After the Abbott operation, Jacob Bigelow sent news of the discovery to Francis Boott (1792-1863), who was living in England. Boott communicated this to James Robinson, a surgeon-dentist, who then performed a painless tooth extraction on December…
List of patients who have inhaled ether or chloroform for surgical operations in the Massachusetts General Hospital up to April 1, 1848, furnished by H. J. Bigelow, M.D.
Surgeon George Hayward performed the second operation employing ether at Massachusetts General Hospital on October 17, 1847, and then the first capital operation—the successful amputation of a leg—later that year. The following year, on April 12th,…
The passage displayed reproduces a letter from Nathan Cooley Keep (1800-1875), recounting the first use of ether anesthesia in labor; the patient was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s wife, Fanny, who gave birth to a daughter on April 7, 1847.
Jackson issued this publication “to interest both the Surgeon and the Solider, and with the intention of aiding the one and of informing the other” at the outbreak of the Civil War. The Manual provides illustrations and examples of cases from French…
A list of students in attendance at the New England Female Medical College during the 1863-64 term along with a list of the graduates of the Class of 1864.
Concerning Base Hospital No. 5 was, according to its editors, originally conceived "on the same idea of a college year book, to contain personal write-ups of every member of the unit…. Steps were immediately taken to get together pen sketches of…
Harvey Cushing published this historical account of Base Hospital No. 5 soon after the war's end, as it was "one of the Units of the American Expeditionary Force to be sent overseas; it was the first to suffer casualties at the hands of the enemy;…
A monthly newsletter from the personnel of Base Hospital No. 5--the first publication from the American Expeditionary Forces--began to appear in November 1917. The issue displayed commemorates a year's anniversary since the departure for France and…
Private Oscar C. Tugo enlisted on May 7, 1917; he was killed as a night orderly during the air raid on Base Hospital No. 5 on September 4, along with Lieutenant William Fitzsimons, Privates Rudolph Rubino, Jr., and Leslie G. Woods. On October 18,…
Professor of Hygiene at Harvard, Roger I. Lee was a member of the Surgical Unit in 1915. He was a Major in the Medical Reserve Corps at the United States' entry into the war. Assigned to Base Hospital No. 5, Lee was its officer in command through…
Soon after his arrival in France with Base Hospital No. 5, Walter B. Cannon was joined to group of surgeons with the B.E.F. at Casualty Clearing Station No. 33 in Béthune, to study the effects of traumatic shock in association with war wounds. He…
Harvard neuropsychiatrist, E. E. Southard, drew on the medical literature from the first three years of the war--English, French, Italian, Russian, German, and Austrian--to compile this study of nearly 600 cases related to shell-shock and other…
The A.E.F. issued these guidelines on instructions and preventive measures against gas attacks, including carrying masks and respirators, frequent drills, alarms, and inspection of equipment. The guidelines include instructions on anti-gas…
Concerning Base Hospital No. 5 was, according to its editors, originally conceived "on the same idea of a college year book, to contain personal write-ups of every member of the unit…. Steps were immediately taken to get together pen sketches of…
Harvey Cushing published this historical account of Base Hospital No. 5 soon after the war's end, as it was "one of the Units of the American Expeditionary Force to be sent overseas; it was the first to suffer casualties at the hands of the enemy;…
A monthly newsletter from the personnel of Base Hospital No. 5--the first publication from the American Expeditionary Forces--began to appear in November 1917. The issue displayed commemorates a year's anniversary since the departure for France and…
Established and sponsored by members of the American colony in Paris soon after the outbreak of hostilities, the American Ambulance Hospital was ready for the reception of patients on September 1, 1914, at the Lycee Pasteur in Neuilly, Paris. The…
Private Oscar C. Tugo enlisted on May 7, 1917; he was killed as a night orderly during the air raid on Base Hospital No. 5 on September 4, along with Lieutenant William Fitzsimons, Privates Rudolph Rubino, Jr., and Leslie G. Woods. On October 18,…
Private Oscar C. Tugo enlisted on May 7, 1917; he was killed as a night orderly during the air raid on Base Hospital No. 5 on September 4, along with Lieutenant William Fitzsimons, Privates Rudolph Rubino, Jr., and Leslie G. Woods. On October 18,…
Original research into medico-legal problems was one of the Department's fundamental activities from the outset, and over one hundred articles were published by members of the staff from 1940 to 1954. The article by O. J. Pollak uses a composite of…
In the 1920s, New England heiress Frances Glessner Lee (d. 1962) became fascinated with the colorful crime-solving career of George Burgess Magrath (1870-1938), the medical examiner for Suffolk County and an instructor in legal medicine at Harvard…
The last external program of the Department of Legal Medicine was the Research on Fatal Highway Collisions project; Alfred L. Moseley, a psychologist, was the principal investigator. The project, funded by a five-year grant from the National…
First formulated in 1947 and, as here, reissued ten years later, is a summary of laws relating to medical practice for students, illustrating some of the wide-ranging areas in which legal medicine could be involved.
This printed version of Rush’s medical lectures at the University of Pennsylvania includes an 1810 lecture on the study of medical jurisprudence—thought to be the first American treatise published on the subject. Rush opens his lecture stating,…
This parody of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Mandalay” was distributed to the members of the St. Botolph’s Club, where Magrath lived for many years—“Number Four” was the club’s address on Newbury Street at that time.
Taylor’s Medical jurisprudence was a standard manual for the study of legal medicine. It was first printed in London in 1844, and an American edition followed in the next year. At least twelve editions were produced by the end of the 19th century,…
Thomas Percival’s Medical ethics, published in 1803, is considered the first fundamental treatise on the conduct of physicians in hospital and private practice. Medical ethics was an expanded version of this earlier pamphlet, Medical jurisprudence. …
D.B.N. Fish, a physician and medical examiner at Amherst, compiled studies of gunshot residue; the item displayed shows a shot from a Smith and Wesson revolver at a distance of four inches. Fish was attempting to determine whether any differences…
As this newspaper article reports, nineteen year old Benjamin Stone of New York, afflicted with headaches, threw himself in front of a train and committed suicide. The article is part of a five-volume collection of newspaper accounts of several…
A small volume of annotated photographs of the interiors and exteriors of the Free Hospital for Women located in Brookline Massachusetts, taken in the late 19th century
This manuscript copy of Avicenna's Canon, written by Mordechai bar Elia in a rabbinical hand, was formerly in the library of Prince Dietrichstein of Nikolsburg.