farewell - it's been a wonderful opportunity to share some of our work here with you, and I'll continue to keep an eye on future developments.  Watch for more to come!

A Bit of Good News

We're getting a Pew grant! The hard work of our crack grant-writing team^* paid off and the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage awarded us a $75,000 Interpretation Planning grant to support the development of interactive online programs for young audiences based on our collections.

This will not be the first time we've looked beyond our usual academic researcher demographic and aimed for younger audiences; in 2006, we received a History Channel grant that led to a relationship with the Philadelphia High School for Girls. Using primary sources from the collection, the students learned about women in medicine by looking at the long history of Girls' High graduates attending the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania.

This time around, the focus is on 'serious play' (which, pictured at right, was rather different in the 1880s) - reaching students in grades 6-12 through online games and interactive features that incorporate original documents and photos. The spotlight remains on the history of women in medicine (as well as Philadelphia's place in medical history), but the project should lead further into digital humanities directions. You can keep up to date on our progress via our new Twitter account - feel free to follow along!

^*All three of them

Could Catharine Macfarlane's work have lengthened Ada Lovelace's life?

One more post in honor of Ada Lovelace Day, who connects to many women in many different ways. I’m connecting Ada with Dr. Catherine Macfarlane. Had Ada been born a bit later, or Catherine Macfarlane earlier, Ada’s life may have lasted longer than her short 36 years.

Ada Lovelace died fairly young of cancer, in 1852. Some sources say uterine cancer specifically and some say she was bled to death in treating her illness.

The same year of Ada’s death, when women had few options for medical training, the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania (later Woman’s Med) graduated its first class of eight women physicians. Its 46th class of women physicians graduated in 1898 and included Catherine Macfarlane.

Class of 1898, Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (unfortunately Macfarlane is missing from the photograph).

Macfarlane practiced and taught obstetrics and gynecology in Philadelphia and in time turned to research. Her work led to a theory that regular examination of women in apparent good health would be the best method to detect cancer in its early stages when it was most treatable. Initially, her theories were not popular and she had little support for her research.

In 1938 she co-founded the Cancer Control Research Project at Woman’s Med where women patients came in for regular pelvic examinations. The clinic was planned to run for five years but ultimately covered a fifteen-year period, providing data from over one thousand women. The project’s 1953 findings supported Macfarlane’s theory and indicated that regular exams could help detect cancer of the uterus early on. Macfarlane then helped establish the first uterine cancer screening in Philadelphia, one of the earliest programs in the country.

Drs. Catharine Macfarlane and Margaret Sturgis in the Cancer Prevention Clinic, 1953.

Had Catherine Macfarlane been born earlier, would her work have changed the outcome of Ada Lovelace’s illness? In Lovelace’s era, women had almost no support for studying medicine; even in Macfarlane’s time, she was discouraged in pursuing her research. However, perhaps Lovelace’s passion and interest fanned the development of schools educating women, attitudes about women’s health, and ultimately, Macfarlane’s groundbreaking work in early cancer detection.

Catharine Macfarlane and Frank Hartman in front of cancer poster.

Ada Lovelace Day: A Visit from Marie Curie

In honor of Ada Lovelace Day, we look back at May 23, 1921, when the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania hosted a distinguished visitor – Marie Curie.

Dean Martha Tracy (herself a WMC alumna, class of 1904) spoke at the occasion:

"…it is singularly appropriate that the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, firm in its hard-won position in the first rank of American medical schools, should greet with profound sympathy and due reverence this woman citizen of a fellow-republic who has likewise won through years of self-sacrificing devotion to research her deserved position as the foremost of living scientists."

Curie was granted an honorary degree – but she herself was absent on that day due to illness (only the year before, she had begun to experience symptoms caused by exposure to radioactivity). In her place, her daughter Irène Curie accepted the honor; Mme. Curie recovered the next day, and a student took a photograph of her with Dr. Tracy to document her visit to the College.

Of course, the visit was not simply a social call – Mme. Curie was on a fundraising tour. Through a campaign organized by Marie 'Missy' Mattingly Meloney, editor of The Delineator, a popular women's magazine, more than $100,000 was 'raised by women' and Mme. Curie was presented with a gram of radium by President Harding 'on behalf of the women of America.'

