Cultural Exchange: Sheppard Pratt

I recently found out that Sheppard Pratt has a museum, a library and archives. So I contacted the curator/librarian/archivist and made an appointment to visit. 

Many years ago, I had volunteered at SP. Nothing psychiatric, but playing tennis with the teenagers who were in residence. While there, I got a great appreciation of the Victorian-style architecture, designed by Calvert Vaux, who was an associate of Frederick Law Olmsted, who is responsible for the look of some of Baltimore's notable inner suburbs.

While the hospital has greatly changed since I was last there, the bones are still familiar. New buildings have been added, some of the land is now home to "University Village," the dorm community of Towson University. 

While the Museum was small, it was quite charming, with a number of artifacts from Moses Sheppard's life there. His old book cases were still filled with his books, 

his old statistics book was on display, 

and the silver service from the former Nursing school was shining and polished. 

Although the buildings have been extensively renovated over the decades, there are still glimpses of the original details, including this beautiful Victorian tile work.

For many years, Sheppard Pratt advertised in the Maryland Medical Journals (the pre-1900 ones are on-line here), and I remembered that I had scanned one. This is probably from the late 1800's or very early 1900's, and describes the hospital in detailed terms.

My most sincere thanks to Lisa Illum, the curator/librarian/ archivist for spending the morning with me and showing me her treasures!

Liriodendron: Dr. Howard Kelly's Summer Home

I had the opportunity to tour Liriodendron, the summer home of Dr. Howard Kelly, one of the Big Four at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Kelly and his wife, whom he had met while studying in Germany, were parents of nine children. Like many of the other early Hopkins physicians, many of whom were Canadian (Osler, Cullen, Barker, etc.) Kelly and his family summered on a lake in Ontario.

But as more and more children arrived, trekking to a rustic camp in rural Ontario was more than Mrs. Kelly wanted to manage. Mrs. Kelly and six of the children are shown below.

The Kellys bought a property in Harford County, just outside of the county seat of Bel Air in about 1898.

The Georgian Revival mansion was designed by the Baltimore architecture firm of Wyatt & Nolting, who also designed many other Baltimore area buildings, including the massive Fifth Regiment Armory, the Pikesville Armory, the Clarence Mitchell Courthouse, the Roland Park Shopping Center, and St. Michael and All Angels Church.

The scale and splendor of Liriodendron is more suited to Newport, RI, than to sleepy Bel Air, MD. The house is set on a raised stone foundation and is constructed of stuccoed brick, with two-and-a-half stories. It is T-shaped, with the service wing serving as the stem of the T.

The house is spanned by a wisteria-covered veranda with semi-elliptical porches at either end.

The house sits facing west on the highest point of the property, the better to catch the prevailing breezes.  For serious architectural details of the house, please read the Medusa report, here. 

Dr. Kelly also had a house on Eutaw Place in Baltimore City's Bolton Hill neighborhood, which also functioned as a gynecological clinic for Dr. Kelly's private practice.

It is marked with a blue plaque to show its historic significance. 

Liriodendron is occasionally open to the public, but otherwise is used as an event space and art gallery. 

Another Successful Hunt Lecture!

Thanks so much to everyone who came to the annual Thomas E. Hunt, Jr, MD History of Maryland Medicine Lecture last week. And a very special thanks to Dr. Paul Rothman, Dean of the Medical Faculty at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine. 

More than 100 members and friends of MedChi, as well as several of Dr. Hunt's family members attended the lecture, entitled "Sir William Osler, MD: Yesterday & Today.

Dr. Allan Jensen, Chair of the History of Maryland Medicine Committee was responsible for recruiting Dr. Rothman, and introduced him at the Lecture. 

Dr. Rothman compared medicine at the time that Dr. Osler was operating at Hopkins, and how when Osler wrote the first edition of "The Practice of Medicine", he was still an avid supporter of blood-letting! Now we are working with nano-technologies and artificial intelligence. One can only wonder what Sir William Osler would have thought about all of that!