Please Vote This Halloween!

 Marcia says the scariest thing this Halloween is not voting for President.

This year, your vote is more important than ever.

Please Vote !

MCN: The Librarian Who Never Left

I was asked to give a talk at the Osher Learning Institute at Towson University. Since the topic was Spirits and Ghosts, I chose Marcia, naturally!

“In making a living, I made a life.” So were the immortal words of Marcia Crocker Noyes, MedChi’s librarian for 50 years.

Marcia was born in Saratoga, New York in about 1870.

She attended Hunter College in New York City, and then came to Baltimore in the mid-1890s to visit her sister, Kitty, whose husband was unwell. Marcia never left Baltimore. 

Marcia and Kitty both worked at the Enoch Pratt Free Library where Marcia cataloged books. 

In 1896, when Dr. William Osler became President of the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty (known then as the Faculty), he was dismayed to find that the condition of the library and the resident librarian were both in shambles.

He kept the former and got rid of the latter. The Faculty had gone dormant during the Civil War, and the existing book collection had been boxed up and all but forgotten.

Back to Marcia. Osler called his friend who was President of the Pratt to see whether he knew anyone who could work as the Faculty’s librarian and live on the premises. That person was to revitalize the library, whose books were out of date and out of order. Marcia was hired and within two weeks, she had a brand-new job and was living at the Faculty’s building on Hamilton Terrace. 

The Faculty’s members initially saw Marcia as a young woman who knew nothing about medicine. Luckily, she had Dr. Osler in her corner. Both Osler and Marcia believed in mixing the younger and older physicians in conversation, and she subscribed to numerous medical journals, so that members would come to the Faculty to read and discuss them. 

Marcia needed to be available 24/7, so she needed to live on-site. For example, a physician might call and ask for an ophthalmology book because his patient’s eyeball fell out. Marcia would check the card catalogue, and then go find the book. The physician would arrive, read up on eyeballs and then be on their way. She was our early Google.

In 1898, Dr. Osler, Marcia, and two other librarians created the Medical Library Association, which still exists today, and whose highest award is given in Marcia’s name. 

After the Faculty outgrew Hamilton Terrace, Marcia acted as project manager for the construction of the building on Cathedral Street.

A “penthouse” apartment for Marcia was included in the planning and she lived there, often with two ChowChow dogs and her maid, until her death in 1946. 

Befitting a young woman who had her own car in the 19-teens,

Marcia was active, among many other things, in the suffrage movement, which had frequent meetings (oddly, both for and against) at the Faculty’s headquarters. She led an active and lively life, spending summers at her camp in the Adirondacks, travelling to Medical Library Association meetings around the country after she became President, and visiting friends in Europe.

As she aged, she slowed down considerably, and the Faculty members planned to host a huge party celebrating the 50th anniversary of her hiring. But being physicians, they doubted she would live until then, so in April of 1946, they held the party, regardless. 

Marcia Crocker Noyes died on November 24, 1946, just four days after her 50th anniversary at the Faculty. Her funeral was held there, with 60 physicians acting as pallbearers. She is buried at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, along with her sister, Kitty. 

And this brings me to the second part of my talk this evening. It always sounds a little bit bonkers to talk about our ghost at work, but it’s actually as much of a reality as it can be.

Marcia lives on in the building which meant so much to her.

She has been seen by members of the staff, she moves items around, finds paintings and other lost things, and is generally a good spirit.

Marcia lived in our building from the time it was built in 1909, until her death.

She didn’t actually die there, but at Eudowood Sanitarium, which was where the Target in Towson is now located. It is likely that she died of tuberculosis, but we don’t have any definitive proof of that.

Beginning in the 1970s, stories written by one of the latter librarians begin to appear in our medical journal. He talks about being in the office on a weekend, knowing that there’s not anyone else in the building, but hearing footsteps in the hallway.

At one point, he mentions hearing someone mounting the great marble staircase, and counted each step. A little while later, he takes the stairs up from the second floor to Marcia’s penthouse, counting as he went along. It matched up to the footsteps exactly!

He tells another story of the library employees hearing steps on the metal stairs of the stacks, and the squeak of the wheels of one of the old wooden book carts. It just can’t be explained away with an easy answer.

The most re-told story is about our former housekeeper, Letha, who used to come at seven in the morning to make coffee for us and clean up from the previous evenings’ meetings.

She went into our big lecture hall one day, and noticed a woman, dressed in old-fashioned clothes, standing on the dais. Before Letha could ask who she was, the figure walked across the platform and just disappeared.

When she told people what happened, someone showed her an old photo of Marcia, and Letha recognized her immediately. After that, Letha would never come into the building unless she knew someone was already there.

