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, 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, 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!