The Medical Woman's Journal also documented the endeavor it described the lack of radium in post-war France and Mme. Curie's financial position:

"Madame Curie is a teacher of science and she has a teacher's salary. She is one of the richest women in the world in scientific lore, but she has given the fruits of her labor to her laboratory. So she could not afford to travel westward."

In a later issue, Madame Curie's trip and the overall fundraising effort were described in an editorial as 'Women's Gift to a Woman for the Benefit of Mankind' - it went on to note that:

"Every progressive step taken by women has been secured by fighting against custom and prejudice; it has been a continual revolt against the established order. That is the reason women make such good revolutionists."

For thousands of other blog posts on women in science and technology, check out Finding Ada - and for more on the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, follow us on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

From the Collections: Constant Diversity?

The Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania had a long tradition of diversity; in addition to opening the doors to a formal medical education to American women of many backgrounds, including a former slave like Dr. Eliza Grier, it also helped to educate women from around the world - and that's back when it was such an usual move that international students made headlines, just for coming. In 1885, there were three such 'exotic' women attending WMC at the same time - Dr. Anandibai Joshee, class of 1886, who was the first Indian woman to earn an MD; Japan's Dr. Kei Okami, class of 1889, and Dr. Sabat Islambooly (yes, it's a typo on the caption - and a very old one), class of 1890, from Syria - so naturally, a photograph was taken to honor the occasion:


By 1904, the College could boast alumnae hailing from '...Canada...Jamaica, Brazil, England, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Russia, Syria, India, China, Japan, Burmah, Australia, and the Congo Free State. Its living alumnae number about a thousand, and are found in nearly every part of the American republic and in many foreign countries, among them Egypt, India, China, Japan, Persia and Korea.'


Indeed, in the early twentieth century, the press loved nothing more than featuring women medical students from around the world in their native costumes - this example is from 1928 (although perhaps what is more interesting is that as late as 1928, a newspaper with a general readership could make a pop culture allusion to Gilbert & Sullivan and have it understood):


While a commitment to diversity waxed and waned throughout the years, it is interesting to note that it was strong in a very public way, at a time when it was not necessarily a popular stance. At the height of the Second World War, WMC admitted students from Japanese internment camps, although it is clear from a few not-so-subtle hints in the Faculty Minutes that not everyone was happy about their presence - one of them was nearly forced out on several occasions, and made to repeat work - all while being closely monitored.

But even within the wartime Japanese-American community at WMC (admittedly, a very small one), there was no single path that defined their experiences. Dr. Toshiko Toyota began her studies with the class of 1943, but the resulting chaos surrounding some Japanese-American students (and not a little suspicion from someone in the faculty - it seems from existing records that her time as a student was made as difficult at possible) delayed her schoolwork and pushed her into the class of 1944.

By contrast, Dr. Emma Hatayama, class of 1945, started at WMC in 1941; she had been advised as an undergrad to apply to east coast medical schools because of the increasing suspicion with which Japanese-Americans were viewed in the west, even prior to 1941 - but according to her oral history, she managed to avoid many of the tribulations other Japanese-American students suffered, largely by being in the right place at the right time - as she started her medical education on the east coast prior to the US entering the war, she was not subject to the restrictions placed on others.

Dr. Mary Sakaguchi Oda, class of 1946, was the sole Japanese-American student in her class; she was in medical school at UC Berkeley when war broke out; a California native, she was sent with her family to Manazar War Relocation Center in 1942, where Ansel Adams them (and where they suffered a number of family tragedies in 1944). After graduation, she returned to California to practice medicine.

Dr. Ruby Inouye, from Seattle, had been a pre-med student at the University of Washington in 1941; after the attack on Pearl Harbor, she found herself in the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho with her family. In 1943, she was able to transfer to the University of Texas to complete her undergraduate education - while her family stayed behind in the camp. Organizations such as the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council worked to find places for Japanese-American college students at universities outside the 'restricted area' - and families who would house and 'monitor' them as required by the terms of their release from the camps. She arrived at WMC in 1944.

