Archives and Rare Books
Happy Valentine’s Day from Becker Archives!
Send your science-loving sweetie a valentine from Becker Archives and Rare Books!
Category: Archives and Rare Books
Archives and Rare Books
The Becker Rare Books Tarot Project
If you stopped by the Annual Display of Rare Anatomical Books last week, you might have seen visitors hard at work on a scavenger hunt around the display. The fruit of their labors? The new tarot decks made with images from our rare book collections! Tarot cards are seen as divination tools and are thus [Read more]
Archives and Rare Books
Missile Missives: An Archival Journey
The year was 1973, and Jerome “Jerry” Cox and his family were en route from Hawaii to St. Louis on American Airlines Flight 152. In the early morning hours of January 12—Cox guessed around 3:00am, St. Louis time—the pilot called their attention to a staged missile launch visible from the plane. Based on their flight [Read more]
Archives and Rare Books
A Fine Day : Rediscovering Lives of Perseverance in Archives
The continued process of digitizing documents and materials in the Bernard Becker Medical Library Archives has made new scans of St. Louis Children’s Hospital publications available in the archives database. These documents shed light on past lives and of turmoil and injustices overcome with perseverance.
Archives and Rare Books
Explore the History of Hearing Aids through a New Digital Exhibit!
“How Did We Get Hear? Historic Hearing Devices 1800-2000” is a new digital exhibit from the Becker Archives that explores the long history of hearing devices, from mechanical conversation tubes to electronic transistor hearing aids. The exhibit features nearly 100 different hearing devices from Becker Archives’ Central Institute for the Deaf–Max A. Goldstein Historic Devices [Read more]
Archives and Rare Books
Scenes from an Early Modern Hospital: Johann Pfann’s Biblische Emblemata
Chances are you’re familiar with the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words.” While this maxim originated with an American advertising firm in the 1920s, it is certainly applicable to images produced in early modern Europe. Many of the illustrative elements in books were meant to convey meanings on multiple levels. Elaborate title pages [Read more]
Archives and Rare Books
Index of Ten Thousand 19th and 20th Century Scientific Articles on Ear, Nose, and Throat Medicine Now Available
The Becker Archives is pleased to announce that an index of the Max A. Goldstein Collection of Scientific Articles on Otorhinolaryngology is now available on the Becker Archives Database. This collection features more than ten thousand scientific articles on subjects related to the study and practice of ear, nose, and throat medicine. The articles were [Read more]
Archives and Rare Books
Violet Doolin, School of Nursing, Class of 1945
In 2024 Violet Mae Doolin (later Schroeder by marriage), donated a collection of letters she wrote while attending the Washington University School of Nursing in the 1940s.
Archives and Rare Books
MUMPS and Medical Computing at WashU Medicine
If you’ve ever accessed your electronic health records (EHR), there’s a good chance you’ve encountered MUMPS—the Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System, that is, not the vaccine-preventable disease. Originally designed in the late 1960s specifically for building medical databases, MUMPS and its descendants continue to form the basis of the EHR software used by many [Read more]
Archives and Rare Books
Travel scholarships available for archives and rare books collections use
Bernard Becker Medical Library is fortunate to have robust collections in archives and rare books that document the history of medicine from the late 15th century up to the present. Subjects in which the library’s holdings are particularly strong include ophthalmology and optics, neurology, deaf education and the history of dentistry. To encourage researchers living [Read more]