MedChi on WYPR-FM

As I mentioned, I recorded a segment for the Maryland Humanities Council a few weeks ago, and it aired last week. You can click here to hear the piece. It doesn’t sound like me, though!

Just so you don’t have to listen to the whole piece, here’s the text:

It was 217 years ago this week that a group of physicians from every county in Maryland met in Annapolis. They petitioned the legislature to establish a medical society to prevent the citizens from risking their lives at the hands of pretenders to the healing art. Thus was born The Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland – chirurgical coming from the Latin word for surgical. Today, the Faculty is known as MedChi, The Maryland State Medical Society.

From its earliest days, MedChi was located in Baltimore. Members met to share and disseminate the latest medical information, much of which came from Europe. And because there was no medical school in Maryland at that time, in 1807 members of MedChi created what is now the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine, and acted as the faculty of the school.

Education is a big part of MedChi. In the 1800’s, orators selected from the membership gave lengthy lectures on important medical topics. In 1849, a medical library was established, with subscriptions to bulletins and journals from specialty, state and international medical societies available for the members to read.

In the mid-1800’s, MedChi began publishing a medical journal, first weekly and eventually monthly. The journals were filled with the most current medical information, as well as physicians’ comings and goings, and were eagerly anticipated by the membership. A medical journal, now titled Maryland Medicine, is still published today, and the orations are now lunch-and-learn meetings, or on-line seminars.

In the 1880’s, when the famed Dr. William Osler arrived in Baltimore to work at the new Johns Hopkins Hospital, he quickly became a member of MedChi and took great interest in the library of 7,000 volumes, many of those outdated. He hired a young librarian, Miss Marcia Noyes, who worked at MedChi for 50 years, and lived in the headquarters building from the time it was built until her death in 1946.

Over the years, MedChi’s library grew to encompass more than 55,000 volumes, housed in the four-story cast-iron stacks library. From tiny books, hand-printed in the 1600’s, to huge beautifully engraved anatomical guides, the library provides a unique look at medicine through the ages.

MedChi’s collection of portraits, painted by everyone from Rembrandt Peale to Stanislav Rembsky, traces the leadership of the organization. Our archives are extensive. Scraps of paper record votes at a meeting in 1830. Elaborate bills and receipts track long-gone merchants of Baltimore. Membership rolls, handwritten in flowing and perfect penmanship, reflect the growing profession. This ephemera coalesces to bring the history of medicine in Maryland to life.

MedChi’s 1909 building, just across the street from the Meyerhoff, retains much of its original design in the patterned brick work on the façade, beautiful mosaic floors, a graceful marble and iron staircase and the elaborate festooned woodwork.

In addition to the history that inhabits MedChi, it’s also home to a resident ghost – our former librarian, Marcia Crocker Noyes. MedChi was her life.

Me in Medicine: A Joint Project of MedChi and the Jewish Museum of Maryland

The Jewish Museum of Maryland is depicting the contemporary and diverse image of medicine in the upcoming exhibit Beyond Chicken Soup: Jews and Medicine in America. The Jewish Museum of Maryland is collecting digital photographs from physicians and other healthcare professionals for a presentation that will be displayed in the concluding section of the exhibition.  

Pictures can be professional or completely informal. So, take a selfie in your office or another medical setting... Or send us your graduation picture... Or get your staff together for a group shot...

You don't have to be Jewish to participate.

Photos must be received by Friday, February 12 to be included in the exhibit. Photos received after that date may be featured on the exhibit’s website or on the Museum's Facebook page.

Please send the photo in a JPG format, which should be equivalent to large or medium size on your cell phone. Please include your name and profession or specialty, which will be included in a caption on your photo. Send photos to chickensoup@jewishmuseummd.org.

For more information about the exhibition or the Jewish Museum of Maryland, please email Karen Falk, Curator, at kfalk@jewishmuseummd.org

MedChi and the History of Maryland Medicine are pleased to be supporting this exhibition, and will be loaning the Jewish Museum of Maryland some of our archival material.

HMM & MHC

The Maryland Humanities Council creates and supports educational experiences in the humanities that inspire all Marylanders to embrace lifelong learning, exchange ideas openly, and enrich their communities. They support a range of organizations and projects. They also have a five-minute segment on the local National Public Radio station, WYPR-FM.

MedChi was asked to record a segment for Maryland Humanities Council on the History of Maryland Medicine. It will air at 4:44 p.m. on Thursday, January 14, 2016. In the segment, I talk about the history of MedChi, the archives, the art and the library. The limit was 500 words, and it had to take less than four minutes to record. So after a few takes, we finally got one that worked.

I hope you will take a few minutes to listen to it. After it airs, I will post a link.

Season’s Greetings!

Construction Photographs, Circa 1909

As I was hunting for some evidence of when MedChi first publicized our phone number, I came across two photographs of the construction of the 1909 building. They were taken in October,

and November of 1908.

The notes say that from beginning to end, the construction only took seven months! Pretty incredible.
Dr. G. Milton Linthicum, the Chair of the building committee had this to say about the construction.

At the time this was written, the library, then located at the premises on Eutaw Street, just a few blocks away, only had about 7,000 volumes. So the projection of an eventual 63,000 volumes was very ambitious. The highest number of books, journals, etc. recorded was 65,000.
In another little piece, I found this nugget of information.

Here’s the first picture of the light and airy reading room, suitably decorated.

Not too different! A few coats of paint, some book cases and a carpet added and you’ve got the present day Krause Room.

Our Phone Number

As I was doing a spot of research this afternoon, I came across this fascinating piece of trivia.

Now to figure out when phone service came to Baltimore!

The Old & the New

In preparation for next week’s Baltimore City Medical Society’s annual meeting and holiday dinner, I was asked to give a tour of the building. Unfortunately, I have another engagement and so I created building information sheets so members could give themselves brief self-guided tours.

In creating the sheet for the 1909 building, I took an early watercolor of the building, which we use on notecards, and scanned it into the computer. Then I took a photograph I had taken earlier and merged it with the watercolor.

Because of the Meyerhoff, I can only back up so far, and can’t get the entire building into a photograph! I should probably take another picture of the building now that we have new blinds in the Krause Room and once the leaves are all the way off the trees!

This is a picture of the building I Photo-shopped for a tour right before Halloween. All of our ghostly friends are looking out the windows.

If you stop by, I will happy to give you a tour.