Happy New Year 2026!

 It's Just a Shock to Realize That 2025 is Over and We're Entering 2026!

Cheers!

Best Wishes for a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

Happy Holidays 2025

 Happy Holidays

From the History of Maryland Medicine!

Marcia Crocker Noyes  1888  New York City

Baltimore's Historic Hospitals, Part I (1770-1850)

Earlier this year, I taught a class called "Baltimore's History Through Its Buildings" and one of the sections was about Baltimore's historic hospitals. 

I have illustrated this lecture with both historic and contemporary photographs, engravings, and paintings from MedChi’s collection of historic portraits.

Name: Bayview Asylum & Almshouse                    Year Founded: 1773

Founded in 1773, the "Baltimore County and Town Almshouse for the Impoverished", was initially located half a mile west of the city, however, the expansion of the city resulted in a number of relocations. Drs. Clendenin and Cole were two of the early almshouse physicians.

In 1820, the facility was moved to the Calverton mansion, the country home of banker Dennis A. Smith. Calverton was used until 1866, when the institution made its final move to the east side of the city and the name was changed to Bay View Asylum because of its close proximity to the Chesapeake Bay. The elderly and disabled inhabitants of the Baltimore almshouse were outnumbered by the able-bodied poor who performed compulsory labor at the institution.

It housed both the impoverished and mentally ill. During the mid-1880s, William H. Welch, the pathologist of Johns Hopkins, began seeing patients as part of his research, creating the first major connection between the asylum and Johns Hopkins.

Its transition to a hospital began in 1925 when it became a hospital for acute and chronic care, as well as a tuberculosis hospital and renamed Baltimore City Hospitals. In 1984, the City of Baltimore transferred ownership of the Baltimore City Hospitals to Johns Hopkins Hospital, which renamed it the "Francis Scott Key Medical Center." In 1994 the name changed to the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, in efforts to convey its strong connection with Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Name: Home of the Friendless                       Year Founded: 1798

The Female Humane Associated Charity School was founded when a group of women banded together to assist widows and their children suffering in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War. Over the years, it merged with other organizations, including the Female Orphaline Charity School, Baltimore Female Orphan Asylum, the Home of the Friendless and finally the Baltimore Orphan Asylum. It moved around the city from Calvert Street to Mulberry Street to Stricker Street to Druid Hill Avenue.

Children were given an elementary English education, and girls were taught cooking, sewing, laundry and housework, so as to find suitable positions as servants. Boys were taught the trades, such as woodworking, carpentry and simple math and reading.

In 1926, a property on Woodbourne Avenue, known as Marble Hall, was donated by the Abell family. The house had been the summer home of philanthropist Enoch Pratt and was known as Tivoli. In 1965, the name of the organization was changed to Woodbourne, which remains to this day, and it provides psychiatric services for youth with behavioral and emotional issues.

Name: Hawkins Point Hospital                       Year Founded: 1800

Baltimore has been a port city for all city for all of its existance, and from the beginning, one thing that the city wanted to do was prevent diseases carried on ships from infecting the citizens. A hospital was established at Hawkins Point, close to where the Key Bridge was located, so ships could stop and their crews could be given a health check. Anyone who was not deemed to be healthy was sent to the “Quarantine & Pest Hospital of the Port of Baltimore.”

Lazaretto Point, just across from Fort McHenry was a smallpox quarantine hospital in the early 1800’s. Lazaretto seems an unusual name for a hospital in the American colonies. As it turns out, the word would become a common English term for isolation facilities and quarantine hospitals, ceasing to be a proper noun at all.

Dr. Francis Donaldson was the only physician at the Marine Hospital who escaped an epidemic of typhus which swept the hospital in 1848.

Name: Baltimore General Dispensary           Year Founded: 1801

Over the years, there were a number of dispensaries in Baltimore, but the Baltimore General Dispensary was first to open in 1801, providing medical and health services to the poor in Baltimore. It was founded by Dr. James Crawford, who was also the founder and most active member of the Maryland Society for Promoting Useful Information (something which I’d love to join!).

The Daughters of Charity were extensively involved in many hospitals over the years, dating back to 1823, in answer to a call to staff the Baltimore Infirmary. Many members of the Faculty were closely associated with the Baltimore General Dispensary over the decades, including Ashton Alexander, whose family gave their name to Alexandria, Virginia.

