“Monstrorum Historia” is a visually stunning book on the history of monsters. It is part of a larger work, an enormous 13-volume encyclopedia on natural history. The author, Ulisse Aldrovandi, wrote parts of the encyclopedia using the raw material in his museum and the botanical garden in Bologna in Italy. He collected not only [Read more]
Becker Library’s rare book collections have had an excellent year! Richard Chole, MD, donated his fantastic collection of rare otolaryngology texts earlier this year, and we’ve recently managed to acquire two more noteworthy monographs to complement our existing collections. The first of these monographs is Guillaume van de Bossche’s “Historia medica, in qua libris IV. [Read more]
Every year on the third Thursday of November, the American Cancer Society encourages all smokers to avoid using cigarettes for 24 hours for the Great American Smokeout event. The hope is that by refraining from smoking for one single day, and instead learning more about the many health benefits of quitting for good, smokers will be taking an important step toward a healthier life and reducing their cancer risk.
By November of 1917, the original members of Base Hospital 21 were six months into their deployment to Rouen, France. Recruited from the Washington University Medical Center, the doctors, nurses and enlisted personnel who had left St. Louis in May with great fanfare were now settling into a routine that included being severely overworked. When the unit arrived in France to assume control of a British army hospital, it became obvious they were seriously understaffed.
How many of you take the time to look at a title page when you buy a new book? Most of the time there’s no real need to do so – we can read the book’s title and author right on the front cover. Hundreds of years ago, however, the title page played a much more important role. During the early modern period, when printed books were first becoming popular, books were usually either sold unbound or with simple paper wrappers. Therefore, the title page was responsible for both providing information about a work and luring prospective buyers.
If you ever stop by to visit the Becker Library archives – and as the archives are open to the public you’re more than welcome to do so – you’ll be asked to follow a few rules. Sign into our ledger book, only look at one folder of archival material at a time, and, please, no food or drinks near the historical documents. Despite this last policy, food often does show up in the archives – in the form of various menus, which are scattered throughout the archival collections.
![Button, Nov 15 [1969], March on Washington to bring all the troops home now!](https://becker.wustl.edu/wp-content/uploads/Fig-1-Button-Nov-15-1969-March-on-Washington-to-bring-all-the-troops-home-FC011-B01-F04.jpg)
With “The Vietnam War: A film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick” airing this week on PBS, it is a good time to examine the oral history of David Kennell, MD, and his archives on St. Louis Doctors for Peace. Kennell’s oral history and papers contain documentation of the 1969 Moratorium, an event to promote peace [Read more]
Some of the most famous images in the history of medicine can be found in Andreas Vesalius’s “De humani corporis fabrica,” published in 1543 by Johannes Oporinus. Medical illustration prior to Vesalius tended to be rather crude and schematic, but the woodcuts that appeared in the Fabrica managed to capture an extraordinary amount of detail [Read more]
Becker Medical Library is pleased to announce that Richard A. Chole, MD, PhD, has generously donated over one hundred rare titles relating to otolaryngology to its rare book collections. Dr. Chole served as Lindburg Professor and Head of the Department of Otolaryngology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis for 17 years before [Read more]
The following is a guest post from Robert M. Feibel, MD, acting director of the Center for History Of Medicine and professor of clinical ophthalmology and visual sciences at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. His paper “James Moores Ball: Ophthalmologist, medical historian, bibliophile” was published in the Journal of Medical Biography in [Read more]