from Obstetrical Anesthesia, Its Priciples and Practice,  Bert B. Hershenson, MD demonstrates the first step in intubating a newborn—placement of the laryngoscope.]]> Obstetrical Anesthesia, Its Priciples and Practice by Bert B. Hershenson, MD demonstrates the proper placement of an endotracheal tube.]]> A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, Page 126]]> A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, by Walter Channing, MD, depicting a design for an ether delivery devise.

Dr. Channing was Professor of Midwifery and Medical Jurisprudence and Dean of the Faculty at Harvard Medical College. In 1832, he became a founder and chief physician of the Boston Lying-in Hospital, the first maternity hospital in New England—and an antecedent of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Channing was the first in the US to publish on the subject of anesthesia in childbirth. In this, his most influential work, Channing presented a statistical analysis of 581 cases of the use of ether and chloroform for the mitigation of pain during delivery. His positive evidence and advocacy reassured the public, and a heretofore unconvinced medical profession, that anesthesia was safe for mother and child.]]> A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, by Walter Channing, MD]]> A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, Page 1]]> A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, by Walter Channing, MD.

Dr. Channing was Professor of Midwifery and Medical Jurisprudence and Dean of the Faculty at Harvard Medical College. In 1832, he became a founder and chief physician of the Boston Lying-in Hospital, the first maternity hospital in New England—and an antecedent of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Channing was the first in the US to publish on the subject of anesthesia in childbirth. In this, his most influential work, Channing presented a statistical analysis of 581 cases of the use of ether and chloroform for the mitigation of pain during delivery. His positive evidence and advocacy reassured the public, and a heretofore unconvinced medical profession, that anesthesia was safe for mother and child.]]> A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, by Walter Channing, MD]]> A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, Title Page]]> A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, by Walter Channing, MD.

Dr. Channing was Professor of Midwifery and Medical Jurisprudence and Dean of the Faculty at Harvard Medical College. In 1832, he became a founder and chief physician of the Boston Lying-in Hospital, the first maternity hospital in New England—and an antecedent of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Channing was the first in the US to publish on the subject of anesthesia in childbirth. In this, his most influential work, Channing presented a statistical analysis of 581 cases of the use of ether and chloroform for the mitigation of pain during delivery. His positive evidence and advocacy reassured the public, and a heretofore unconvinced medical profession, that anesthesia was safe for mother and child.

]]> A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, by Walter Channing, MD]]> De l'auscultation médiate]]> De l'auscultation médiate.]]> ]]> catalog record.]]> Warren's handbook. The text accompanying this illustration states, "The side of the skull has been cut away; the brain has been removed leaving the falx cerebri; the tunica mucosa oris is held up by hooks showing the glandula sublingualis; most of the clavicula is removed. The first rib, the trachea, glandula thyreoidea, and the cervical transverse processes, together with cut ends of the cervical nerves, are shown."]]> Warren's Handbook]]> Warren's handbook belonged to Green and contains some of his emendations.]]> Warren's handbook of anatomy : from original dissections by John Warren. , with text by Robert M. Green and drawings by H. F. Aitken]]> Journal of biophysical and biochemical cytology. July 1, 1961. Vol. 10, no. 3.]]> here.]]> "The number of medical students in Boston the last season was about one hundred and thirty. If anatomy could not be learnt at home more than one hundred of these students would remain ignorant, for want of means to go to foreign countries. What miseries would their ignorance produce!" Thomas Dwight noted on this copy that he believed it likely his grandfather, John Collins Warren, was responsible for the addition.]]> A state almshouse for paupers at Tewksbury was founded in 1852. In the 1880s, charges of theft and abuse of the inmates–including the sale of bodies of the deceased to Harvard and other medical schools for anatomical dissection–were leveled against the caretakers. Governor Butler, in his testimony before the Investigation Committee, stated, "The defence brought three or four of these people here to swear that nobody ever dissected a body there, and nobody ever desired to so do. That is entirely contradicted now by the testimony of four or five witnesses. They said also that there never was but one body at a time in that dead-house. They swore that–two at the most. I had two men here yesterday–entirely outside men–who said they saw dead bodies, ten on the tables, and in the dead-room twelve to twenty more piled up like cordwood, higgledy-piggledy, the dead infants between the adults' legs."

