New Acquisitions

I recently found out that Marcia was a big fan of auctions, and when we moved into our building in 1909, she scoured the local auction rooms for furnishings for the building. She collected paintings, rugs and furniture to make the building feel like a warm and welcoming place for the members. 

Over the past 12 years, I've continued the tradition of buying items for the building and collections from auctions. Recently, I made a great purchase, which I got for my favorite hammer price - insultingly low!

I got Sir William Osler, Bart. [Baronet] Brief Tributes to His Personality, Influence and Public Service (Baltimore, JHU Press, 1920; A Way of Life (Baltimore, Remington, 1928) and The Bibliography of the Writings of Sir William Osler, Minnie Wright Blogg (Baltimore, Privately Printed, 1921). Miss Blogg was the librarian at Johns Hopkins Hospital. 

Another book I won was Sir William Osler Memorial Number: Appreciations and Reminiscences (Montreal: Privately Published, 1926) 619 pages. 

The memorial number is FILLED with dozens of photographs, many of which I'd not seen before. It was printed in a limited edition and the copy which I got is number 1424 of 1500.

The book is more than 600 pages and there are numerous essays from each part of Osler's life, including the early years, Montreal, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Oxford.

Many of the essays are reminisces from old friends and colleagues.

It has been fascinating looking through the book, and when I have the time, I will pick and choose the essays I want to read.

What I Found: Baron von Munchausen

About 100 years ago, we inherited an old medical case. It was rosewood with silver corner pieces and an escutcheon.

It was given to MedChi by the descendants of a young physician who had emigrated to Baltimore with his seven children.

The story is that he had received it from a grateful patient, one Baron von Munchausen, who had liberated it from Napoleon’s physician at the Battle of Waterloo.

We have all the documentation about the family donating the “Napoleon Chest” to us, but when we investigated the rest of the story, things weren’t quite as clear.

The Battle of Waterloo was in 1817, and Baron von Munchausen lived in the early 1700s. He was a fantasist who was renowned for making up incredible stories.

Oddly enough, as I was going through some books here at the office, I stumbled upon a copy of “Baron Munchausen Illustrated.” This is possibly a second edition of the book from around the mid-1780s. The book about a fictionalized character named after a real person. 

The author, a German writer, scientist and con artist, Rudolf Erich Raspe, probably met the real Baron at the University of Göttingen. Raspe’s career mixed writing and scientific scholarship with theft and swindling.

Regardless of that, Raspe was a prolific writer, with at least eight different books about the Baron. The book I found has the most charming illustrations, which help tell the crazy stories, such as flying on a cannonball after a battle,

and riding a seahorse under the ocean.

The books are all written as if Baron von Munchausen himself was the narrator. In addition to the books, some of which are still being published, there are a number of movies which have been made of these stories, the most recent of which was in 2012 by Terry Gilliam.

Here are some additional illustrations. 

If you are in the area, please get in touch with me and I’d be happy to show you our Napoleon Chest and the rest of our Museum of Medical History.  

More Mencken

You may remember that a few months ago, I found a cache of letters from the noted writer, H.L. Mencken to Max Brödel, the first non-physician member of MedChi. You can read the letters here.

While I was poking around today, I found another Mencken-related piece. Dr. John Ruhräh was a long-time member of MedChi and very active in the organization. 

What I found was a book of Mencken's quotes personally inscribed to Dr. Ruhräh, with Dr. Ruhräh's bookplate, illustrated by Max Brödel, on the front cover. 

I love how this one little book is emblamatic of our town, Smalltimore!   

I did authenticate the Mencken signature by comparing it to other signatures, including one on a letter we have here from Mencken to Marcia Noyes.  

Seeing in 3-D, Circa 1905

One of the most interesting things in our collection is a number of boxes of photographs from "Edinburgh Anatomy" which contain hundreds of slides. 

In 1905, David Waterston edited "The Edinburgh Stereoscopic Atlas of Anatomy", which consisted of 250 stereograms, mounted on cards, and housed in five volumes. 

The "Edinburgh Atlas" was prepared under the control of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Edinburgh. In 1908-1909, the general anatomy was followed by the more specialized Edinburgh Stereoscopic Atlas of Obstetrics in four volumes. 

At the same auction where I found the Yardley map of Johns Hopkins, I also found one of the devices used to view the stereograms. 

Although we already have one of the stereoscopes, it's in another cabinet, in another part of the building.