The Baltimore General Dispensary was one of a number of dispensaries scattered through the city, some standing alone, and others associated with a hospital. Funds to support this Dispensary came from the State lottery, concerts, and “Fines imposed by the Sheriff's office on persons keeping houses of ill-fame.”

In 1959, a decision was made to sell the Dispensary building and establish a foundation which would grant money to the city and hospitals for the free distribution of medicine at out-patient clinics.

Name: College of Medicine in Maryland                Year Founded: 1807

On December 18, 1807, the Legislature passed a bill creating the College of Medicine in Maryland. However, this would never have happened without the work of several members of the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty, including Dr. John B. Davidge. From the Annals of Medicine, published on our centenary in 1899, “The founding of this college, the forerunner of the University of Maryland, emanated from and owes its existence directly to the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty.”

However, it was almost over even before it started! Dr. Davidge owned a building on Liberty Street, near Saratoga where he began instructing students in anatomy. He “procured a subject” and began classes. Prejudice against dissection by the general public was great and they were bent on destroying the building and its contents, and lit it on fire. However, professional physicians had the opposite reaction. They rallied to Davidge’s support, found another building, collected funds and secured the necessary legislation to allow dissections to continue.

The story doesn’t end there! What is now Davidge Hall was built in 1814, conveniently right around the corner from the Westminster Burying Ground, and there are stories about the medical staff procuring cadavers from the newly dug graves! Story about John Davidge.

After several mergers, the College of Medicine in Maryland became the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Name: Washington Medical College/Church Home     Year Founded: 1835/1854

Originally founded as the Washington Medical College in 1835 and later merged with St. Andrew’s Infirmary. Dr. Horatio Gates Jameson was the head, along with five other physicians.

Dr. Jameson was in a feud with another member of the Faculty, Dr. Frederick E.B. Hintze. Jameson’s colleagues were jealous of him, and one, Dr. Hintze published a pamphlet disparaging Dr. Jameson’s surgical skills, so Jameson sued. He was awarded $50, but Hintze assigned away all of his property so not to have to pay Jameson.

Edgar Allan Poe was taken to this location when he was found semiconscious and ill in a street gutter near East Lombard Street. This is where he subsequently died in October of 1849. Among other things, it is suspected that he died of rabies.

The building was purchased in 1857 by the Episcopal Church and renamed Church Home & Infirmary. Patients were required to present a certificate indicating that they were free from mental diseases before they would be treated.

The hospital closed in the early 2000s and the buildings are now used by Hopkins.

Name: Baltimore College of Dental Surgery              Founded: 1839

Between 1819 and 1825, Dr. Horace Hayden delivered a series of lectures on dentistry to medical students at the University of Maryland. In 1839, the dental school was chartered by the Maryland State Legislature as the first dental school in America, as there was a need for systematic formal education as the foundation for a scientific dental profession.

Dr. Hayden was a renaissance man, founding the Maryland Academy of Science, and serving as President. He was a geologist and botanist and published the first general book on geology in the USA. He also discovered a new mineral, named Hadenite in his honor.

For many years, the Dental School was located on Eutaw and Franklin Streets in the beautiful Charles Fish building. 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, interior shutters, and plaster cornices and medallions.

The present dental school evolved through a series of consolidations the final taking place in 1923 when BCDS and the Dental Department of the University of Maryland were combined to create a distinct college of the university under state supervision and control.

Name: Mount Hope Retreat for the Insane           Year Founded: 1840

Mount Hope was a private, Catholic institution founded by the Sisters of Charity in 1840. It was designed by the architects Long & Powell. In 1843, Dr. William H. Stokes became the supervisor of Mount Hope Retreat, located just north of Baltimore City on 300+ acres in a rural setting. He held that position for more than 40 years. Mount Hope was an atypical mental hospital – it was open and bright, and used non-restraint methods of care and a cottage plan for residents.

There was an infamous trial against Dr. Stokes and the Sisters of Charity alleging “false and injurious representations as to the management of an Insane Asylum,” assault and false imprisonment of several residents. 

The lengthy trial came to an abrupt end when the State said that it was “…unable to sustain the indictment under the evidence offered. From beginning to end, an utter shame and disgrace…” Dr. Stokes, whom the State had sought to brand as a liar and conspirator, was a gentleman of the highest personal and professional character whose life had been dedicated to the treatment of diseases of the mind.