Butler's accusations and a considerable public outcry derived, in part, from the testimony of Dr. John Dixwell (1848-1931), an 1873 graduate of the Medical School. According to an article printed in the Lowell weekly sun for March 31, 1883, Dixwell testified before the Committee on Public Charitable Institutions that, "During the three years he saw and knew of several hundred bodies of infants, each year, being brought to the school for dissection. They were brought there in trunks, in a country team, and were deposited in a little anteroom on crates or shelves until the students were ready to use them. The students obtained the bodies by applying to

]]> Boston magazine, described the progress of the new institution. Anatomical study under John Warren was one of the foundations of the curriculum, and, by 1785, the Corporation could report that "a number of very valuable natural preparations of the whole, as well as of the several parts of the human body, are procured, and frequent additions are making to the anatomical apparatus: these, together with the actual dissection of recent subjects, for which a convenient theatre is erected, furnish ample means for acquiring an accurate knowledge of the structure of the human body, and of the animal oeconomy."]]> Boston Magazine]]> Aristotelous : Physikēs akroaseōs, biblia Th., Peri ouranou D, Peri geneseōs kai phthoras B, Meteōrologikōn D, Peri kosmou A, Peri psychēs G, Peri aisthēseōs kai aisthētōn bibl. A, Peri mnēmēs kai anamnēseōs A, Peri ypnou kaiegrēgorseōs A, Peri enypniōn A, Peri tēs kath ypnon mantikēs A, Peri neotētos kai gērōs, kai zōēs kai thanatou A, Peri anapnoēs A, Peri makrobiotētos kai brachybiotētos]]> This copy of the second edition of George Cheyne’s work on disease is a rare and notable survivor of the disastrous Harvard fire of 1762. On the night of January 24th, during a storm of snow and high wind, Harvard Hall, containing the College’s books and scientific apparatus, caught fire. Over 5,000 volumes were destroyed, with only 404 surviving, the books being either on loan or recent donations not yet unpacked. Today, 67 books which survived the fire can be identified, and eight of these are in the collections of the Countway.

The Cheyne volume, along with another fire survivor, A new method of treating consumptions (1727) by Nicholas Robinson, have been recently digitized and are now available through the Medical Heritage Library project.

]]> The natural method of cureing the diseases of the body, and the disorders of the mind depending on the body : in three parts]]> Following U.S. Senate Committee on Education and Labor hearings on a proposed National Health Bill in 1946, the National Physicians Committee produced this pamphlet to warn against the danger of compulsory health care as a threat to the American way of life. Dr. Edward H. Cary, the chairman of the Committee, closed his statement by saying, "I believe that if this legislation was submitted to the people in a referendum, with full knowledge of its implications, the voters of this country would finally and forever reject the meddling and the presumption of the bureaucrat to interfere in the sacred relationship of patient and physician, and would register against this kind of revolutionary legislation the everlasting scorn of a free-born an freedom-loving people."

In 2008, Dr. Rashi Fein, emeritus professor in Harvard's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, donated over 150 pamphlets and reports concerning health insurance and health economics from the past fifty years, laying a cornerstone for the library's future collecting efforts in this area.

]]> Compulsion, the key to collectivism : a treatise on and evidence of attempts to foist on the American people compulsory health insurance, and explanation of the implications involved]]> Intern was developed by two physicians based on their experiences on the house staffs at Duke University and Johns Hopkins. The object of this unusual board game is for the intern to be the first to admit, diagnose, and treat all of his or her patients in the shortest amount of time.]]> Intern, by Avalon Hill Game Co.]]> Royal Jennerian Society for the Extermination of the Small-pox : at a very numerous and highly respected meeting held at the London tavern, on Wednesday the 19th day of January, 1803, to consider of the best means to be adopted for the extermination of the small-pox, the Right Honorable the Lord Mayor in the Chair. The following address was read and approved, viz. Address to the public ... ]]> A colleague and friend of Harvard's Benjamin Waterhouse, Sylvanus Fansher (1770-1846) successfully vaccinated over 35,000 individuals in New England, New York, and New Jersey before 1816. This register, maintained by the town council of Providence, Rhode Island, records the names and dates of over 5,300 smallpox vaccinations by Fansher, along with physician John Mackie (1780-1833), between 1810 and 1816.

The Providence register along with the Royal Jennerian Society broadside, are some of the recent additions to the extensive collection of books and manuscripts related to smallpox vaccination in the library collections.

