Harvard's Assistant Professor of Music, F. S. Converse, composed this choral work for the dedication of the new Medical School buildings on September 26th. A chorus of alumni under the direction of Harvard's choir-master performed the piece. A…
After some weeks abroad, Alan R. Moritz sent these reflections on legal medicine in an academic context to Mrs. Lee to help crystalize the direction and goals of the new department.
My greatest problem to date has been to arrive at some more or less…
In this letter to an unknown correspondent, Holmes reflects on his career and activities: “My mode of life is rather solitary than social, though I have contributed my share of hilarity to scores of festivals and am almost entitled to be called…
After the death of transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1882, Holmes was approached to write his biography for the “American Men of Letters” series. After publication, he received this letter from journalist Alexander Ireland…
Although there was doubt on the part of President Eliot that the Longwood buildings would be ready for the meeting of the American Medical Association in June 1906, as this letter of J. Collins Warren attests, the architects affirmed that, within a…
Financier and industrialist J. Pierpont Morgan was the most significant benefactor to the construction of the Quad buildings. His magnificent gift of $1,135,000—the single largest donation received by Harvard to that point—underwrote the…
The Medical School received formal letters of congratulation on the opening of the new buildings from other medical schools in the United States and from institutions abroad, including this unusual greeting from the rector of the Imperial University…
Although not present at Camiers during the event, Harvey Cushing sent this account of the air raid and bombing of Base Hospital No. 5 to the Dean of Harvard Medical School a few days after the event. The editorial corrections made by Cushing were…
Written contributions from members of the Harvard Medical School Class of 1958 reflecting on their medical education and life experiences on the occasion of their 65th reunion year. Contributions were solicited and gathered by project organizers…
The Mary Ellen Avery papers, 1929-2002, consist of personal and professional correspondence, teaching materials, professional activities records, grant records, articles and drafts, lectures and speeches, diaries, photographs, and other records from…
During the 19th century, every incoming medical student signed this volume at the beginning of the academic session and so agreed to follow the statutes of Harvard University and the direction of the Faculty of Medicine. On the page on the right can…
As wounded soldiers were evacuated from the battlefield for hospital treatment, each was issued a field medical card for identification with a brief diagnosis or assessment; the card was in a window envelope and tied to the individual, with red-edged…
As part of the dedication ceremonies, honorary degrees were to be presented to some distinguished physicians. In this memo, the dean of the Medical School, William L. Richardson, canvasses and records the opinions of some of the faculty members on…
As a complement to the fund raising campaign for the new campus, Drs. H. P. Bowditch and J. Collins Warren produced this pamphlet to inspire donations to endow professorships, departments, and scholarships at the school.
In 1937, the men and women of the Harvard Surgical Unit formed the Harvard Unit, B.E.F. Association "to keep alive friendships fostered during the years in France and to have a committee through whom information may be obtained." At the first…
Although he never practiced as a physician, William James—philosopher and psychologist best known for The Varieties of Religious Experience(1902)—received a degree from Harvard Medical School in 1869 and taught physiology during the…
After initial attachment to General Hospital No. 4 in the British Expeditionary Force, Frank W. Snow was then assigned to Camp Hospital No. 12 in the A.E.F. in April 1918 and appointed officer in command there. He was transferred to Camp Hospital…
This passport was issued by the State Department for Lyman Guy Barton (1887-1968), a member of the surgical staff of the Harvard Unit at the American Ambulance Hospital.
Autographed passport photograph of M. Blanche Wallace, April 1918. Mary Blanche Wallace (1892-1979) of Woburn served as a nurse with the third Harvard Surgical Unit, working at General Hospital No. 22 from June 11, 1916, to June 9, 1917. She then…
After initial attachment to General Hospital No. 4 in the British Expeditionary Force, Frank W. Snow was then assigned to Camp Hospital No. 12 in the A.E.F. in April 1918 and appointed officer in command there. He was transferred to Camp Hospital…
In 1933, the Mallinckrodt Chemical Company produced a short silent file, “The Advent of Anesthesia”, depicting the experiments of W. T. G. Morton with ether anesthesia and recreating the first public demonstration of the operation on Gilbert Abbott…
After initial attachment to General Hospital No. 4 in the British Expeditionary Force, Frank W. Snow was then assigned to Camp Hospital No. 12 in the A.E.F. in April 1918 and appointed officer in command there. He was transferred to Camp Hospital…
During the 1880s, Holmes was involved with the fund-raising appeals for the Medical School’s Boylston Street building. As part of the centennial celebration and dedication of the new building in 1883, he delivered this oration, tracing the history…
Over 2000 detailed records of patients treated by the Harvard Unit at Neuilly have been preserved along with photographs and X-rays. Patient 2146 had a perforating shrapnel wound of the upper right arm followed by gas gangrene--the first such…
Drs. Fawcett, for the Department of Anatomy, and Sognnaes, in the School of Dental Medicine, along with Professor Solomon in the Biophysical Laboratory outlined the need for an electron microscope at HMS, a report probably addressed to the dean.…
At the request of William T. G. Morton, “to be preserved in perpetual remembrance of the thing,” sixteen physicians--John Collins Warren and Henry Jacob Bigelow among them--with knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the ether discovery and its…
Animated view of a black and white stereograph exhibiting Harvard Medical School anatomy demonstrator and professor Richard Hodges participating in a research or classroom dissection. Dissection subject stabilized on wooden block.
In 1945, the Department began to offer these educational seminars. The advanced session for medical examiners, coroners, and pathologists was conducted in association with Boston University and Tufts College.
The fall 1945 seminar in homicide…
First-year medical students, DeWitt Allen Green, Ernest Bingham Oliver, Harold Bengloff, and Bruce Robinson Merrill, produced these drawings as part of their assigned course work on a cadaver in the fall of 1934.
According to the description in…
Following the discovery of charred human bones and some artificial teeth in the laboratory of John White Webster, Harvard's Erving Professor of Chemistry, scientific experts were called in to provide anatomical and chemical analyses of the remains on…
Although invited to the dedication, physician Sir William Osler—who had just been named Oxford's Regius Professor of Medicine—could not attend, but did telegraph his congratulations.
Although Thomas Francis Harrington published a three-volume history of the Medical School in 1905, the dedication of the new buildings prompted the appearance of this shorter commemorative work, with a history of the individual departments and a…
This local newspaper was one of the first to report the formation of the Harvard Medical School following the plan devised by Dr. John Warren for the Harvard Corporation. The article announces the appointment of the first three faculty members and…
The Aesculapiad, the yearbook for Harvard Medical School, first appeared in 1924, but it had this unique precursor in 1906, in conjunction with the opening of the new buildings. The yearbook contains photographs of the faculty and the 68 graduating…
Holmes was one of the founders and faculty members of the Tremont Street Medical School; he offered courses in anatomy, physiology, and, as attested by this prospectus for the 1848 course, regular instruction in microscopic anatomy, and was one of…
Soon after his appointment as Dean of Harvard Medical School, though before he assumed that office, Robert Higgins Ebert (1914-1996) delivered this address at Vassar, at that time still a women's college. Ebert states, "I believe in education for…