The current four-story building, with a two-story chapel, was built in 1911. In 1940, it was renamed the Seton Institute. It closed in 1973 and the land was sold to the city for an office park.

Stay tuned for Part II (1851-1900)

Giving Tuesday 2025

MedChi's Museum and Archives are an important part of MedChi’s 226 year history, and play a vital role in the history of medicine, both in Maryland and around the world

MedChi recently received a challenge grant in the amount of $50,000 to support the History of Medicine in Maryland and everything that the program does. Over the past year, the Office of the History of Maryland Medicine has accomplished the following:

• Moved the rare book collection from the stacks, which were not climate controlled. The books are now in the rare book room, and have been catalogued, so we have a current catalogue of what is in our collection. 
• Set up social media accounts, including the MedChi Archives Blog, YouTube and Instagram to highlight MedChi’s history, and the vast number of items in our collections.
• Sourced donations to the Museum, including an 1845 painting of Founder, Tristram Thomas, on permanent loan from the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine Alumni Office. This painting measures 8’ x 5.5’.
• Secured items for the rare book collections, including a set of fifty 1813 French medical dictionaries, a 1925 second impression of Cushing’s Osler book and four Osler books,  including a limited 1926 edition of the “Osler Number.” 
• Reached out to the community through events including open houses, ghost tours, lectures at local colleges, women’s history month symposia, and more. 
• Catalogued thousands of photographs and scans so that anyone who accesses them in the future will know who, what, when, and where. 
• Met with colleagues in medical history, archives, and adjacent fields, and conducted tours with curators of local museums, historic houses, and archives. 
• Spoke at the annual American Osler Society’s conferences. The Director is now a Fellow of the American Osler Society.
• Wrote a biography of Marcia Crocker Noyes, an acolyte of Sir William Osler, who shaped the organization that MedChi is today.

However, historic preservation is not a job we can do by ourselves, and we need your financial help to support the continued care of these archival and museum pieces. At times over the past decades, our history has not played an important role at MedChi, and when we’ve searched through the archives, studied our paintings, and looked at our rare books, we’ve been dismayed to find that they’ve suffered the damage of the aging process. For the past ten years, we have worked to ensure that this no longer happens.

Please click here to match our generous challenge grant and support the work preserving the MedChi Museum and Archives.

Thank you very much!

 
Meg Fairfax Fielding
Director of the History of Maryland Medicine

Happy Thanksgiving!

 For the past 10 years or more, I have been dressing Marcia for the holidays. 

This year, I made a compilation of a number of these images!

Best wishes for a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

79 Years Later

It was 79 years ago today that Marcia Crocker Noyes took her last quiet breath at the Eudowood Sanitarium (below) in Towson, Maryland. She died just a few days after the 50th anniversary of her hiring at the Medical Faculty.

Initially, a party had been planned for the anniversary, but the physicians realized that she was probably not going to live until November (she did), and so planned a party for April of 1946. 

Marcia had just returned from the Medical Library Association's Annual Meeting in New Haven, CT. The experience exhausted her, and at the party, she had lost much of her voice. 

Years before, she had convinced the Library Committee to purchase a painting at auction, and had always said that if/when she retired, she was going to sneak the painting into her valise.

But that was not necessary, as the Faculty gave her the painting as a gift. When she died, she gave it back to the Faculty for their art collection, and it now holds pride of place above the fireplace in the Krause Room. 

Before Marcia died, she commented that she had not accomplished everything that she'd wanted to do during her 50 year tenure at the Faculty. She promised to rest for a few days, and then come back and "haint" the staff in order to get them to do what she wanted. 

And she has come back to "haint" all of us. If you want to learn the full story of Marcia's life, please click here to purchase and read a digital copy of her biography, written earlier this year. 

Of all of the images I've seen of Marcia, this one is my favorite.

I don't know the year of the photograph, but I love her steady gaze at the camera. 

Vaccines Start Early

I was looking through the Annals of Maryland Medicine, 1799-1899, this morning and came across this little reminder of how long we've had vaccines in the United States, and how incredibly important they are. 

In the 1813, the US Government, as mentioned, established the Vaccine Institute. Dr. John Crawford, a faculty member of the new medical school in Baltimore, knew that his brother back in England was vaccinating his patients against cow pox. 