Now the viewer is with the images. 

More About the Lecture Book

We received a very interesting email about the Lecture notebook from Earle Havens, who is the Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Hopkins Sheridan Libraries and Museums. 

In the email, he writes:

This is quite interesting indeed! An interleaved and annotated book (so bound from the date of the spine illustration, which is clearly from the period of the book’s initial publication). It was specially bound for the purpose of annotation. The dated/located note in manuscript facing page 41 (“Philadelphia 1868”?) gives some internal evidence for dating the annotations. This is rare in any book, but a long tradition regardless, of recipes for “simples” (i.e., medicinal preparations and compounds) comprised here not only of naturalia (i.e., naturally occurring herbs, roots, ground resins, metals, etc.) but also of artificially formed chemicals, some perhaps commercially available (by the mid-19^th c.) through industrial means.

As we have further examined the lecture book, it seems that the lectures are really just the outlines, and that the students filled out the details. It makes fascinating reading. Too bad it's not also illustrated with the wonderful old botanic engravings!

 

On My Desk: Lecture Notes from 1855

Our friends from the Harford County Historical Society came down for a tour last week and brought along some presents for us! They were de-accessioning some medical books which were not relevant to their collections and thought we'd be interested in them. 

One in particular caught my eye. The book is "The Synopsis of the Course of Lectures on Materia Medica and Pharmacy, Delivered in the University of Pennsylvania, 1855. 

What's fascinating about this book is that about half of the pages are blank, so someone could amend the lectures with their own notes. Even more interesting is that the notes look to have been taken over a number of years by various students. 

Some of the writing is the beautiful copperplate writing of the age, clearly done in a pen dipped in ink. Other writing is less beautiful and almost scribbled in pencil.

I have never seen this in any of our other books and was surprised when I started flipping through it and found all of the hand-written notes. 

Another interesting aspect of the book was the botanical notes on everything from camphor to calamine to cannabis. 

It is always a lot of fun to share what I find on my desk.

Another Piece of Baltimore History

One of our generous members kindly dropped off a print for us the other week, and I’ve just had the chance to take a really good look at it.

It is essentially a view from the old Church Home & Hospital, from where Johns Hopkins is situated today. You can see the iconic dome of Church Home in the center of the image. The amazing building on the right in the foreground is Fairmount Hill Vocational High School, which is no longer in existance.

Fairmount Gardens, near the intersection of East Fayette and Broadway, served as a private pleasure ground in the decades before the Civil War. The hotel with observation deck to the right, “situated upon the most lofty pinnacle near our city, stands in the centre of an enclosure of about five acres,” where visitors could treat themselves to ice cream, a lemonade, or a Baltimore seasonal favorite, strawberries and cream.

Along the bottom of the image is a series of numbers which correspond with highlighted locations.

The map was drawn by Edward Sachse, a premiere map-maker in the mid 1800’s, and the maker of what is called the most spectacular drawing of Baltimore ever made. Measuring 10 ½ feet by 5 feet and produced in 12 sections, the Bird’s Eye View of Baltimore, printed by the lithographic firm of E. Sachse and Company in 1869, is probably the “largest panoramic view of an American city ever published.”

The map is reputed to show every house, church, business, and park—many in fine detail—in Baltimore, which in 1869 was bound to the north by Northern Avenue (today North Avenue), Canton to the east, Gwynns Run to the west, and the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River to the south.

There is even a detail of MedChi’s corner of Preston & Cathedral Streets in the 1850’s, long before we were located there. A downloadable copy from the Library of Congress is here.

For more on Sachse, click here for a Maryland Historical Society article.

We are so delighted to have this amazing piece as part of our collection!

What I Found on My Desk

After returning from a nice long four-day weekend, I came into my office to see a nice bright-blue bag on my desk. Looking forward to a treat, I was a wee bit taken aback to find a vintage glass syringe and a pocket scalpel!

It was kindly given to us by Rosalyn Berkowitz, a forensic nurse examiner who attended the Hunt Lecture last week.

What I Found: Pressed Flowers

On Friday afternoons, I generally poke around the archives and the stacks. Today, I was searching for something specific, which I didn’t find, to my chagrin.

But I did find an early copy of the Dictionary of Chemicals, published in 1771. 

As I leafed through the book, something caught my eye, and so I flipped through, page by page, until I found it.

