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!

1215-1217 Cathedral Street

I recently found out that MedChi once owned the two buildings directly to the north of our 1909 building, 1215 and 1217 Cathedral Street.

The School 49 building is on the right and 1215-1217 is to the left. 

In 1935, the owner of the two properties died, and in 1936, the Faculty, as it was then known, bought the two for $6,500, or $862,000 in today's money. The plan was to expand the Faculty's building and relocate the Board of Medical Examiners and the Committee on Careers in Nursing to the building. 

At the semi-annual House of Delegates meeting, the members were encouraged to visit the new buildings, and check the display of bookplates (some of which are now displayed in our Museum).

On the left side of the image, you can see a "white" house that looks like two joined houses, which would have been 1215 and 1217.

During the 1950's, plans were to demolish the two buildings and build a three-story building as an annex to the 1909 building.

But at the semi-annual House of Delegates meeting in April of 1960, that plan was dropped and a new plan was formulated to renovate and upgrade the original building, including adding an elevator, air conditioning and new seating for Osler Hall. 

This may have been the period in which all of the decorative elements from Osler Hall were removed and the Hall was stripped to Mid Century Modern blandness. (Details here)

Osler Hall, Circa 1962

At some point in the early 1960s, the buildings were demolished.

1961 and the adjacent buildings have been demolished.  Cathedral Street is one-way, southbound.

Plans to build a parking lot there to supplement the parking on the Maryland Avenue side. Half of the current lot was the playground for the adjacent School #49. 

The Mistake on the Seal!

I am going to tell you a story about MedChi’s historic seal.

It became part of our “brand” soon after our founding in 1799. Eventually, it was one of several bookplates for book collections that were funded by donors, such as the Frick Family.

It was a rather dour looking piece, with the figure of Aesculapius with his serpent-entwined staff. It was originally rendered in red and black, with deep-set eyes. He was known as “old potato head.”

In our centennial book, there is a slightly different version of the potato head with more hair and more rays emanating from his head.

After we moved into the new building in 1909 and the library continued to grow, we asked the medical illustrator, Max Brödel to design an updated seal for us. You can see the date on Brödel’s original sketch of the seal.

It wasn’t until the 1930’s that it was finally engraved, and hundreds of copies were printed to place in our book collections.

Soon, we received a letter from one of our members, letting us know that there was a mistake on the seal. Around the bottom edge of the seal are a few words in the Greek alphabet. One of the letters is incorrect. 

And because that letter is wrong, it changes the meaning of the sentence! It should read, “A physician is of more value than many other men for the dressing of wounds and the stilling of pain,” from Homer’s Illiad, Book II, Line 514.

The mistake was combining a Greek Z and a Greek X, when there is no such letter. It should have been three parallel lines, with the middle one a little shorter.

The mistake was corrected, and new bookplates were printed.

We still have some digital copies of the mistaken seal, but I try and check to make sure we’re using the correct one.  

Another Mystery Solved

In our beautiful Krause Room, there are four busts that look down from the trim that surrounds the room and tops the bookcases. They are about ten feet off the ground, and are a bit difficult to see.

But half of that mystery was recently solved, when searching through an 1899 Maryland Medical Journal article about MedChi’s history. In the article, there was an engraving of a bronze bust with the caption as follows: Engraved from bronze bust in possession of Medical & Chirurgical Faculty. Nathan R. Smith, MD of Baltimore, 1797-1877.

Dr. Smith lived in Baltimore and was selected to become the chair of surgery at the University of Maryland in 1827, commencing an eventful, 50-year career. Considered a bold and skillful operator, Smith was known to his students as “The Emperor.” His removal of a goiter from a patient was the first procedure of its kind in Maryland and only the second thyroidectomy in the country. 

Something about the engraving in the article seemed familiar, so I went to the Krause Room to take close-up images of the busts. Once I spent a few minutes comparing the actual bronze to the engraving of the bronze, I realized that that they were the same person: Nathan Ryno Smith, MD. Interestingly, it looks like there are two small repairs on the bust, one on the top of his head and a smaller one on his clavicle.

As I continued to read the article, I realized another image showed the second of the four busts!

It is John D. Buckler, MD (1785-1866) and again, it’s an engraving from a bust in our collection.

He graduated from the University of Maryland in 1817 and was an adjunct professor of anatomy there, as well. This one was a bit easier because the hairstyles are so similar. 

Two down. Two to go!