Dr. Crawford's brother soaked some cloth in the pox, dried it and sealed it with varnish. The pox was potent enough that when it finally arrived by letter in Baltimore, the pox was still contagious. Dr. Crawford re-hydrated it and then made a small cut between his patients' thumb and forefinger and ran a thread soaked in the pox through the cut. 

This was a rudimentary vaccine, which went on to prevent thousands of deaths in Baltimore alone. 

Make of this what you will, but we've been vaccinating people in Baltimore for more than two hundred years. 

Please Join Us for the Third Annual Ghost Tour and Evening of Spooky Stories

For decades, there have been stories of staff members and others hearing footsteps echo in the hallways or on the stairs, finding items which appear with no explanation, or catching a glimpse of a figure out of a corner of an eye...

On Wednesday, October 29 and Thursday, October 30, from 6:30 to 7:30, MedChi will be hosting a Ghost Tour of MedChi's Historic Headquarters Building in Mount Vernon, which is reputed to be one of the five most haunted buildings in Baltimore. 

While we can't guarantee that you will see Marcia, we will tell you stories of her haunting of the building, show you our extensive stacks library, our timeless art collection and the historic medical equipment our physicians have used for the past 226 years. 

Copies of the recently published biography of Marcia will be for sale that evening. Tickets are $10 per person and will support the preservation of our archives. Click here for tickets!

Reservations are required. And don't forget to select which date you'd like to attend!

Carroll County Farm Museum

A few months ago, I got an email from the curator at the Carroll County Farm Museum telling me that they had found a number of items that had been loaned by MedChi in 1962. 

In late August, I made the trek up to Westminster to see what we had lent to them. They knew what items had been ours because of our unusual identification system - acquisition numbers painted in red nail polish. 

By Maryland law, after this much time has passed, legally, the Farm Museum now owns everything we lent them, but mostly, I was interested to see what they had. 

Almost everything had a note attached to it that the item had been donated by physicians from Carroll County.  

As we went through the items, one of us checked our Medical Annals of Maryland to see if we could find out about the donor, and another checked Google to see if we could figure out what the item was, as everything was not marked.

This was one of my favorite pieces, and if I could have snuck it out in my bag, I would have. It is a late 1800's inhaler for anesthesia or ether. It was a beautifully made English transferware piece, which I collect. 

There were several other inhalers, but they weren't nearly as glamorous! This is called Gwathmey's Gas Ether Inhaler. You can see where the bottom parts fits over your mouth and nose. 

Honestly, I hadn't been to the Carroll County Farm Museum for decades, so it was fun to visit again! 

Camp Seyon

A few weeks ago, I received an email from someone in Vermont whose family had owned the property that was Marcia Noyes' Camp Seyon (Noyes in reverse) on Lake George. 

Marcia ran a summer camp for girls for a number of years, finally selling the property in the 1930s. We have old advertisements for the camp, recruiting both counselors and campers. 

At first, the only building housed the kitchen with its huge, wood burning, cast iron stove and the great room with floor to ceiling book shelves, used principally as a dining hall for the girl's camp that had existed there since the turn of the century.

From an article about the property I found online: 

The girls slept on narrow, World War I army cots in large canvas tents rigged on wooden platforms.  Marcia Noyes (Seyon is Noyes spelled backward), who ran the camp, was an internationally known medical librarian at Johns Hopkins University the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland.

Johns Hopkins The Faculty provided her a penthouse apartment in Maryland and the Medical Librarians Association still gives out a yearly award in her honor. But Miss Noyes' summers were dedicated to the camp and her girls. Marcia had the Main House floated down from an island in the Narrows on a barge as the Camp was, then, a virtual island. A boggy path led across the isthmus to the peninsula but vehicles were left on the mainland.

After she sold the Camp, it seemed to remain in one family for several generations. When they finally sold it in the early 2000s, they kept a lot of things from the property. Among the items were some pieces from the Camp Seyon years. 

As one of the descendants was going through the papers, etc. he realized that they should be with Marcia's documents at MedChi, and not with the family, so he kindly sent them to us!

There were numerous ink printings of various ferns from the property, along with the scientific names and descriptions, all in Marcia's handwriting.

Additionally, there were some notes and letters, plus catalogues of various camping supplies. 

Here are some more pieces which were in the box.

We greatly appreciate the family's foresight in making sure that we received the documents from Camp Seyon, and they weren't just thrown away.

Wooden German Doctors

One of our generous donors gave us a set of hand-carved wooden German physicians. 

