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The Center for the History of Medicine, Countway Library, houses one of the world's leading collections in the history of health care and medicine, with strong holdings in virtually every medical discipline, including anatomy, anesthesiology, cardiology, dentistry, neurology, obstetrics and gynecology, psychiatry, and surgery. The Center offers access to the personal and professional papers of prominent American physicians and is the institutional repository for the records of Harvard Medical School (founded 1782), Harvard School of Dental Medicine (1867), and Harvard School of Public Health (1922).
Researcher access to portions of many of the modern
manuscript and archival collections may be restricted due to the presence of personal
and patient information; these records are restricted for a period of 80 years
from the date of creation. In addition,
access to all Harvard
University records is
restricted for a period of 50 years from the date of creation. Restrictions and their duration are generally
noted on the finding aids to the individual collection.
Researchers may apply for access to restricted records. Consult the public services staff for
additional information on the application process.
In addition to the resources available on the Center's website, researchers are invited to browse digitized items from the Center's collections via its Omeka site
OnView
or its Digital Access Repository.
NewsNew online exhibits from the Archives for Women in MedicineTwo legacy online exhibits, The Stethoscope Sorority and Grete L. Bibring: The Modern Woman, are now available through the Center’s new online collections site, OnView.
Over the years, women have faced, and continue to face, many struggles in the field of medicine. Despite this ongoing adversity, they have emerged as strong leaders and helped revolutionize the profession. The Archives for Women in Medicine (AWM) at the Countway Library was created in 2000 to capture and preserve the untold history of the many women who have helped change the face of medicine in the United States. This exhibition highlights materials from the AWM that illustrate women’s experiences as mentors, pioneering researchers, healers, and strong voices speaking out for their beliefs. Using their own words, the exhibition presents stories from some of the women of the AWM and the people who have helped contribute to their successes.
In the 1970’s, Dr. Grete L. Bibring created a seminar for Radcliffe College called ‘The Educated Woman’. A small group of students would gather to discuss the issues surrounding educated women and their lives. The concept of the ‘modern woman’ came to portray the dual roles of family and career that women had one point been forced to choose between. Dr. Bibring was a mentor for the emerging modern woman, understanding the demands and rewards of maintaining both a career and family.
Born in Vienna just before the 20th century, Grete L. Bibring would earn the honor of being the first female full clinical professor at Harvard Medical School in 1961. As a part of the “second generation” of Freudian scholars, her achievements include her appointment as Psychiatrist-in-Chief at Beth Israel Hospital in 1955, professional activities in numerous psychiatric organizations, such as the psychoanalytic societies of Vienna, London, and Boston and psychiatric consultant of the Children’s Bureau in Washington D.C. She was highly influential in integrating psychiatric principles into general patient care. Her passion permeated her other roles working with students, residents, physicians, social workers, and nurses across the globe. Dr. Bibring’s work continued well after retirement with a thought provoking seminar at Radcliffe, publication of multiple articles, and her dedication to patient care. This exhibit celebrates her life and her influence on the generations of medical, psychiatric, and social services professions.
Browse all of the Center’s online exhibits at Onview.
Flowers and secrets of medicine: the Ludlow Santo Domingo Collection A modern interpretation of a 16th-century facial In 2012, the Ludlow Santo Domingo Collection, a treasure trove of rare books, manuscripts, erotica, film posters, and ephemera, was placed on deposit at Harvard. The collection reflects the broad interests of Julio Mario Santo Domingo, who amassed the 50,000+ items, including the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library, over the course of about 30 years. Both Santo Domingo and Ludlow were intrigued by the use and effects of mind-altering drugs, and Santo Domingo added sex and popular culture to the mix. The Center for the History of Medicine is currently participating in the selection of books and ephemera, and has cataloged over 500 titles — ranging from the early 16th to the 21st centuries — from a collection of approximately 4,000 items of medical interest.
This image, from a 1949 edition of Raoul Du Montvert’s 1544 treatise Les Fleurs et Secretz de Medecine, depicts a woman washing her face with a concoction containing aloe, cardamom, mercury, and white lead, among other ingredients. The treatise focuses on the use of medicinal plants, but also includes advice on bloodletting, diet, and cosmetics.
Additional highlights of items recently cataloged from the collection include:
HOLLIS 13767214 Grasset, Raymond. Au service de la médecine :chronique de la santé publique durant les saisons amères (1942-1944). Clermont-Ferrand: Bussac, 1956. A survey of public health in France during the Nazi occupation; held by 3 libraries worldwide.
HOLLIS 13751509 Huson, Hobart. Total synthesis II San Antonio, Tex.: Panda, Ink, 1999. A ”cookbook” for street drugs such as crystal meth and other amphetamines; one other holding inFrance.
