Beautiful Bills

I found a file filled with bills from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and they are gorgeous! Many of them have beautiful engravings on them, which either depict the goods they are offering or the building where they’re located. Some of the buildings are still standing, but most were lost in the Baltimore Fire in 1904.

Here are a few of the ones that I like the most.

People with Flags!

Animals & Birds

Buildings

Ships

Household goods

Multi-Colored Inks

Fancy Fonts & Great Typesetting

Don’t you wish the bills you received looked this great?

Ashton Alexander (1772-1855)

When I started photographing the portraits, I was not at all methodical about it, rather, I’d have my camera with me, see someone I’d not photographed before and then take a picture. I knew that if I had a picture in color, it was a painting. Engravings and black and white images came from either our 1899 Annals of Maryland Medicine, or the 100th anniversary of our library book.

I was in one of the other buildings on our “campus” and saw a painting of Ashton Alexander, our first secretary, an early treasurer and our last surviving member. Of course, I took a picture of the painting. When I got back to my office, I realized that I already had a color image of Alexander. Hmmmm… how was that possible?

It turns out that we have an original painting, which is in our Physician Health Program building,  and a copy of the painting, which is in our Founders Hall.

I went back and checked the 2002 Sotheby’s appraisal, and sure enough, only one copy of the painting was listed. And it was by Philip Tilyard, a well-known painter in Baltimore in the early 1800’s. Philip Tilyard studied with his father, an English painter who had immigrated to America. After his father died, Tilyard worked with another artisan for a year and then with his brother as a sign and ornament painter. In 1814, the Baltimore City Directory listed his occupation as “portraitist.” For a short time, Tilyard went into the dry goods business, but was unsuccessful and returned to making signs to support himself. Tilyard eventually built back his reputation as a portrait painter for wealthy Baltimore citizens. But this success did not last long, and he died poor from what his obituary described as a “lingering illness.”

Back to Ashton Alexander…

Ashton Alexander was born near Arlington, VA in 1772, where his family owned large tracts of land, and the town of Alexandria was named for them. He was privately educated and then studied medicine as a student of Dr. Philip Thomas, of Frederick, MD and then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his degree in 1795. He first settled in North Carolina and then came to Baltimore in 1796.

He was a founder of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland and its first secretary (1799-1801); then he was treasurer (1801-1803) and the last surviving charter member.

Additionally, he was Commissioner of Health in Baltimore from 1804-05 and again in 1812; Attending Physician, Baltimore General Dispensary, 1801-03; Consulting Physician, Baltimore Hospital, 1812; President District Medical and Chirurgical Society, 1819-20; Provost, University of Maryland, 1837-50.

He was married, first to Catherine Thomas, a daughter of Dr. Philip Thomas, and fathered eight children, only three of whom survived to adulthood, and all of whom died before he did. In his later years, he was married to Miss Sarah Roger Merryman.

Dr. Alexander is described as being “a self-possessed and courteous man, neat in his dress which included knee and shoe buckles and gold-headed cane.” He died of pneumonia in Baltimore in February, 1855, in his eighty-third year.

 

In my opinion, the top painting is the one by Tilyard. It’s beautifully painting, with a luminosity to it. The second picture is muddied and not well-detailed.

ExLibris: The Bookplate Collection, Part II

In December, I posted the first of the bookplate collection and when I found another fascinating plate this week, I was reminded to write another bookplate post.

MedChi had a lending library for many years, and members could join for the princely sum of $1.00. However, there were some rules, which were spelled out in this bookplate.

I love that this was unevenly cut out and glued in the front of one of our books. It’s the first one like this I’ve seen, and it must be between the 1850’s and the 1870’s according to the library history. This was a period when the library was at its low point, and members had borrowed, and not returned, so many books that the Board considered closing the library.

I found a similar plate in an old botany book, but it’s from the The Library Company of Baltimore. It’s printed on green paper similar to the MedChi plate, and the rules are a little less onerous.

The by-laws refer to some of the pamphlets in now-historic terms: duodecimo, octavo, quarto and folio. These were printing terms. Here’s a great explanation from Abe Books:

A book’s format refers to the shape and dimensions of the physical book.  When browsing bookseller catalogs and listings on the Internet, the terms and abbreviations used to describe book sizes (8vo, 12mo, folio, quarto, etc.) can seem confusing at first.

Essentially these terms are simply an explanation of the book’s evolution from single sheets of paper into a completed book with printed pages. Each term defines how many times the initial piece of paper was folded to become pages.  Using this terminology, the term ‘Folio’ would tell us that the original sheet of paper was folded once, resulting in two leaves.  Therefore a book described as ‘Quarto’ would have its original sheet folded twice and would have four leaves - each leaf being one-quarter or one fourth the original size.

To make life even simpler, remember ‘Folio’ is a large upright-shaped book and an ‘Octavo’ is a small upright-shaped book, while a ‘Quarto’ is in-between the two and mostly square-shaped. 

The book where I found this bookplate is not something I’d spend any of my free time reading.

Most fortunately, this book was not illustrated.

1211 in 1909

In 1909, MedChi purpose-built a headquarters building, which we still use today. It was modeled on other medical society buildings from New York and Boston. It was designed by Ellicott & Emmart, a Philadelphia firm who designed other well-known buildings in Baltimore, including this house in Guilford, and St. David’s Church in Roland Park.