But Dr. Inouye was not the only Japanese-American student accepted in 1944 - Dr. Kazuko Ono (later Bill, whose family was in an internment camp in their home state of California, and whose education had been similarly interrupted) started at the College the same year. They are pictured together here in a College event from 1947:


In a class of fewer than 35 students, two who required considerable 'extra' administrative work certainly stood out - and it is interesting that there is no record of any Japanese-American student coming across discrimination from the faculty after Dr. Toyota's experience.

It's not clear whether she was simply the victim of bad timing or a particular individual with a grudge - but she and her fellow Japanese-American students went on to successful careers after graduation, although some continued to face discrimination in the years immediately following the war; but whether that was down to racism or sexism (or both) is another question entirely.

From the Collections: Harriet

She became famous at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, generations of medical students consider her part of their alma mater(s) and she's even been considered an off-the-beaten-track tourist attraction - but who was 'Harriet?'

Hahnemann Medical College in the 1880s was still very much a homeopathic institution - but that did not mean its professors overlooked basics such as anatomy. Enter Dr. Rufus B. Weaver, Professor of Anatomy. Weaver was an 1865 graduate of Penn Medical College, a institution that lasted from 1853-1880, and also known as the Penn Medical University - incidentally, it was co-ed from the start, as were a few other eclectic medical schools of the era. It was a purely homeopathic school which shared a founder with Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (although a few early graduates later became homeopaths, teaching at Woman's Med was always allopathic) in Dr. Joseph Longshore.

Weaver joined the Hahnemann faculty in 1869, first as a 'demonstrator' of Anatomy ('demonstrator' was a common job title for medical school faculty members in the nineteenth century), and later as a full professor. At some point during his career there in the 1880s, he crossed paths with Harriet Cole, an African-American cleaner at the College (you can find her described in more colorful fashion, as it were, by Time Magazine in the 1930s). When she died of tuberculosis in 1888, she willed her body to the College (although it's equally possible that there was some opportunism at work on Weaver's part). He set about dissecting her nervous system, a process that took him over five months of full-time work, and mounted it for display. While the intent was to employ Harriet (or, more accurately, what was left of her) as a teaching aid, the results were considered so tremendous that she was later submitted for display at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, winning a number of prizes.

Harriet returned to Hahnemann as first 'worked' as a teaching tool, and later as a museum piece; restored by Hahnemann-trained cardiologist Dr. George Geckeler in the 1960s, she became part of the fabric of the institution and greeted medical students at Hahnemann's Center City Philadelphia campus - even through mergers and related administrative upheavals.

Harriet remained in Center City until a recent renovation to the Hahnemann Library - she moved to Drexel University College of Medicine's Queen Lane campus in 2008. While she is no longer part of the curriculum, Harriet still oversees current medical students; she is posted just outside the bookstore in the Student Activities Center.

While some who see Harriet in passing do not realize she was part of a real person, Weaver's groundbreaking work with 'Harriet' continues to be referenced in medical journals - even as recently as 2005. While we know very little about Harriet Cole's life, hopefully this sheds a little light on someone who made Weaver's scientific efforts a success - and who deserves more than a brief footnote in his biography.

And...We're In!

Apologies for the lack of updates, but the move has been something of a time killer. The good news is that we have been comfortably ensconced in the new building for a month now, and while we have yet to get absolutely everything moved in from our off-site storage (both locally-housed and at Iron Mountain), we are more or less up and running. Here are a few things we learned during this most recent move:

1. New buildings can be dustier than 'old' archives
   The new compact shelving (left, with your cruise directors posed by photographer Dan Burke) is wonderful, but we had to wipe it down with old t-shirts before moving in the first portion of our holdings. Then there was a bit more construction work done which added yet more dust - but luckily, it seems this layer will be cleaned up by people who actually do that professionally, rather than by a few archivists.



2. New buildings mean many visitors
   While I've moved offices before, this is the first time I've experienced a nearly-daily stream of visitors coming to tour the new space. It's certainly not unpleasant to see people taking notice, but it does behoove one to keep things tidy - not always an easy prospect in this line of work!



3. New buildings have glitches
   While this is a no-brainer, the challenge has been trying to predict what those will be before they pop up - and who is responsible for fixing them when they do. So far, we've been relatively lucky and have managed to avoid any showstoppers.



4. New buildings generate 'stuff'
   Starting the day we moved in, various departments appeared with 'potentially important stuff' - the accessioning table filled up rapidly (and stayed that way).
   



