The Center for a Healthy Maryland and the History of Maryland Medicine Committee are pleased to announce that Richard Colgan, M.D. will be the speaker at the Sixth Annual Hunt Lecture to take place on Thursday, June 25, 2015 at MedChi’s Osler Hall.
We hope that you will be able to join us at the Hunt Lecture. For reservations, please click here.
As I was searching the archives in preparation for a Graphic Design & Branding class I am hosting at MedChi this evening, I came across an envelope with one small piece of paper contained within.
It is a prescription from John Ruhräh, M.D. to Marcia Noyes on Christmas Day, 1934 for joy, happiness, health and prosperity to be taken throughout the year. It is a sweet commentary on the friendship between these two people who both loved books.
As I worked on cleaning up the bookplates, I couldn’t help but notice how many times I saw an owl depicted on the plates. The owl is sacred to the Greek goddess of learning, Athena and is even depicted on some Greco-Roman currency as a symbol of status, intelligence and of course, wealth. But there is also their association with wisdom, which might be why owls are on a lot of the plates.
Here are some of the owls I have found.
Right at the top.
It’s a little hard to see, but the owl is perched on the books.
The memorial bookplate for Sir William Osler, MD.
Ruhräh by Brödel. Two owls.
Just perched there on the shelf.
Owls are not the only birds depicted in the bookplates, there are also others, including several chickens!
Honestly, it’s hard to pick out my favorite bookplate, because each is fascinating in its own way. However, a few come to mind.
Hard to choose.
I recently talked about how we’re “decorating” the bathrooms here at MedChi with copies of the bookplates which I found last year. One of the more tedious and time-consuming chores I had to undertake before I could frame and hang the plates was to Photoshop them, so they’d look good when they were enlarged.
First I scanned in each plate at 600 dpi resolution. 
Once I’d scanned the plate, I had to do some work to clean it up.
The design of this one got lost in the discoloration and foxing on the paper.
The detail on these plates is fascinating, and when I was Photoshopping them, I got a chance to look at them up-close. As an example, this plate has a fishing rod and a fish, a shot gun, a paddle, a skull, an owl, and a pyramid and sphinx, all entwined in roses and thorns.
And this one, which has Johns Hopkins’ distinctive buildings at the top, Dr. Cullen in his library cum laboratory, and his summer camp on a lake in Canada at the bottom. In addition, it has the seals of the schools Dr. Cullen was affiliated with, as well as various scrolls and decorative elements. The bookplate was engraved by Dr. Cullen’s friend, Max Brödel.
Dr. Dandy’s bookplate has a brain at the very top of it, as fitting his practice as an early neurosurgeon. His surgical team was known as the “Brain Team” and was thought to be the finest available in the world at the time. If you look closely at the bottom, you can see the initials DMP and the date 1939
If you are interested in looking at the bookplates, either visit our bathrooms, or contact me at events@medchi.org, and I will be happy to show them to you.
Last week, the U.S. National Archives asked any organization with an archival collection to post a picture on social media of their archives. They asked everyone to tag the picture #ArchivesShelfie. The #shelfie is a play on the term #selfie, which, as you may know is a picture that you’ve taken of yourself.
The idea was for archives across the world to post pictures of their collections, and perhaps some of the workers who tend to these collections.
MedChi participated in this fun effort with a picture of our library, and if you look closely, you can see our former librarian, Marcia Crocker Noyes, just hovering on the right.
We were pleased to take part in this national recognition of the importance of archives, but also wanted to have a little fun with it!
I never know what project is going to pop up next. In an attempt to showcase more of our archival materials, we decided to add artwork to the numerous men’s and women’s rooms throughout the buildings. After some discussion, we thought that the bookplates we found a few months ago would be fun to use. One of our trustees suggested we use ones from urologists, and so I found one!
All of the bookplates will be printed in black and white to reflect the engravings that most of them are, and then will be framed in simple black frames. Spare, elegant, classic.
