A Mystery is Unraveling

Sometime in October of 2018, I got an email from a professor at Duke University who told me that her great-grandfather had worked at MedChi for decades! Once she told me his name, Gustave O. Caution, I realized that he was the second full-time employee at what was then known as the Faculty. 

Marcia Noyes had hired him to be the "Man Friday" around the building, serving as porter, custodian, cloakroom attendent and general helper. Mr. Caution worked at the Faculty for 56 years, and his son Walter, joined him and stayed for several decades, as well. 

At some points, Mr. Gustave Caution's address is given as the address of the Faculty, and at other times, it is elsewhere in the city, but close to the Faculty. 

His grand-daughter was visiting Baltimore on another matter, and asked to come by and see where her ancestor had lived and worked. Of course, we were pleased to welcome her and show her around the building where Gustave had worked for decades. 

We found an old city directory which listed his home address, and drove to find that. We also found and visited the church where he and his family had been active for decades. 

However, one of the things that we couldn't find was where Gustave was buried. 

I am beginning to do some deep research on Marcia Crocker Noyes for a possible book, so I headed over to the Maryland Center for Culture and History (formerly the Maryland Historical Society), to search her files which were donated to them in the late 1990s. 

The Medical Library Association had done a highly-researched article on Marcia, who was one of its founders, in the 1980s. I came across a letter which was written to the Faculty, asking where Marcia was buried. Of course, we know the answer to that - it's Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore. 

But what we didn't know was that both Gustave and Walter Caution were also buried on the same plot as Marcia, her sister Kitty, and their nephew.

At the bottom of the letter, in handwriting that is possibly Mike Murray's, is a listing of who is buried in the plot at Green Mount Cemetery. And that's where we learned that Gustave and Walter were both buried there. Gustave died in Baltimore in 1961 at age 88 years old. He started working at the Faculty in 1897, just a year after Marcia was hired and when it was still located on Hamilton Place, Eutaw Street. 

The plots are unmarked, but we are working with the cemetery to find out exactly where the Caution plots are, and if there are any markers that we've missed.

Stay tuned!

2022 Hunt History of Maryland Medicine Lecture

Please Join the History of Maryland Medicine Committee for the 2022 Hunt History of Medicine Lecture: 
Medicine and Mount Vernon on Tuesday, September 20, 2022 at 6:00 p.m. at MedChi

The Board of Center for a Healthy Maryland and the History of Medicine Committee invite you to the annual Thomas E. Hunt, Jr., MD History of Maryland Medicine Lecture, "Medicine and Mount Vernon" featuring Dr. Hunt's son, historian Jamie Hunt. The lecture will be presented in hybrid format, subject to change as we move closer to the event.

Since the 1700's, Baltimore's historic Mount Vernon neighborhood has had an affiliation with the City's medical commity. From the Revolutionary War when General John Eagar Howard was seriously injured, to the establishment of the Medical Arts Building, Dr. William Osler moving to the neighborhood and the continuation of physicians with private offices along the tree-lined streets, Mount Vernon has played a key role in the City's medical history. Jamie Hunt will be exploring the importance of medicine to the neighborhood and how the Mt. Vernon benefitted from it.

The Hunt History of Maryland Medicine Lecture is named for the late Baltimore orthopedic surgeon Dr. Thomas E. Hunt, Jr., who was an active member of MedChi and the Baltimore City Medical Society for many years. Dr. Hunt’s interest in the history of medicine in Baltimore and Maryland led to the establishment of this annual lecture series in his honor.

Current masking requirements, as dictated by the local jurisdiction, will be enforced. When you RSVP, please indicate whether you will be attending via Zoom, or in person at MedChi's Osler Hall. If you choose to attend via Zoom, a link will be sent the day before the lecture. Due to masking requirements, we will only be serving light refreshments this year. To RSVP, please click HERE by September 15, 2022. 

Both free and paid parking are available in the general MedChi area, including on MedChi's lot at 1204 Maryland Avenue, and across the street (paid). 

