Horace Greeley Jacobs collection now online

The finding aid for the Horace Greeley Jacobs Collection (OHA 199.5) has been uploaded to the NMHM website here.

The Jacobs collection contains 25 items documenting to the life of Horace Greeley Jacobs, including those related to his service to the Union during the Civil War. Two of the most unique documents are a letter Jacobs wrote to his mother from Camp 19 on May 31, 1862 and a short narrative titled "Thoughts on the Battle Field" (c. 1864). The finding aid includes a biographical note about Jacobs from his years in the Union Army (he joined at 16) through to his death in 1910.

This is a small collection, but part of what makes it unique is that the Museum's anatomical department already contains material relating to Jacobs, specifically his left humerus (AFIP 0384696), which was donated when Jacobs was injured during the war.

A few images relating to Jacobs:


SP 103
Excised head and portion of shaft of left humerus, comminuted by a musket ball.

Jacobs, Horace G. 2LT, G, 6, ME

Doctor: Bliss, D.W. & Otis

Battle: Rappahannock Station, 7 November 1863


CP 1669B


CP 1669A

U.S. Hospital Ship, the Ernestine Koranda

The Ernestine Koranda


Verso of the photograph, includes signatures of what we presume to be her crew.

Whenever we have a new donation, no matter how small or large it is, it is accessioned and catalogued into the Museum’s collection database. Today I’ve been working with a photograph of the World War, II hospital ship, the Ernestine Koranda. She was named for the real-life Ernestine Koranda, an Army nurse who was deployed to Papua, New Guinea during the war. Koranda died tragically en route to Australia when her plane crashed, not long before her wedding, planned for Christmas 1943. The Ernestine Koranda was named for Lieutenant Nurse Koranda before the end of the war, one of a small number of service personnel to be honored in this way.

Ernestine Koranda’s personal papers and photographs can be found online at the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS).

Ernestine Koranda, MHS

The NMHM has quite a few examples of hospital ships in our collections. Here are a few of my favorites:

US Hospital Ship, the "D.J. January," was used on Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from 1862 - 65. Photograph of model at Army Medical Museum constructed for Centennial Exposition 1876 at Philadelphia.

U. S. Army Hospital Ship, Marigold: "Men Sunning on the Deck." [The Marigold, aka Old North State, President Van Buren, President Fillmore, was first deployed during World War, II on 07/19/44, bound for Italy.]

"(SE4-Dec.17) Casualty Evacuated - Yanks load a wounded GI [?] aboard a landing barge at Hungnam for transport to a waiting hospital ship in the harbor of the northeastern Korean evacuation port. UN [United Nations?] defense forces were compressed into a tight perimeter around Hungnam today as Chinese Reds pressed toward the escape beachhead. (APWirephoto) [Associated Press?] (jdc11305stf-md) 1950.

"Number 43. Taking wounded on board U.S. Hospital Ship 'Relief' from hospital at Siboney - Siege of Santiago, Cuba." [This USS Relief, pictured here, was constructed in 1895-96, commissioned in 1908, decommissioned in 1910, and sold into merchant service in 1919. her fate is unknown.]

Public medical appeals through the Post Office

The Museum has a stamp (or philately) collection, although not much has been done with it in recent years. Here’s two new additions to it – cancellations attempting to raise funds for medical charities

 

The 1952 appeal for the American Cancer Society seems early, inasmuch as a ‘war on cancer’ hadn’t been declared yet. The American Lung Association is known for putting out its Christmas Seals and we have a fairly good collection through the middle of the last century.

A Day in the Life...

I meant to write these more often, but somehow the life keeps staying busy.

Here's one from a few weeks ago. We're part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (see the sidebar history) and their Radiology Department had a lead on some personal papers they were interested in. The American College of Radiology has stored their records with the History Factory in Chantilly, VA, and in their collection they had personal papers of Dr. William Thompson. Thompson was instrumental in setting up the large radiology program at AFIP. The ACR was willing to hand over this series of records to AFIP since it didn't really relate to their core holdings. I tend to wear a dual hat as AFIP's archivist as well as the Museum's so I was on the job.

Poaching from other archives never thrills me, although at times it makes sense. Years ago, we returned photographs of unidentified corpses that we had received from the NY Medical Examiner to the NY Municipal Archives to reunite them with the paper records of the cases. I was fine with that, but there have been plenty of times when people come in to do research and say "wouldn't this be better if it was in..."

Anyway, two people from the radiology dept., and 3 museum staffers took a van from Walter Reed while I drove myself from home. I beat them by about an hour so I hung around with the archivist there. He showed me the collection - it was pretty straightforward personal papers including diaries, some awards and some photographs, both personal and professional. I've seen dozens like it, and at 3 linear feet, it wasn't large. So we talked shop and then when everyone else arrived, they looked at the records. The radiologists were particularly interested as one doesn't see fifty-year old diaries every day, I suppose. We took a quick look in the stacks at the rest of the ACR collection - most archives look alike especially in the 'bulk' storage areas - and I've got to say that they have a nice set of advertising trade literature if you're doing anything on radiology's history. We also looked at the 3-D artifacts because there was some confusion in our party if we were supposed to be checking on them as well.

After signing the paperwork transferring it to us, we headed back to AFIP. Lauren Clark, who's volunteering as an intern this summer, has processed the collection and written a finding aid to it, which should make it onto our regular website soon. There's nothing deeply interesting or dramatic in Thompson's papers, but they help round out the history of radiology at AFIP.

Shhh, check this out

It's coming!

New book donation

We're not the Pathology Institute's library and most of what would have been the Museum library left with the National Library of Medicine when it split off from the old Army Medical Museum and Library for good in the 1960s (remind me to post about the split of the photographs and AMML records), but people give us books.