5. New buildings have no impact on 'regular work'
   On-site and remote research has continued apace - we've been a bit slower in responding to requests, but we have yet to completely turn anyone away. The same is true of grant applications, College events, digital projects and the like; we may have to offer a bit more expectation management than normal, but the world does not stop for anyone - certainly not us!



6. New building t-shirts don't design themselves
   But we still hope to get around to doing that in the near future - I still have my 'I survived the Women.com server migration' shirt from the late 1990s, and it's only fair to commemorate this event in the same classic style.
   

We expect the rest of the collection to appear some time in January - and then a complex integration project will begin!

Imminent Move

We have been assigned a moving date, and, as promised, we've received a full two weeks notice. The Thanksgiving holiday will eat a chunk of that but with the help of our supporters we will pack our offices and on-site collection materials and move on Friday, December 4th.

As previously noted, we're returning to familiar ground. Our new building on the Queen Lane campus (2900 W. Queen Lane, 19129) is not far from the former Medical College of Pennsylvania Hospital, the campus built and occupied by Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1930.

Before we leave our current home at Hagerty Library we are hosting an Open House at the library on December 2, 4-6pm. Please join us to commemorate our partnership with the University Archives and celebrate our move to our new space.

Here's a peek at the new space.

Miles of aisles!

The as yet un-populated reading room.

Art shelving.

From the Collections: Women Physicians at War

We have previously taken a brief look at female doctors who served during the Civil War; today, with Veterans' Day upon us, we will examine a number of women physicians who served in twentieth-century wars.

In 1917, Dr. Bertha Van Hoosen (at that time the president of the Medical Women's National Association) established a War Service Committee; it evolved into the American Women's Hospitals (PDF finding aid). The name was chosen to reflect the good works of the Scottish Women's Hospitals, which sent teams of female doctors and nurses throughout war-ravaged Europe. Although their direct military service had been rejected by the US government, AWH doctors designed their own uniforms and sailed to Europe in 1918, establishing their first hospital in France.


Under the leadership of Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy, AWH established hospitals and clinics in various parts of France, Serbia and the Middle East. In 1922, AHW staff witnessed the burning of İzmir (or Smyrna, as it appears from time to time in the correspondence in the collection) and physicians including Dr. Mabel Elliott became heavily involved in treating refugees and orphans throughout Turkey, Armenia and Greece under obviously trying conditions. While most AWH doctors and nurses were never officially members of the military (a few were accepted as contract surgeons, but were not commissioned officers), their service during wartime was certainly comparable - and it laid the groundwork for the next generation.


A bill to allow female physicians full appointments in the Army and Navy Medical Corps was brought before Congress in 1943; while it makes fascinating reading in general, the testimony from Dr. Emily Dunning Barringer apparently had quite an effect on the committee, and what became known as the Sparkman Act was duly passed.


Immediately thereafter, the first woman doctor was commissioned in the Army Medical Corps; Dr. Margaret D. Craighill, dean of Women's Medical College from 1940-1946, was given leave to take up her post. After her appointment, she encouraged newly-minted women doctors to consider a military career. (A small aside - this clipping and photo detailing Dr. Craighill's 1944 WMC commencement address advice is particularly interesting, given that many Japanese-Americans were still in internment camps - and Dr. Toshiko Toyota, a native of Utah, overcame considerable adversity in her medical school career, according to notes in the Faculty Minutes - there were several attempts to have her expelled).



Dr. Craighill, in her capacity as Major Craighill, went on to survey conditions for the Women's Army Corps and recommended that air conditioning be provided as a matter of course for those stationed in hot climates; noting its success in Tehran, she said, "I do hope some of these lessons learned in the Persian Gulf will be carried out in the Pacific" (New York Times, 6/24/45).


Dr. Bernice R. Walters (WMC 1936) was the first woman doctor assigned to shipboard duty in the US Navy. She served aboard the USS Consolation, which was chiefly stationed off the Korean coast, beginning in 1950, but had actually joined the Naval Reserve in 1943. Of her initial induction, she noted, "They didn't even know how to process me...I almost wound up as an apprentice seaman" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11/23/52).


Our collections in this area are some of our most heavily-used by researchers, and yet the role of women doctors in the military and at war seems little-known to the general public; we hope future research and a few upcoming publications will help to correct that deficit.