When I began working at MedChi, people always talked about Marcia when anything went awry. After a few months, I read that the physicians would give Marcia bouquets of flowers when she did a special favor for them. And then I heard that the highest award at the Medical Library Association, which she had co-founded, was given in Marcia’s name, but that somehow, MedChi, the place where she spent her entire career, was never mentioned in conjunction with her.

I decided to remedy that.

So, I went up to the top floor of the stacks, where Marcia had a desk, and told her, out loud, that we would be giving a bouquet of flowers to the Noyes Award winner in her name, with our love. I said that hoped it was okay with her and a second later, I heard something small drop onto the floor. Great, I said, and zoomed down the four flights of stairs.

But that was just my first interaction with her. I was doing a lot of research in the stacks which is where our archives are located. I pride myself on being pretty observant.

So, I don’t think I’d miss things like a 5’x4’ picture frame, or a painting leaning up against the end of a row of bookshelves, or a 5’x16’ rolled canvas, among many other items.

I still find things in the stacks. I was recently working on the rare books collection, and as I was walking out of the stacks, I noticed a large, rounded frame peeking out from behind a file cabinet. I pulled it out, and low and behold, it was an old portrait, and it happened to be one I had been looking for. It was of the historic physicians, who has one of my favorite names: Peregrine Wroth. Of course, I should tell you that my second favorite name is the doctor, Clotworthy Birnie.

I also know, without a doubt, that the items were not there before. How could they just have appeared? Where did they come from?

A few years ago, after the pandemic, we realized that we had a lot of extra space, since many of our staff were working from home. We shifted most of the offices in the 1909 building over to our adjacent building. We then converted some of that space into the small MedChi Museum of Maryland Medical History, open by appointment only.

A few of us spent the Saturday prior to the Museum’s opening at the office doing final installations.

 

We knew we were the only people in the building. But every so often, someone would poke their head outside the Museum doors and look down the hall. When I asked what was going on, as a person, they told me that they’d heard footsteps.

The evening before the opening, we were doing that frantic last-minute detail work. We had put light-weight drop cloths on the walls to protect the displays, and all of a sudden, they started billowing in a breeze! We couldn’t feel a breeze, but could see the plastic moving, and there is no HVAC in the museum room. It was a bit scary, but we rationalized that it must have been Marcia coming to check out what we were doing.

I hadn’t seen Marcia, only had arms-length interactions with her… until last fall. I was working in the rare book room, and walking down the hallway towards our Osler Lecture Hall. I saw someone, clearly a woman, walk across the Lecture Hall, but couldn’t discern who it was. When I walked into the room, there was clearly no-one there. But I knew I’d seen someone. It took me a few minutes to wrap my head around what had happened, but I was pleased that she’d finally made herself seen.

A few weeks later, a colleague stopped me to tell me that she and one of her co-workers had just seen Marcia. They were in a meeting to discuss confidential medical cases and saw a woman walking down the hallway with books in her arms, heading towards the marble stairs.

They didn’t recognize the woman. But because the case was confidential, one of them got up to look to see who it was. But no one was there. They checked the adjacent rooms and the marble staircase, but saw no one. Yet, they’d both clearly seen the woman in the hall.

Earlier this year, we had our 70-year-old intern working on our rare books collection.

He was bringing our rare books down from the top floor of the stacks, and cataloguing them to add to the Museum’s list of items. Every morning, as he’d enter the stacks, he’d call out a cheery “Good Morning, Marcia.” Sometimes, he told me, he’d hear a sound in return, or something rustling around. Was it a mouse, or was it Marcia?

We always dress Marcia for the holidays, so I thought I’d share some of the past ones with you. I haven’t had a chance to dress her for this year yet!

Since I switched jobs a few months ago to focus solely on the history of medicine, my new office is located in Marcia’s old office.

The person who had the office a few years ago, used to talk about Marcia turning off the music if she didn’t like it, or scrolling her screen up or down to read something.

So far, nothing like that has happened to me, but then, I’ve only been in her office for two months. However, I am planning on working on a biography of Marcia sometime this year, and I have a feeling she’s going to be sitting on my shoulder correcting things that I’m writing.

Funnily enough, last week as I was wrapping up my slide show, and getting ready to send it to Tracy, my computer blinked out for a second, and when it came back on, the only document that I lost was the slide show. Coincidence??? Who knows.

I grew up in an old house where odd things routinely happened. And then I worked in a 12th century castle on the coast of Wales, so, as they say, I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.

Especially one who is a good spirit, like our ghost, Marcia Crocker Noyes.

Thank you.  

The 2024 Hunt History of Medicine Lecture: From Leeches to Lasers

Leeches to Lasers: 225 Years of Service

Since the earliest days of Maryland’s founding, there have always been medical practitioners in the population. Some had formal training, but many others did not. Many early physicians studied in Europe and then migrated to America. The first medical school in America opened in Philadelphia in 1765, and Marylander, John Archer was the first person to receive a medical diploma in America, mostly by dint of his last name.