Recently we got 26 books from Dr. Inghram Miller, Newton, Kansas (NMHM Acquisition Number 2007.0038) accompanying a wicker wheelchair. There was also a couple of neat pieces of medical trade literature in the books.

Johnson, Alexander Bryan. Surgical Diagnosis, volumes I, II, and III, 1910

Kelly, Howard A. Operative Gynecology, Volumes I and II, 1898 and 1899

Deaver, John B. Surgical Anatomy, Volumes I, II, and III, 1904 and 1908

Bryant, Joseph and Albert Buck. American Practice of Surgery, Volumes VII and VIII, 1910 -11

International Clinics Vol II, 2nd and 3rd series, 1892 and 1893

Ashton, Willaim Easterly. A Testbook on the Practice of Gynecology. 1906

Flint, Austin. A Treatise on the Principles and Practice of Medicine. 1881

Bartholow, Roberts. A Practical Treatise on Materia, Medica, and Theraputics. 1889

Wood, George B and Franklin Bache. Dispensatory of the United States, 18th ed. By Wood, Remington and Stadtler. 1899

Osler, William. Principles and Practice of Medicine. 1895

Gould, George M. An Illustrated Dictionary of Medicine, Biology and Allied Sciences, 5th ed. 1903

Holt, L. Emmett. Diseases of Infancy and Childhood. 1897

Da Costa, J. M. Medical Diagnosis, 8th ed. 1895

Gray, Henry. Anatomy Descriptive and Surgical. 8th and enlarged ed. 1881 (1878)

Babcock, W. Wayne. A Textbook of Surgery. 1929

Kaltschmidt, J. H. School Dictionary of the Latin Language, Part 1: Latin-English. 1876

Tillmans, Herman. A Textbook of Surgery, Vol II: Regional Surgery. trans from German. 1899

Mathews, Joseph M. A Treatise on Diseases of the Rectum, Anus and Sigmoid Flexure. 1893

Taylor, Alfred Swain. A Manual on Medical Jurisprudence. 11th American ed by Clark Bell. 1892

New Bell Daguerretoype acquired and finding aid added to website.

The museum has acquired an 1852 daguerreotype taken by William Bell, chief photographer for the Army Medical Museum during and after the Civil War. Bell took many of the pictures included in the collection of Photographs of Surgical Cases and Specimens and provided his work to Matthew Brady's gallery. The daguerreotype, in a pristine leather case with a velvet lining embossed with "W. Bell, Jenny Lind Gallery, 86 N Second St, Phil[adelphia]" shows a man with ptosis (drooping eyelid). This acquisition was made with the generous assistance of Frederic A. Sharf.

We updated the finding aid for Bell's collection done a few years back by intern Rudolf D'Souza and posted it to the website as well. You can see more of Bell's scenery pictures from the 1882 expedition to photograph transit of Venus (and his obituary) on the website too.

New book donated to museum

Civil War Museum Treasures: Outstanding Artifacts and the Stories Behind Them by Kenneth D. Alford, McFarland 2008. Includes a brief mention of the bullet that killed Lincoln and a picture on p. 25.

Ephemera - whadya do with it?

So what do you notice when you look at this box? It's a box of crackers? It's low fat? It's pink? It's a big breast cancer awareness advertisement?

The last is what I noticed. This is the type of ephemera which usually doesn't get saved, but is darn useful for doing exhibits. The question about where to file it then arises of course. We dropped this in a folder on Breast Cancer and didn't catalogue it in our General Medical Products Information trade literature collection.

New book donated to museum

We just received The Tropical World of Samuel Taylor Darling: Parasites, Pathology and Philanthropy by E. Chaves-Carballo, Sussex Academic Press, 2007.

Dr. Chaves-Carballo used our collection a little bit to write this biography of the pathologist at Panama's Gorgas Hospital. We have Darling's pathological reports and autopsies of the hospital in OHA 177 Gorgas Hospital Autopsies and Pathology Reports, 1900s-1970s. Darling discovered the fungal disease Histoplasmosis (although according to the book he thought it was a protozoa) and a picture from us of a 1905 autopsy report of the first case is on p. 66. The autopsy records also showed how many cases of malaria (called estivo-autumnal fever) was killing people.

Letter on "A Family Album is One for the History Books"

At the beginning of the year, the New York Times ran an article that caught our archivist eyes:

A Family Album Is One for the History Books
By ROBERTA HERSHENSON
Published: January 1, 2008
Photographs of William Howard Taft’s mission to the Far East, now on view at the Nippon Club, were found in an unlikely place.

I recalled that we had similar photos of Taft donated fairly recently, so Kathleen checked the collection and found them. We sent a letter to the Times that it didn't run, so here it is now for the Taft fans.

To the editor:

We read with interest "A Family Album is One for the History Books," (January 1), of the Harry Fowler Woods scrapbooks containing photographs from the 1905 return to the Philippines of William Howard Taft. The National Museum of Health and Medicine archives also has photographs of Taft in the Philippines, taken at his 1901 inauguration as the first Governor-General of the islands. Osborn also took pictures of the Filipino memorial services for the assassinated President McKinley, as well as Douglas MacArthur's father, military governor Arthur MacArthur. The photographs are part of a recent donation, the William S. Osborn Collection of scrapbooks, diaries, and dozens of letters that Osborn created during his service as a hospital corpsman in the wake of the Spanish-American War, as well as items from later in his career as a physician in Tennessee and Wisconsin. Many of Osborn's pictures were cyanotypes, which remain a lovely cool shade of blue. The scrapbook can be viewed by appointment.

Regards,

Kathleen Stocker & Michael Rhode
Archivists, National Museum of Health and Medicine Washington, DC