A Visit to the Historical Collections at the Welch Library

I recently had the opportunity to spend the morning with the Curator of the Historical Collections at the Institute of the History of Medicine at the Welch Library at Hopkins. 

As you arrive at the Library, located on Monument Street, the first thing that you see is a beautiful bronze bust of William Welch, MD in a gorgeous classical niche.

On the second floor, you will find a huge meeting/reading room with the famous John Singer Sargent portrait of the "big four" physicians from the founding days of the hospital: William Welch, William Halsted, William Osler and Howard Kelly. I had never seen the portrait in person and was gob-smacked at the massive size of it. It is about 10x9 feet!

Another portrait in the room is a beautiful painting of Mary Elizabeth Garrett, whose money helped open the medical school, with the condition that it admit women on the same basis as men.

There was also an exhibition of some of the works of Max Brödel, the first professional medical illustrator who worked with Kelly and Halsted, as well as Harvey Cushing. When I recently read a biography of Brödel, it mentioned that he summered on a lake in Canada with Thomas Cullen and some of the other physicians, and one of his hobbies was painting woodland scenes on tree fungi like mushroom conks. It was so fascinating to see some examples of this unique artwork.

One of the more disconcerting things to see was the death masque of Dr. Welch, made just after he died. The detail is incredible. 

The Henry Barton Jacobs Room was oddly reminiscent of the Osler Rooms at McGill University which I had visited several summers ago.

These two rooms were created at about the same time: 1930.

As we moved on, we began looking at some of the rare books in the collection and they were just amazing! One of the books from the 1600s had colored engravings which were so incredibly detailed.

Thinking of the process necessary to accomplish this was truly mind-boggling. 

One of my favorite books was this English-language book from MDCLXXV (1675).

It was literally an anatomical pop-up book, which was hilarious with strategically-placed foliage to shield sensitive eyes.

One of the interesting things about this book was that it included women! Most anatomical books were only illustrated with men. Here are some of my favorite illustrations. 

It was such a great to see these amazing books, and learn about the historic collections!