Daily Archives: November 29, 2017

NLM Poster Exhibit: Frankenstein, Penetrating the Secrets of Nature

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The UT Southwestern Health Sciences Digital Library & Learning Center is pleased to host Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature, a six-panel traveling exhibition that explores the birth of the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s life, connections to medicine and science in her time, and how Frankenstein continues to resonate into the 20th century and beyond. Frankenstein was first published anonymously in 1818, with revised editions attributed to Shelley in 1822 and 1831. The 1831 edition is the version most widely read.

The exhibit will be on display for the UT Southwestern community until December 30, 2017. This physical exhibition also has publicly-available online components, including web pages for each of the six panels, higher education class modules, a curator’s bibliography, and even an NPR interview with an illustrator about adapting Frankenstein for a graphic novel.

The National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health developed and produced this exhibition. This exhibition has been adapted from early exhibitions including the National Library of Medicine installation (1997-1998) and the American Library traveling exhibition (2002-2012). It was guest curated by Susan E. Lederer, Ph.D. (Robert Turell Professor of Medical History and Bioethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison).

ALCEP funding highlights—Texas County Histories & African American Historical Serials

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A wide group of online resources was recently purchased by the University of Texas Digital Library with Academic Library Collection Enhancement Program (ALCEP) funds. The UT Board of Regents allocates ALCEP funds for one-time collection purchases to broaden the research and scholarly capabilities of the System’s fourteen institutions. The UT Southwestern Health Sciences Digital Library and Learning Center now offers online access to two history-centric resources through an ALCEP purchase: Texas County Histories and African American Historical Serials.

The Library now has perpetual access rights to Texas County Histories, a collection of more than 80 ebooks within Accessible Archives. Accessible Archives is a full-text, searchable database that includes serial publications such as newspapers and magazines, as well as books and county histories. Note: Other content within the Accessible Archives database is only available through September 2018.

Some of these ebooks also provide information on the history of medicine in Texas. The Encyclopedia of Texas, written in the 1920s, has a chapter on the history of the Texas medical profession, written by R. W. Knox, M.D., who had been a president of what is now known as the Texas Medical Association. Another chapter highlights Dallas as the medical center of the Southwest.

The other history-related resource of interest is African American Historical Serials, which is available through EBSCO. Developed in conjunction with the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) as an effort to preserve endangered serials related to African American religious life and culture, this database is a centralized and accessible digital resource of formerly fragmentary, widely-dispersed, and endangered materials originating from various institutions and sources, including some that had not previously participated in preservation projects. This collection documents the history of African American life and religious organizations from materials published between 1816 through 1922.

Some of the online materials within this resource that chronicle the history of medicine include the Report of the State Hospital at Goldsboro, North Carolina, which covers every other year between 1902 to 1916, and the Annual Report of the Lincoln Hospital & Home, which covers some of the years between 1915 and 1922. These reports provide images of hospital buildings, department staffing, statistics on patient stays, local medical advertisements, and more.

 

Highlights of medical artifacts on display at Dallas Public Library

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The UT Southwestern Health Sciences Digital Library and Learning Center’s Special Collections and Archives includes more than 200 medical artifacts. Thanks to the Dallas Public Library, selected highlights from the medical artifact collection are on now display at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library in downtown Dallas.

Some of the artifacts on display include:

  • An English homeopathic medicine case (circa 1873)
  • Pocket surgical kit with a paper packet of surgical needles, manufactured around 1880
  • Surgical instruments catalog published in1890
  • Snake bite kit similar to those issued to oil field workers in Texas in the 1930s and 1940s

A snake bite kit similar to those issued to oil field workers in Texas in the 1930s and 1940s

Some selected artifacts also have connections to the Texas Physicians Historical Biographical Database. This publicly-accessible database contains brief biographical entries and citations for more than 10,000 Texas physicians who either practiced in or had strong historical connections to Texas. Artifacts from physicians William Benjamin Goodner and Luis Leib are included in this exhibit.

A small selection of patent medicines and pharmaceutical containers

A small selection of patent medicines and pharmaceutical containers are also on display. The federal 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act called many of these earlier medicines into question. To learn more, the National Library of Medicine provides online access to the FDA Notices of Judgement Collection, which contains a fascinating digital archive of evidence files, including correspondence, legal records, lab reports, product labeling, photographs, and more.

St. Paul Hospital on Bryan Street, two nurses adjusting empty orthopedics patient bed. http://utswlibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p13044coll6/id/601

One of the four display cases contains a range of artifacts, such as the pitcher (visible in this circa 1955 photo) that are also part of the extensive St. Paul Hospital Collection, 1896-2004.

The exhibit is available for viewing on the fifth floor (Business & Technology) of the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library in downtown Dallas until mid-February 2018.

Questions or comments about the exhibit? Contact archives@utsouthwestern.edu.