Latest Construction Photos: Nearly There!

Despite last week's torrential rain, some brave members of Team Archives went to the Queen Lane campus to check on the progress of our new building - and it's almost at the 'finishing touches' stage. Without further ado, a quick photo tour:

An exterior wall, just outside the lobby

Stairs off the lobby head down to the Archives, as is right and proper

Inside the future stacks - note the rails for the compact shelving

We will host future researchers here, in the reading room

Office interior - the windows may be well above eye level, but they still allow natural light!

From the Collections: Women's Suffrage

Today marks the 89th anniversary of the 19th Amendment going into effect (which, oddly, doesn't get an artistic rendering from Google). In a few short weeks, as part of the Institute for Women's Health and Leadership, we'll be kicking off Vision 2020 at the National Constitution Center and we will also be involved in quite a few events to celebrate the 90th anniversary of women's suffrage next year as well as working toward the centennial in 2020. In light of that, here are a few items from the collection related to winning the right to vote.

Although it was at the forefront of women's medical education in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it may come as a surprise to some to learn that not all Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania students and faculty were in favor of the suffrage movement. This editorial in the student magazine from 1912, was very much opposed to the notion, even though the author (an anonymous female medical student) agreed, in principle, that women should have the right to vote - it just wouldn't be a good thing for the nation as a whole.


However, that was most definitely not the majority view; another anonymous student satirized the anti-suffrage viewpoint held by some men under the none-too-subtle pen name 'J. Ilted' in this poem from the very next issue of the magazine.

Throughout this period, there are notices of pro-suffrage meetings being held in the Philadelphia area (such as this one), and some WMC faculty members were by no means quiet about the issue.

Dr. Ellen C. Potter (WMC 1903) issued a call to arms in 1912, lamenting the fact that contemporary young women medical students were apathetic compared to the previous generation's struggling pioneers. Dr. Potter was a very popular professor and later a pioneer in public health and preventive medicine, which was a cause taken up by not a few suffragist physicians.

One of those was Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, who was a regular visitor to WMC, serving as commencement speaker when her schedule permitted (she was the leader of the National American Woman Suffrage Association for a number of years); her death, only a few months after the passing of the 19th Amendment, inspired the creation of the Anna Howard Shaw Memorial Deptartment of Preventive Medicine - although it was no easy task. The department was not officially created until 1930, even though a campaign was begun in 1920 to raise funds.

Despite earlier anti-suffrage positions from some students, there is no indication that anyone chose not to take advantage of the college holiday afforded by the 1920 election; the account in the Bulletin recorded that, '...the casting of our first ballots assumed the solemnity of a religious ceremony.' Students took the opportunity to do some of the above-mentioned fundraising, '...collecting the National American Woman Suffrage Association's 'thank-offering' for the Anna Howard Shaw Memorial.'

It may have been a working holiday, but it was a most welcome one.

Louisville Floods & Racing History

It's typically an extremely rare occurrence when my worlds collide - oddly, this is the second time it has happened this year.

As many in the archival world know, I write about horse racing. And some in the horse racing world have a vague idea that I'm an archivist, but people in both spheres are probably a little unclear about what happens in the other one.

Here's the short version for each group - first, for the archivists: horses run around a track and I comment on it. American horse racing has a long and storied history that could be more (and here I'm dropping in a professional buzzword) accessible - but more on that later. For the racing folk: archivists preserve documents, photographs, ephemera, etc. from the past so that people (and not just historians) can learn about (and from) that shared past. We also do a lot of complicated things with digitization and metadata - while the usual adjectives employed to describe our profession are 'dusty' or 'musty,' that's only a small part of what we do.

Quite often, the archives (and the archivists who work there) are located in the basement - and that becomes a major issue in, say, a flood. The Kentucky Derby Museum at Churchill Downs just completed a renovation to their basement (where the storage and, as ever, archives are), including new shelving, when they were hit by a flash flood yesterday.

New shelving to an archivist is a precious commodity - we are rarely lucky enough to get shelving that is truly designed for archival use and it is difficult to raise money for it (as we have been doing in our archives for many a long day) because it's not immediately apparent to someone outside the profession how much the right shelves help protect and maintain the collection.