]]> "that the profits thereof may help him along through this present affliction, peculiarly unfortunate to one who had already lost hearing and speech. All purchasers of this book will understand that they are aiding a deaf-mute, who, while able, actively devoted his energies to the welfare of his fellows in misfortune, and deserves some return therefor in his now darkened days."]]> Adventures of a deaf-mute]]> Fundamental psychological conceptions : a report of five lectures given under the auspices of the Institute of Medical Psychology, Malet Place, London, W.C.1., September 30-October 4, 1935]]> A pattern-maker in Springfield before the outbreak of the Civil War, George W. Murray was taken prisoner, along with his three elder brothers, after the battle of Spotsylvania and confined to the infamous Confederate prison at Andersonville. He survived the ordeal, although parts of his hand and foot were amputated, and he lost the use of his right limbs. Murray then printed and sold this account of his imprisonment to help his wife and children:

"All the fingers on my right hand gone, and my arm, from my wrist to my elbow, partially paralyzed; nearly one-half of my right foot was in a similar condition, while the rest of it is drawn entirely out of shape, which obliges me to use a crutch … I returned home a mere wreck of my former self. Therefore, unable to work, and ashamed to beg, I have taken this method to raise a small capital to start some business, in order to enable me to support my family comfortably."

In 2005, Harvard purchased a collection of over 130 books, pamphlets, poems, and broadsides, all examples of the genre of mendicant literature—items composed and printed to raise charitable funds for their disabled authors. These narratives and autobiographical accounts of the hardships and triumphs of the blind, deaf, lame, and war-wounded are all now primary resources for the emerging field of disability studies.

]]> A history of George W. Murray, and his long confinement at Andersonville, Ga., also the starvation and death of his three brothers, at the same place]]> In 1981, Harvard researchers David H. Hubel and Torsten N. Wiesel shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine with Roger W. Sperry of Caltech for their discoveries relating to information processing in visual systems. This article on the Siamese cat, published in the Journal of physiology, v. 218 (1971), was one of a number of articles describing the research of Drs. Hubel and Wiesel.

]]> Aberrant visual projections in the Siamese cat, but David H. Hubel and Torsten N. Wiesel]]> View the complete record for the original in Hollis.

]]>
]]> View the complete record for the original in Hollis.

]]> This copy of the Boylston's 1824 catalogue was presented by the library's founder, Ward Nicholas Boylston, to Dr. John Collins Warren. The collection at that time had over 550 titles. By contrast, at this time, the library of the Massachusetts Medical Society had about 300 works and the Essex Southern District Medical Society's library about 100, while the Boston Medical Library held over 800 titles.

]]> Catalogue belonged to Dr. John Collins Warren, who held the office of Librarian at this time. The emendations probably represent an inventory of the collection, along with printing corrections for a subsequent edition in 1810.]]> Somnia Danielis [“Daniel’s Dreams”] is a work on the interpretation of dreams; it originated in the eighth century.]]> Somnia Danielis]]> ]]> The Surgical Treatment of Facial Injuries. Co-authored with Dr. John M. Converse, this textbook is considered a classic work in the field. This diagram is an example from the textbook.]]> The Surgical Treatment of Facial Injuries]]> Correction of Midfacial Deformities, published in Surgical Clinics of North America, v. 51 no. 2, April 1971]]> Following in the tradition of his father and grandfather, John Collins Warren-usually known as "Coll"-studied medicine at Harvard and then completed his education in England, France, and Germany.

This album of carte-de-visite style photographs was assembled by Coll Warren during his European sojourn. In addition to some commercial prints of royalty, generals, statesmen, and other public figures, the album includes a number of photographs of physicians Dr. Warren encountered in the course of his travels and studies. There are also some personal items, such as these photographs of Coll's sister, Elinor Warren Motley, and J. Collins Warren himself with his nephew, Mason Warren Hammond.

]]> Genealogy of Warren with Some Historical Sketches (Boston : John Wilson and Son, 1854), tracing his family from its earliest origins down through the birth of his grandson, J. Collins Warren, in 1842. This family tree shows the lineage Dr. Warren claimed from the English Earls of Warren and, among others, William the Conqueror.]]> "Observe the manner and mode of different lecturers. Whether they use notes or not and every circumstance that can improve my lectures. For example, whether they have any person to aid them in doing operations on the dead body before a class. How they manage dissecting room demonstrations. Making preparations, demonstrating difficult parts, as nerves and deep seated viscera. These things will become very common to you, but to me they will be very interesting." ]]> John Barnard Swett Jackson was Harvard Medical School's first professor of pathological anatomy and first curator of the Warren Anatomical Museum. He published catalogues of the specimens in the museum of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement (1847) as well as the Warren (1870).

Four days after John Collins Warren's death, Dr. Jackson, with the assistance of Calvin Ellis, examined the body and produced this report. Dr. Warren's bones were subsequently preserved and kept for educational purposes in the Warren Anatomical Museum.