Each figure has a hand-written description of what type of doctor the figure represents, and some of the tools of the trade. Below is an ophthalmologist in one of our display shelves with some early 20th century ophthalmology tools.

The figures are displayed in our Krause Room, and are in shelves with some of our historic German medical books. In the image below, you can see on the left side, the figure in the rust apron and his specialty is listed as "chirurg" and behind him, a German book on surgery.

The next time you're in the building, stop by and take a look at them. They are so charming!

The figures are from the collection of Dr. John H. Talbott, Sr. who was among other things, the Editor of JAMA and a very important researcher on topics (during WWII) such as climate and its effects on soldiers, and later he was among those researchers who discovered colchicine, the first effective treatment for Gout. 

From Dr. Talbott's obituary in the New York Times on October 13, 1990:

Dr. John Harold Talbott, Sr. a researcher, educator and author, died Wednesday at a care community where he lived in Delray Beach, Fla. He was 88 years old and died of lymphoma, said his son, Dr. John A. Talbott of Baltimore.

Dr. Talbott wrote 12 books and hundreds of articles and was former editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association and the former director of scientific publications of the American Medical Association. He was also an editor of the Merck Manual and of his own journal, ''Seminars in Arthritis and Rheumatism.''

A 1929 graduate of Harvard University Medical School, Dr. Talbott did his internship at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. From 1930 to 1940 he was affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. In these years, he worked for the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory, where he did research on the physiological effects of exposure to high altitudes. He also did research on gout and arthritis.

In World War II, he was director of the Army Climatic Research Laboratories in Lawrence, Mass., where he studied environmental stress on soldiers produced by exposure to extreme temperatures.

He then spent 13 years at the University of Buffalo Medical School and at Buffalo General Hospital as a professor and chief of medicine. In 1959 he was named editor of the A.M.A. journal and remained there for 12 years. As editor, he was criticized by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare for issuing warnings on possible cancer-causing effects of smoking or food additives, calling them premature or without sufficient evidence. In 1971 he moved to Florida to serve as a professor of medicine at the University of Miami.

We are so delighted to have these wonderful figures as part of our collection!

The Details

As I mentioned, I recently acquired a drone! My drone's name is Daisy Drone because the blades of the motor look like daisy petals.

I had an opportunity to fly it outside our 1898 building to see the details a week or so ago. The building's details are brownstone, and 125+ years worth of being on a busy street has caused a lot of deterioration and discoloration. 

Droning On...

After wanting a drone for ages, I finally got one... and promptly flew it into the woods up at my friends' farm. Luckily, I had insurance on it, and got another one. But then, another friend was selling his, which was WAY easier to use than my original one, so I bought that and returned the replacement! 

Whew!

You might be asking what this might have to do with this History of Medicine blog, so I will tell you! There are artworks, busts, and other items that are out of my reach. I can't get a good "head on" view of these items to get a good identification for them. 

Sending a drone up, even ten feet or so, gets me at eye-level with the art work. Two of our busts are in the Krause Room, above the bookcases. Last year, I finally identified two of the bronze busts, but the only photos I got were from the ground (or my eye level) looking up.

Using my drone, whose name is Daisy Drone by the way, I took photos of the busts at eye level. 

Stay tuned for more drone photos, and me seeing what I can do with my new toy tool.

Marcia Crocker Noyes: The Librarian Who Never Left

I am so pleased to announce the publication of "Marcia Crocker Noyes: The Librarian Who Never Left," a biography of our librarian of 50 years.

Marcia was hired by Dr. William Osler in 1896 to be the first trained librarian for the Faculty, as it was then known. She was required to live and work on the premises, so that if a physician needed a book in the middle of the night, she could get it out of the stacks.

When we built our current building in 1909, she was highly involved in the design of it, as it was also to become her home. Marcia died in 1946 and her funeral was held in Osler Hall, a fitting testimony to her long friendship with Dr. Osler.

Of course, we've all heard stories about how she's never left the building. In fact, in her latter years, she mentioned that she would stay away for a few days, and then come back to haint (haunt) the building. And indeed, she has!

The book is available in two formats: an 80-page soft-cover edition for $30.00, and a digital format for $5.00. The funds raised by the sale of the book will be used to support the MedChi archives. 

To purchase the book in either format, either scan or click the QR code below. 

I hope that you will enjoy reading the book as much as I did researching and writing it!