But of course, even the best compact shelving cannot save the collections from the archivist's second-greatest fear - water. At least one of the comments on the Courier-Journal article by Jennie Rees is wondering why the historical collections were stored in the basement, where they would be subject to flooding - and while that may seem unusual to the public, that's essentially standard practice; except for the few institutions that have successfully implemented a visible storage project, cultural institutions cannot take up exhibit space with shelves and processing space - and you need a large open space for most useful shelving systems. Best practices may seek to get the archives and artifact storage above the flood line, but it rarely happens - indeed, when our archives moves into our new building, we will again be in the basement. (It may come as something of a surprise to some to discover that water damage happens even when collections are stored on higher levels - leaky pipes are a constant source of worry in the archival world).

Regardless of how the water gets in, archivists usually respond in just the way the Derby Museum staff did - by creating a human chain to get the materials and artifacts to higher ground. To add insult to injury, several museum employees lost their cars to the floodwaters while working to save the collections - but the good news is that it seems nothing was lost - just made very wet. Conserving wet materials is not as easy as just letting them dry off - the most effective approach is to have them freeze-dried and dealt with by a disaster mitigation firm. Obviously, that's not cheap, but some organizations are lucky enough to have insurance to cover those costs - I don't know whether that's true of the Museum, but I hope they are able to get their collections back to the pre-flood state I enjoyed when visiting the Museum only last month.

Public libraries are rarely that fortunate - and the Louisville Public Library sustained very serious damage to both the physical plant and the books and computers (as did several of the branch libraries). In their case, a fund has been set up and donations are being accepted; keeping libraries running can be a challenge under the best circumstances, but the combination of a down economy and a major disaster is one that no library director wants to face - it's a worthy cause.

I mentioned accessibility above and the lack of accessibility to horse racing history was, rather serendipitously, the topic of Teresa Genaro's article in The Saratogian today (a note to the archivists reading - Teresa writes the rather wonderful Brooklyn Backstrech blog and was one of my co-bloggers for BelmontStakes.com this year). She noted how difficult it was to authoritatively establish basic facts not only from the more distant past, but even statistics from recent years - and as someone on both sides of that fence, I couldn't agree more with her conclusions. American racing history is fairly widely dispersed - there's the Keeneland Library, the currently-damp Kentucky Derby Museum, the International Museum of the Horse, the National Museum of Racing and the National Sporting Library and while there is some crossover, for the most part, each has a different collection policy and research goals.

That list does not even begin to take into account an individual racetrack's holdings (and who knows what happens when they close - where are the records of Ak-Sar-Ben? Who will take on those of Hollywood Park?) including their film and video storage. Other sources of racing history, like the Daily Racing Form or Equibase, tend to be considerably more proprietary about their information. Unlike the aforementioned libraries and museums, making their information accessible is not the goal - and while that makes a certain amount of sense in their business models, it would be nice if they turned their data over to one of the aforementioned institutions or had a records management policy that involved making that data available online (with a preservation copy elsewhere) after a certain time period - I'd be happy to recommend a number of Kentucky-based archivists for the job.

It's difficult enough for researchers to find the information they are looking for under normal conditions; dealing with a disaster like the flooding in Kentucky makes the archivist's goal of preserving the past and providing access that much more difficult. The only potential upside is that the spotlight these cultural institutions unwittingly find themselves in brings in some much-needed funds for repairs and, hopefully, future improvements that serve both the collections and the public.

Construction Update: July

We were lucky enough to get some updated photos of how construction is proceeding; while it's certainly exciting to see the exterior come together, we were thrilled to get some previews of our actual workspace as well.

Building exterior: those partial windows at the bottom left will be ours.

Inside (and, you'll notice, down the stairs, as is the rule for archives): we're reasonably sure this is where the compact shelving is going.

Interior: this looks to be the reading room (or the office watching over it - we're not entirely sure which side of the wall we're seeing).

Interior again: Finally, an office! And, in an even more exciting development, we can see what I understand is a 'window' - something nary a one of us has had at work for years. Granted, it's above eye level, but it's still natural light.

Now we just need to figure out how and when we're moving everything...