]]> On October 16, 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. John Collins Warren performed the first public operation on a patient under ether anesthesia administered by dentist William T. G. Morton. Dr. Henry Jacob Bigelow witnessed the event and described the operation to the Boston Society for Medical Improvement on November 9. His account, printed in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal on November 18, is the first medical publication on this groundbreaking achievement.

In Dr. Bigelow's account, the patient, Gilbert Abbott, stated that "the pain was considerable, though mitigated." Dr. John Collins Warren, in an article published in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal on December 9, said, "Being asked immediately afterwards whether he had suffered much, he said that he had felt as if his neck had been scratched; but subsequently, when inquired of by me, his statement was, that he did not experience pain at the time, although aware that the operation was proceeding." It was only a second operation, performed on the following day, that had a completely successful etherization.

]]> Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Volume 35 (November 18, 1846)]]> here through Google Books]]> The Journal of the American Medical Association, this map for attendees of the meeting graphically demonstrates the distance of the new Medical School campus from the center of Boston.]]> ]]> ]]> Hymn 283, the "Harvard Hymn"]]> ]]> Scientific Exhibit in the New Buildings of the Harvard Medical School]]> ]]> "in acute cases, the most efficient treatment…. I can corroborate fully the statements of [Sydney] Ringer, who taught me this practice, as to its extraordinary and prompt efficacy in many instances."]]> The principles and practice of medicine : designed for the use of practitioners and students of medicine, recommending acupuncture for the treatment of lumbago]]> ]]> Specimen medicinae Sinicae("The Chinese art of Feeling the Pulse is describ'd; and the Imitation of their Practice of Physick, which is grounded on the Observation of the Pulse, is recommended”) into English.]]> The physician's pulse-watch ; or, an essay to explain the old art of feeling the pulse…, which translates a portion of the Specimen medicinae Sinicae into English]]> Materia Materia medica Americana potissimum regni vegetabilis by Johann David Schopf]]> Harvard Gazette, January 18, 2001]]> Harvard University Gazette, 2001 January 18, found here]]> Radcliffe Quarterly]]> Radcliffe Quarterly, June 1972. Available online here.]]> The Origin of the Vaccine Inoculation (London : printed by D. N. Shury, 1801). The Origin was Edward Jenner's attempt to prove his claim to the priority of cowpox inoculation. He concludes the treatise with the words "An hundred thousand persons, upon the smallest computation, have been inoculated in these realms. The numbers who have partaken of its benefits throughout Europe and other parts of the Globe are incalculable: and it now becomes too manifest to admit of controversy, that the annihilation of the Small Pox, the most dreadful scourge of the human species, must be the final result of this practice."]]> The Origin of the Vaccine Inoculation by Edward Jenner]]> Benjamin Waterhouse contributed this statement on his work to the publication.

]]> and transferred to the Harvard Medical Library
]]> In the footnote on page 16, Waterhouse describes the procedure he has developed for vaccination.

]]> A Prospect of Exterminating the Small Pox, Part II, describing the procedure for vaccination]]> In this letter, addressed to Massachusetts Congressman Edward Everett (1794-1865), Waterhouse outlines his experience with vaccination and concludes with this: "Whereas you have a very expensive dept. for destroying human life, would it not be for the honour of the New World to have a little national establishment for the preservation of human life; more especially as the devouring monster, small pox, has a lready destroyed many millions (some say 40) more lives than there are people now on the face of the earth."

]]> Medical Repository, volume 2, number 2, 1798]]> ]]> The title-page of this copy of An Inquiry bears a presentation inscription by Edward Jenner to the Reverend John Clinch.

]]> An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae]]> This trial transcript with drawings of the facility give some idea of the small size of Harvard Medical School at this time. The plan of Dr. Webster’s laboratory shows the locations of the tea-chest, furnace, and privy where the remains of George Parkman were discovered.

]]> Trial of Professor John W. Webster for the Murder of Doctor George Parkman]]> ]]> “… intended to serve primarily as a laboratory of research, and secondarily as an adjunct to the lectures on physiology in the preparation of suitable apparatus and experiments”) was one of five new laboratory spaces for students in the facility. This description of the Physiological Laboratory and its equipment was originally published in Science.]]>

]]> This trial transcript with drawings of the facility give some idea of the small size of Harvard Medical School at this time. The plan of Dr. Webster’s laboratory shows the locations of the tea-chest, furnace, and privy where the remains of George Parkman were discovered.