If you would like to make a contribution in support of the Hunt Lectures, the History of Medicine in Maryland, the historic archives, or any of our other projects and programs, please click here.

Our Little Visitor!

We had a little visitor stop by this weekend. It's Yama the Firetruck, whose adventures can be found on Instagram here. Yama is a retired 1993 Diahatsu Hijet fire engine from Katsymama City, Fukua Prefecture in Japan, now having fun in Baltimore. 

Yama's owner has been exploring Baltimore and taking pictures of Yama in front of various landmarks. We were delighted that they stopped by MedChi!

Amazon Smile Benefits the Center for a Healthy Maryland

Do you do a lot of shopping on Amazon? If so, your shopping could help support the Center for a Healthy Maryland through the Amazon Smile program.

There are several ways to make certain the Center benefits from your shopping. If you receive an email from staff at MedChi, be sure to check their signature line for a direct link to the Center’s Amazon Smile account. Or you can go to your Amazon Profile and select the Center for a Healthy Maryland as the recipient for your donations. Either way, your shopping helps support the programs at the Center for a Healthy Maryland, MedChi’s 501(c)(3) Foundation. 

Dental School Details

A dear friend of mine, Jerome Gray, is a talented watercolorist, and he recently shared a picture he'd done of one of the buildings where the Baltimore School of Dentistry was located. 

From its initial location at Lexington and Calvert Streets where it was founded in 1839 by Horace Hayden, the dental school moved four more times until it finally became part of the University of Maryland in 1915. 

The Dental School originally met in the homes and offices of its founders and professors before it moved to Lexington Street. From Lexington and Calvert Streets where it shared space with Newton University, the school moved to Lombard and Hanover Streets, which was also the location of the New Assembly Rooms. As it grew, the School moved to an adjacent building where there was more space. Next, the School moved to an 1870's mansard-roofed building at Eutaw and Lexington Street.

Finally, in 1881, the Dental School moved into the first building it had actually owned - the one at Franklin and Eutaw Streets. It never moved very far! 

From the report comes this detailed description of the building:

The Baltimore College of Dental Surgery building, constructed in 1881 on the southeast corner of North Eutaw and West Franklin Streets in Baltimore, is a three-story pressed-brick commercial building. Each of the street facades is three bays wide; the bays are articulated by projecting brick pilasters, and the three stories are defined by granite belt courses. Windows on the second level are tall, paired 2/2 sash with peaked granite hoods decorated with incised, Eastlake-influenced designs; the third story is lighted by triple 1/1 windows, with round-arched granite heads. A projecting bracketed wooden cornice caps the flat-roofed building. A narrow projecting bay between the center and south bays on the west facade defines the original entrance location. The first story has always been given to commercial use; it now features a Streamline Moderne storefront of etched black glass and aluminum, added c. 1942 when the entire building was adapted for use as a department store. The interior of the upper floors (the spaces used by the College and called Infirmary Hall) remains almost entirely intact, retaining the original stair and balustrade, door and window architraves, plaster cornices and medallions; the only alteration consists of the insertion of a mezzanine in the north room of the second floor, which is reversible and was accomplished without significant disruption of original fabric. The building retains a high level of integrity.

Jerome kindly included the Maryland Historic Trust's survey of the last building the Dental School occupied before it became part of UM. It is now called the Charles Fish building and it's always been one of my favorites! 

Important Baseball Signature Found...

 ... amazingly at the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Medical Alumni Association archives! We are so delighted for our friends/colleagues over there who found this rare signature, AND landed a front-page, top-of-the-fold article in the Baltimore Sun, our local paper. 

Larry Pitrof and Tara Wink, both from the UM Medical Alumni Association, have both been good friends and ardent supporters of MedChi's archives, and we are elated for their wonderful and fun discovery. 

From the Baltimore Sun,
Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Happy Independence Day!

 From all of us at MedChi and the Center for a Healthy Maryland, enjoy the day!