Archer returned to his hometown of Bel Air, Maryland and opened the small Medical Hall,

a rudimentary medical school. His sons were his first students, and others gradually joined the student body. Medical Hall still stands in Bel Air, but is now a private home.

In 1779, Dr. Charles Weisenthal,

a Prussian physician in Baltimore, gathered other physicians to put a letter in the local paper to tell the population that they would be setting prices for certain common services, and not undercutting each other.

In June of 1790, physicians suggested a “humane society” where patients would know that their physician was reputable, and not a quack.

This was the first inkling of a medical society, although Dr. John Archer had established one in Harford County at his Medical Hall. In local papers in 1785, ‘86 and ‘88, there were discussions between physicians on the Western Shore of a “medical establishment,” limited to qualified physicians. It would also create a Board of Physicians who would license applicants to practice medicine.

Applicants and now members would pay a sum, which would also be used to maintain a medical library. And perhaps, eventually, a medical college might be established, with members of the board serving as its faculty. When this proposal went before the Maryland State Legislature, it was soundly rejected.

Small “medical schools” which mainly featured lectures, sprang up around Baltimore, and in 1788, anatomy students who had “acquired” a body of an executed prisoner, were set upon by a mob who took the cadaver by force. This is evidence of the first dissection mob.

By 1799, the original petitioners to the Maryland State Legislature had gathered more knowledge and additional supporters, and when the Charter

was brought before the Legislature on January 20 early in the session, the Legislature signed it into law and the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of the State of Maryland was established. 

As Dr. Eugene Fauntleroy Cordell says in his magnum opus,

The Medical Annals of Maryland, 1799-1899:

“It would be interesting to know the details of the Charter’s passage, to pry into the past and see the old doctors as they conferred over this document of such far-reaching significance. But these, like many other events connected with those early days, are hidden from us, perhaps forever, and we can only picture them to ourselves in our imagination.”

This might be a place to tell you to visit our YouTube page, MedChi Museum and Archives, for some five-minute videos on the founding of MedChi and the first meeting of the organization.

For the first few years of the organization, the members met every other year on the first Monday in June, and the meetings dealt with executive functions rather than medical knowledge. Board of Physician members continued to examine prospective members, and gradually elaborate orations were added to the meetings.

In 1807, the second part of the early discussions, establishing a medical school, came to fruition with the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty establishing one, which eventually became the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

On December 18, 1807, the College of Medicine in Maryland was chartered into law by the Maryland State Legislature.

The Charter established a close relationship between the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty and the College of Medicine which continues until today. Early members acted as the Board of Regents of the College, and as the faculty, which led to the shortening of the name to “The Faculty” for the next century and a half.

The Faculty’s president was the chancellor of the college and members were the original professors and lecturers at the college. Progress reports from the college were presented to the biennial meetings of the Faculty.

Although a number of early physicians had not formally attended medical schools, they used a system of preceptorship, or studying with an established physician, and became “Doctors of Medicine by Act of Assembly” from the College of Medicine.

In the early years, classes or lectures were held at the homes of the faculty members, but in 1813 the College of Medicine built what is now known as Davidge Hall, the oldest operational medical school building in the United States.

In addition to teaching medicine and surgery, conducting anatomical classes, the College and Faculty worked to contain diseases which ravaged the population.

The Faculty’s John Crawford, one of the earliest vaccinators, received strings which had been run through cow pox from his brother in England. When Crawford received them, he re-hydrated them, made a nick in between a patient’s thumb and forefinger, and ran the string through that, thereby vaccinating them.

Although the Faculty did not have a permanent location in Baltimore where the original Charter mandated meetings be held, Davidge Hall,

the city Athenaeum, and members’ homes were used for gatherings.

In 1830, the Faculty established a medical library, subscribing to a range of medical journals and other publications, so that each member did not have to. 

This established a congenial atmosphere where members could exchange information and knowledge, a hallmark of the organization for the next century and a half. The Faculty’s library went on to become one of the leading medical libraries in the states, and number more than 60,000 volumes.

As a part of the College of Medicine, Dr. Horace Hayden established one of the earliest schools of dentistry in the world in 1837. 

Hayden was a polymath, having been a cabin boy on sailing ships, a teacher, an architect and a renowned geologist. Our portrait of Dr. Hayden was painted by the famed Rembrandt Peale.

At the request of the Faculty, the American Medical Association had its first convention in Baltimore in 1848. It was the most important medical event of the year. In 1838, members of the Faculty had advocated for a national medical society, but it took a few years to come to fruition. One of the hot topics at the meeting was the use of anesthetics. The next time the AMA held their annual meeting in Baltimore was in 1899.