Upon the opening of the building, there was a large ceremony with many notables from Baltimore, including Cardinal Keogh. Several pictures were taken, which still survive.

Luckily, there’s a close-up of the people in front of the building.

So, I took the two and merged them, with the close-up overlaid on the other image.

I am pretty happy with the result!

MedChi’s Library

In preparation for a meeting with several members of the University of Maryland’s Medical Library, I prepared a brief timeline of the history of MedChi’s Library.

In 1830, Samuel Baker, M.D., proposed a resolution to establish a medical library, which was passed and the Library Committee was formed. John Fonerden, M.D. was appointed as the first librarian and the Library was located in his private home. An allocation of $500 was given to establish the Library and Dr. Fonerden was given a salary of $100 a year.

Samuel Baker, MD

John Fonerden, MD

The first catalogue was printed in 1833 and numbered 569 books. In 1835, the Library was relocated to the home of Dr. Samuel Chew, on Lexington Street, and by 1840, it had moved to his office at 88 N. Howard Street. In 1846, a catalogue of the Library’s holdings was printed and distributed to every member.

By 1855, the Library had begun its decline, and subscriptions to all of the periodicals and books were discontinued. Although the Library was reported to have 1,250 volumes, there were significantly fewer, as members, against the rules, had borrowed many of the books and not returned them. By 1858, the Executive Committee had voted to close the Library due to its sad condition. But the Library held on, with the books remaining in its possession.

In 1874, the Library had added no books, held no meetings and only had $60 in its accounts. But 36 volumes were donated to the Library, regardless. In 1876, $350 was allocated to the Library and each member was assessed $4.00 to help rebuild the Library. By 1879, a card catalogue system had been established, one for authors and one for book titles.

By 1880, the Library was on an upward trajectory, and there were more than 2,700 volumes on its shelves. Although there’s no mention of the location of the Library, it was most likely at the Faculty’s Hall on East Fayette Street. The Library had become one of the most important facets of the Faculty by 1882. It was at this time that the Library Committee began to look for a building which could house the Library and which was also fireproof.

By 1886, the Library had relocated to the Mercantile Library Rooms, which had glass-fronted shelves which could hold up to 50,000 volumes, although they only had one-tenth that number of books. Members paid the sum of $1 a year for a key to the reading rooms. The Library was by now subscribing to medical journals from England, France, Germany and other countries which had major medical universities. The card catalogues were in order and so were the books.

By 1888, William Osler, M.D., had arrived in Baltimore and he was a great bibliophile. In his work bridging Johns Hopkins Medical School and the greater medical community in Baltimore, he became active in the Faculty’s Library. The Library’s volumes had increased to more than 9,000 and another permanent location was being investigated. It was with his urging that the Frick family made a significant gift to the Library to establish a separate reading room, purchase books on topics which Dr. Charles Frick had been interested and to support the Library and reading room and Library with an annual contribution.

In 1896, it is reported that “a lady librarian has been hired” and she’s Marcia Crocker Noyes, who turned out to be the Faculty’s librarian for the next 50 years. The Library also begins keeping full hours – from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. More than 3,000 visitors had come to use the library, which by then had more than 7,500 volumes. The Library had also moved again and it was located in an antebellum mansion on North Eutaw Street, and an apartment was provided for Miss Noyes on the premises.

In the year of the Faculty’s centennial, the Library was doing better than it ever had and had more money in its coffers than anyone would have imagined. In addition to the books it purchased, it also received numerous donations of the libraries of deceased members. In 1899, that numbered more than 1,200 volumes.

By 1909, the Faculty had moved yet again, but this time into its new purpose-build headquarters. A four-story stacks library was included in the original plans, and a large sunny reading room was included as well. There was an office for the library staff adjacent to the reading room, and the librarian, Marcia Noyes, was on-call around the clock.

When the building was constructed, the Faculty built her a “penthouse” apartment on the top floor of the building. This meant that she could be reached at any hour of the day or night to provide assistance to the doctors who called searching for a particular book.

Sir William Osler’s role in the library cannot be underestimated. It was his drive and reputation that helped bring the library into prominence in the country. When he left Baltimore, members of the Faculty raised money for a special fund for the library and Osler’s colleague at Hopkins, Max Brödel designed a bookplate for these volumes. Sir William would send special and valuable books to the library even after he had moved to England. Upon his death, another fund was established to provide books for the library.

Max Brödel, the premiere medical illustrator at Johns Hopkins, also designed the seal for the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty and it was used as the bookplate for the library, along with plates he designed for John Ruhräh, M.D., and Thomas S. Cullen, M.D.

At its peak, the Library housed more than 65,000 volumes, dating from the 1500’s to the late 1900’s. In 2004, the decision was made to eliminate the position of librarian and to de-accession some of the Library’s more valuable volumes, in part because MedChi lacked the financial resources to care for the books. Members were invited to come and select the books they wished to have for their own libraries and the stacks were closed to the membership.

However, more than 50,000 books remain, and there is still the occasional query for a specific volume. The card catalogues, with their thousands of cards, many hand-written, still remain, and anyone wanting to hunt for a specific book would be welcome to try and find it.