]]> The Parkman Murder : Trial of Prof. John W. Webster for the Murder of Dr. George Parkman]]> "…of ample dimensions, and well warmed and ventilated throughout. It contains, on the second floor, two large Lecture rooms, the Chemical Laboratory, and the Library. On the floor above are the Theatre, in which the Lectures on Anatomy, Surgery and Pathological Anatomy, are delivered, the Professors' and Demonstrators' rooms…. The ground floor is occupied by the Janitor's apartments, rooms attached to the laboratory, etc. The Dissecting Room is a separate hall attached to the main building."

The North Grove Street building also provided accommodation for the institution's newest educational asset—the Warren Anatomical Museum.

]]> Harvard & its surroundings by Moses King, 1878.]]>

]]> This schedule from the 1881-1882 academic session outlines a student’s typical week as well as the curriculum and course of instruction.

]]> “An analysis of the list of those who attended lectures last year shows that of 276 students but 62 had received a previous collegiate education… We may conclude then that such a reform would inevitably be followed by the immediate loss of two thirds of its present number of students, by an equivalent crippling of its material resources, and the sacrifice of the prestige of a large school.”]]> The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, v. 83 (1870)]]> “… if [a student] could pass a ridiculously easy examination … he got his degree of Doctor of Medicine. With this necessarily general groundwork of knowledge, and without any proper clinical or special training, he went out into the world, either to make himself by observation, reading and natural shrewdness the really excellent, practical family physician, such as nearly every village in America may boast of, or to remain through life a very ignorant and cheap doctor.”

White called for a general full year of medical instruction, an array of examinations, and an increase in the number of faculty members. Harvard, by incorporating the summer courses of the Tremont Street Medical School in 1858, had already provided for an increase in the length of the curriculum, had instituted more rigorous exams during the Civil War, and, as White announces in this article, had just created a chair in comparative anatomy and made assistant and adjunct appointments in physiology and surgery.

]]> The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, v. 74 (1866)]]> The issue of admitting women to Harvard Medical School continued to provoke controversy until June 5, 1944, when the Harvard Corporation voted to admit women to the Medical School in the fall of 1945.

]]> Text Book of a Course of Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Physicin 1825.

This copy of the Syllabus is interleaved with the manuscript notes of Sumner Cummings (1800-1848), who studied medicine at Harvard during the winter of 1821.

]]> A Syllabus of the Lectures Delivered at the Massachusetts Medical College to the Medical Students of Harvard University with an adjacent interleaved page of manuscript notes by student Sumner Cummings]]> Act to Protect the Sepulchres of the Dead by the Massachusetts Legislature and so legalized dissection of human bodies for anatomical study. Dr. John Collins Warren, stressing the essential importance of dissection, stated, “Some may perhaps believe that books, and plates, and wax figures convey adequate notions of the human structure. This is an opinion natural enough, but entirely erroneous…. It is probable that a single square inch of the human body contains more parts distinctly organized, than could be represented by all the wax figures which ingenuity has ever contrived.” This copy belonged to Dr. John Collins Warren.]]> Mémoires, although written at the end of his life and not published until 1873, contains the earliest account of a student’s experiences at Harvard Medical School and remains a seminal historical document of the institution during its first years.]]> Mémoires]]> After summarizing the history of his subject, Dr. Warren then justifies dissection as an essential component to anatomical study: “At the first view of dissections, the stomach is apt to turn, but custom wears off such impressions. It is anatomy that directs the knife in the hand of a skilful surgeon, & shews him where he may perform any necessary operation with safety to the patient. It is this which enables the physician to form an accurate knowledge of diseases & open dead bodies with grace, to discover the cause or seat of the disease, & the alteration it may have made in the several parts.”

]]> View the complete work online through the Harvard University Library.

]]> A Discourse upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America]]> to the Harvard Dental School, 1894]]> to the Harvard Dental School, 1894
]]> The Mirror, the yearbook of the Dental School, and Richard Locke Hapgood's published History of the Harvard Dental School (1930). This photograph is from the 1928 edition of The Mirror.

Just visible in the foreground in the right-hand photograph is the student piece of Dr. Frederic Augustus Merrill of the Class of 1874.

]]> "solatium afflictis" translates as "relief to the distressed."]]> A Treatise on the Management of the Teeth]]> The Mirror.]]> ]]> Here among the entries for items of mechanical dentistry are specimens 1562 and 1565]]> "He must also deposit with the Dean, to be placed in the Museum of the college, a specimen of mechanical Dentistry or of practical and pathological anatomy, prepared during his course of instruction." This qualification remained in effect through the 1901-02 academic year.]]> The Mirror, describing the Dental Museum]]> catalog record.]]> and deposited with the Harvard Medical Library, 1941]]> catalog record]]> catalog record]]>