The Maryland Medical Journal was established in 1877, and continues until today. 

In fact, the November issue of Maryland Medicine will feature numerous articles on the history of our organization. Many of the earliest volumes have been digitized and are available on-line and are fully searchable.

Medicine was changing and medical schools were no longer limited to white men only.

Blacks and women were beginning to attend medical schools in greater numbers, and the first of each were admitted to membership at the Faculty in 1882. By 1885, numbers indicated that the by-laws needed to be changed to reflect this new reality, and the wording was changed from “gentlemen” to “persons.”

Medicine shifted again in 1889 when Dr. William Osler arrived for a 16-year stay in Baltimore.

He was appointed the first Chief of Medicine at Johns Hopkins, and eventually taught at the School of Medicine. His approach to teaching combined traditional academic learning with a personal touch, visiting patients on the wards to see how and what they were feeling. He also established the system of residency, feeling that students weren’t quite ready after medical school, and that they needed more “hands on” education.

While Osler (as a reminder, Osler rhymes with dose) was teaching medicine, he was also lecturing around the world, hosting numerous luminaries visiting Baltimore, and working on his best-selling “Principles and Practice of Medicine,” which was in publication for more than 70 years.

His impact on medicine still echoes today.

Osler, a huge bibliophile, became president of the Faculty in 1896, and was eager to re-establish the library which had gone dormant, as did the Faculty, during the Civil War years. To accomplish that, he hired a young librarian to oversee the library.

Marcia Crocker Noyes eventually became the Executive Secretary of the Faculty, and worked there for 50 years. She and Osler worked to establish the Medical Library Association, which is still a vibrant organization and whose highest award is named for Marcia Noyes.

One of Osler’s fondest wishes was to have a permanent headquarters building after moving from place to place for almost a century. After he moved to Oxford, England to become the Regius Professor of Medicine, the Faculty acquired a piece of property on the west side of the Mount Vernon neighborhood in Baltimore.

Marcia visited several other medical societies’ headquarters to get ideas about what worked and what didn’t, and got together with the architects, Ellicott and Emmart, to design a building for the benefit of the members. It included several large meeting rooms, a dining room, reading rooms and a four-story stacks library with room for 60,000 books!

The building on Cathedral Street opened in 1909 with many luminaries in attendance, including Dr. William Osler who had arrived from England to be part of the opening for which he had long advocated, and to which he had generously donated.

In a letter to Marcia Noyes, Osler said that the building was perfect and that he had never been so proud of anything in his life.

With some slight changes, the building remains almost exactly as it appears on the original blueprints.

Sir William Osler died in 1919 of heart-break after the death of his only son in France during World War One. Memorial services were held around the world, including here in Baltimore. His books eventually ended up at McGill University in Montreal, although the Faculty benefitted from his generosity over the years, and they are now in our Rare Book Room.

Marcia Crocker Noyes died in 1946, four days after her 50^th anniversary of being hired to work at the Faculty. Her funeral was held in Osler Hall and 60 physicians acted as her pallbearers.

She is buried at Baltimore’s historic Green Mount Cemetery, along with her sister, Kitty, who brought her to Baltimore in 1895.

Soon after Marcia’s death, the first official Executive Director was hired at the Faculty, and began to professionalize the organization.

The membership had topped 2,000 and after many members had returned from World War II, the Faculty was more active than ever, and getting ready to celebrate the 150^th Anniversary.

Medical advances seemed to be coming faster than ever, and at the summer meeting in 1963, a group of members presented something new and un-heard of at the time, but in common parlance today. 

It was CPR, Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation. 

Sudden cardiac arrest is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, but CPR has been used to “bring people back to life.” It is one of the most important things that a layman can do to help a dying person. Combining the engineering skills with medical skills of professionals from Johns Hopkins, this new method of resuscitation was perfected and sent out to the masses who could possibly save a life.

Small and large advances in medicine have been made by members of MedChi over the centuries, but it’s not often that one has the impact that CPR has had.

When the Faculty built its headquarters space in 1909, we were flanked on one side by a row-house and on the other by a junior high school.

In the 1970s, the school was closed because of a reorganization, and the volume of asbestos in the space.

We were offered the building and the gymnasium for the sum of one dollar, and of course, accepted it! A few years later, after enough money was raised, the main building and the accompanying gymnasium were both fully renovated and merged with the original building, which was given some cosmetic updates.

In 1999, MedChi celebrated its 200th Anniversary with a series of events across the state of Maryland.  And now, we are celebrating our 225th  Anniversary.

When I think about the original 101 founders, I often wonder if they could ever have imagined that the organization they fought so hard to establish would still flourish all these many decades later. Would they be shocked to learn about medicine today, with radiation, laser surgery, gene replacement therapy, organ replacement surgeries, in vitro fertilization and so much more. 

Thank you.