This Thing Is Actually Happening

We had one of our not-as-frequent-as-they-should-be formal staff meetings yesterday and as you might expect, our move was one of the larger topics of conversation. The concept is becoming less ephemeral as the building looks more and more like a real building, even if the actual move-in date keeps shifting. We hear that it's possible construction will be largely completed at the end of October, and that our compact shelving could be installed at that point - and that's when the fun begins.

Our collections are currently in three major chunks as far as their physical locations - a small portion is here on-site in Hagerty Library, a very large segment is in our 'local' offsite storage and another grouping of possibly indeterminate size is held by Iron Mountain. We discussed whether it makes sense to move any one group first, leaving space for the others, since we'd like to start actually putting items in accession order (notwithstanding the fact that there are a few different systems of accessions floating around - and of course scary unaccessioned items). It's clear in any event that getting everything in order is the new space will be a very long process; just the initial integration of these three groups that have not seen each other in years is going to be tricky. We do not know yet whether we will be able to rely on the movers for their large library carts (and manpower) in terms of simply getting things staged and on shelves, but we do know that we need to get it done (at least a first pass) with some celerity - there is a planned opening event for the building in January (for which we also want to create a small exhibition), and we're going to be involved in quite a few major events throughout 2010.

As our goal is to complete the move without having to shut down entirely to researchers, time will be of the essence in that regard as well - so even though we know there will be some very necessary reboxing (especially with the Iron Mountain materials) and moving around, we're going to have to try to make it snappy.

As much as we are looking forward to having our new offices (with windows! well, technically the windows will be above eye level, but they will be there all the same) it's clear we won't be spending much time in them for the first few weeks/months/longer.

But there will be a certain satisfaction when we can input meaningful information in the Archivists' Toolkit 'location' tab - the idea that in the near future we can simply look up a collection or box and know exactly where it is (rather than referring to several spreadsheets and a reasonably useful mental map) makes the move worth the hassle.

From the Collections: Drugs

As any archivist will attest, one not infrequently comes across something interesting while looking for another item entirely and it's necessary to make a note to go back to interesting item number one (although following up on these Notes To Self is a rarer occurrence, at least in my experience). Luckily, I had the chance again recently to pull out the same journals and boxes in which I'd found these magnificent drug ads for your viewing pleasure. They are in chronological order (for your convenience, naturally).

The first ad was placed in The Medical Woman's Journal in 1924; back then, it seems one drug could do it all and still be 'agreeable to the taste' - this particular offering had been on the market for decades at this point:

The next ad, also from The Medical Woman's Journal but placed ten years later, shows that even in 1934, advertised drugs were still rather one-size-fits-all:

You may rest assured that it 'can be prescribed at any season of year.' Whew!

Ten years on, Girl Power was the order of the day - this ad is also from the The Medical Woman's Journal, from May, 1944 and the influence of women's war work is clear:

Ergoapiol had been popular since at least the turn of the century for a number of uses; it would seem the prescribing physician is invited to read between the lines in certain situations.

Sticking with 1944 and the same publication, we start to get slightly more straightforward ads about family planning - although clearly there's a need to market contraception as a last resort. In this instance, kidney trouble provides the key:

Interestingly, other similar ads from the same year start to drop the 'protecting health' angle and go straight in for a more modern one - although they are still fairly discreet.

The next series of ads are from a 1958 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Women's Association - it's quite clear we're almost in the modern era.

The first ad has dispensed with any excuses for its product and simply sticks to a clinical theme:

The one consistent thread through these late-'50s ads is that they are still marketing to doctors - not directly to patients. One presumes the array of psychotic characters presented in this ad would have been familiar to its audience:

I'm not entirely sure what's wrong with the older woman near the top of the 'D' - is it the fact that she's so cheerful despite having Angry Old Man to her left and Proto-Goth-Girl just below her? One can only assume she's dealing with the 'minor emotional disturbances' Dartal handles, while everyone else falls into the 'major' category.

And in case you require a weight-loss method, fear not - your goal can be accomplished through diet, exercise and a fun mixture of methamphetamine and pentobarbital. Wait, what?

Well, it does also have vitamin c. Who wants to stick to plain old diet and exercise, anyway?

Finally, Bonadoxin not only stops morning sickness but compels the expectant patient to garden furiously:

If someone wanted to compare the way drugs were (are?) marketed to female doctors and their male counterparts, I imagine there's a PhD in there somewhere...