HOLLIS 1359274 Pseudo-Mesuë. Opera. Venice: Giunta, 1589. A compilation of canonical medical texts by Mesuë and many others. 4 other holdings worldwide.
HOLLIS 013520246 Madame de Saint-Amour à l’Académie de Nantes. [Nantes :Imprimerie d'Hérault,1828] A pamphlet on spiritual healing and the followers of Emanuel Swedenborg.Held only at Harvard.
In Memoriam: David H. Hubel, 1926-2013 Torsten Wiesel and David Hubel in 1980 The Center staff was saddened to learn of the passing of David Hubel on Sunday at the age of 87. Hubel shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Harvard Medical School colleague and collaborator Torsten Wiesel, and Roger Sperry, for their discoveries of information processing in the visual cortex. Hubel received his M.D. from McGill University in 1951, and after completing a residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital, was drafted for military service and assigned to Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Neuropsychiatry Division. In 1958 Stephen Kuffler recruited Hubel to Johns Hopkins, where Hubel first met Wiesel. In 1959, Kuffler, along with Hubel and Wiesel, moved to Harvard Medical School and the Department of Pharmacology, which in 1966 became the Department of Neurobiology, the first of its kind in the country. At Harvard Hubel and Wiesel, working with cats and monkeys, conducted their Nobel Prize-winning research on the visual cortex. At the time of his death, Hubel was the John Franklin Enders University Professor of Neurobiology, Emeritus.
Obituaries for Dr. Hubel can be found at boston.com, the New York Times and the Washington Post.
The Center holds the David H. Hubel papers. For information regarding access to this collection, please contact the Public Services staff.
Below are photographs from the day the 1981 Nobel Prize was announced:
Joseph Murray, Bradford Cannon and Plastic SurgeryJoseph Murray (1919-2012) and Bradford Cannon (1907-2005) first met at the Army-run Valley Forge General Hospital during World War II. After the war, both returned to Boston (Murray to Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Cannon to Massachusetts General Hospital) and had distinguished careers in plastic and reconstructive surgery. In the video below, entitled “Plastic Surgery at Harvard Medical School”, the two discuss their careers.
The video was produced by the Boston Medical Library as part of the series “Leaders in American Medicine”, and will be part of a Center online exhibit about the life and career of Joseph Murray, which will be available later this fall. The video is part of the Joseph E. Murray papers and was recently digitized.
The Center holds both the Joseph E. Murray papers (finding aid here) and the Bradford Cannon papers (finding aid here). For information regarding access to these collections, please contact the Public Services staff.
New Acquisitions: the Jeremiah Mead Papers Jere Mead (center, seated) with collaborators (L to R) T. A. Sears, David Leith, Ronald J. Knudson, and Ralph Kellogg, circa 1965. H MS c413. From the Harvard Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine. The Center for the History of Medicine is delighted to announce the recent acquisition of Jeremiah Mead’s personal and professional records. The collection consists of research records, correspondence, subject files, and writings produced and collected by Mead during his nearly six decades of leading research in the field of Respiratory Mechanics while working in the Department of Physiology at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).
Mead (1920-2009) was a graduate of both Harvard College (1943) and Harvard Medical School (1946). He joined the faculty of the Department of Physiology at HSPH as Assistant Professor in 1950, was appointed Professor of Physiology in 1965, and was named the first Cecil K. and Philip Drinker Professor of Environmental Physiology in 1976 (Emeritus, 1987-2009).
By all accounts, Mead was a “tinkerer” and viewed lab work as “play”; he frequently built conceptual models out of household items and welcomed seemingly outlandish questions and hypotheses as the essential driving force of innovation. Mead realized his passion for research while engaged in cold-climate physiology experimentation during a post-war Army assignment at Fort Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, a field station for the Quartermaster Corps Climatic Research Laboratory (CRL) then based in Lawrence, Massachusetts (now the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Massachusetts). Upon his return from service, Mead left clinical medicine and sought to build a career in the lab. He found his place in the HSPH Department of Physiology under the leadership of James L. Whittenberger.
Mead’s interest in decoding the normal mechanisms of breathing inspired the growth of a new field of Respiratory Mechanics that continued to expand throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. He and his collaborators developed methods and instruments for measuring air flow and evaluating pulmonary function with ever-increasing accuracy. In recent decades these tools have been applied to the treatment and relief of patients suffering from a host of medical conditions including, but not limited to, poliomyelitis, cystic fibrosis, and asthma. Perhaps the most widely recognized result of Mead’s work was the 1959 discovery, alongside then-research fellow Mary Ellen Avery, that newborns with fatal respiratory distress syndrome exhibited abnormal surface tension in the lungs; this breakthrough facilitated Avery’s later discovery of lung surfactant and the implementation of life-saving surfactant replacement therapy in newborns.
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