It was a petal, pressed between the pages. I tried to see if there was something specific on the page that would explain why the petal was there, but nothing caught my eye.

As I continued turning page, I found more and more petals, some making heart shapes on the pages.

I thought this was so enchanting, and wondered who had put the petals there, and why they were keeping them.

At the end of this volume, I found this wonderful table of chemical characters,

and this note to the book-binder.

I love discovering things like this.

What I Found on My Desk: Isaac Ridgeway Trimble

I guess that should really read who I found on my desk. It’s a small commemorative paperweight for Isaac Ridgeway Trimble, the surgeon. He was born in 1860 and died very young, in 1908.

Isaac Ridgeway Trimble was born at Wye House in Talbot County, Maryland on October 10, 1860. He was a member of an old Maryland family whose roots extended back to the early days of Maryland’s founding. He was the grandson of Major General Isaac R. Trimble, a hero of the Confederate Army. He was educated at Shenandoah Valley Academy and Johns Hopkins University. He received his M.D. from University of Maryland in 1884.

Dr. Trimble was a Resident Physician at the University Hospital, 1884-85; Assistant Surgeon, Fifth Regiment of Maryland National Guard from 1889 to 1899; Surgeon, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, from 1890 until his death; Professor of Anatomy and Operative and Clinical Surgery, Woman's Medical College, Baltimore, 1891-99; Dean, Woman's Medical College, 1894-96; Lecturer on Clinical Surgery, University of Maryland, 1894-99; Professor of Anatomy and Clinical Surgery, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Baltimore, 1899-; Surgeon in Chief, United Railway and Electric Company of Baltimore.

Dr. Trimble was a member of many of the influential clubs and societies in Baltimore during his lifetime. He also had a large and influential medical practice, and gave what spare time he had to the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty. He died young from blood poisoning following surgery on an inflamed kidney on February 24, 1908. A lecture series was later established in his name, and from the program comes this explanation:

Oddly, there’s no information about Dr. Trimble in the Medical Annals of Maryland, although he would have fit in the 100+ year time-frame of the book.

The plaque or medal or paperweight is quite small, about 3x2.5 inches. It looks to be bronze and is beautifully detailed. He had quite a striking profile. If you look just behind Trimble’s shoulder, you can make out the words, J.M. Miller, 1916. I am informed by my sources that this is Joseph Maxwell Miller (1887-1933), a sculptor living and working in Baltimore at that time. Here’s a little information that I gleaned from the Archives of American Art:

Miller received his diploma from the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of Mechanical Arts in 1897; two awards, an Honorable Mention from the Society of French Artists, Salon 1902 and Silver Medal from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Missouri, 1904; sculptor of the monument to the Confederate Women of Maryland;

Biographical/Historical Note: Sculptor; Baltimore, Maryland. Received his early art education at the Maryland Institute where he won the Rinehart scholarship to study in France. He showed at the Salon des Artistes and was made officer of the Academie Francais. He was a member of the National Sculpture Society and the Charcoal Club. He is buried in Green Mount Cemetary in Baltimore.

Look Who I Found!

Although I sound like a crazy person when I say it, I truly believe that Marcia finds things for me. Most recently, I was working in the stacks, and when I was shutting off the lights, and closing the door, I happened to look down and see the corner of a picture frame. I yanked it out and discovered a gorgeous oval frame with a handsome man in it. The picture appears to be an enlarged photograph of a painting, and is listed on the 1961 acquisition list as a photo enlargement.

Luckily, there was an acquisition number on the reverse, so with a few keystrokes, I was able to find that it was Peregrine Wroth (1786-1879), an Eastern Shore physician in the 1800’s. He was educated at Washington College in Chestertown, and was a student of Drs. Edward Worrell and Morgan Brown. He attended lectures at Penn, and received an honorary degree in 1841 from the University of Maryland. 

Wroth began practicing in Chestertown in 1807 as a partner of Dr. Brown, and taught at Washington College from 1846 to 1854. He was also the President of the school’s Board of Visitors. The image below is from Cordell’s Annals.

In 1868, Wroth moved to Baltimore where he became a founder of the AMA and the College of Pharmacy in Baltimore. He was a Vice President of the Faculty several times: 1848-51, 1853-54, and 1856-57. Although he signed a diploma as President, in 1849, he’s not listed on the roll of Presidents.Peregrine Wroth died in Baltimore on June 13, 1879.