Category: Archives and Rare Books

Archives and Rare Books

November 1917 at Base Hospital 21

By — November 14, 2017

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.

Archives and Rare Books

New Exhibit: “Introducing the Book – The Title Page from 1500-1900”

By — October 19, 2017

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.

Archives and Rare Books

The Archives: A Gourmand’s Delight

By — October 12, 2017

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into our ledger book, only look at one folder of archival material at a time, and, please, no food or drinks near the historical documents.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.

Archives and Rare Books

Moratorium, 1969 and St. Louis Doctors for Peace

By — September 20, 2017

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]

Archives and Rare Books

Before There Was Copyright

By — September 11, 2017

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]

Archives and Rare Books

Dr. Richard A. Chole Donates Rare Otolaryngology Book Collection

By — September 1, 2017

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]

Archives and Rare Books

James Moores Ball: St. Louis Ophthalmologist, Medical Historian and Bibliophile

By — August 28, 2017

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]

Archives and Rare Books

A tradition of self-experimentation

By — August 22, 2017

As new and returning medical students come to Washington University in St. Louis to throw themselves into their studies, we remember that self-experimentation in medical research has a long tradition at the School of Medicine. One of the earliest examples involves two medical school students, Alfred Goldman, MD 1920, and Samuel B. Grant, MD 1920, and  [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

Wu Comes to WU

By — August 3, 2017

Ying-Kai Wu (1910-2003), also known as Y. K. Wu, was born in the town of Xinmin in northeastern China. In 1933, he graduated from the Moukden Medical College, located in present-day Shenyang. Wu then trained in surgery at the prestigious Peking Union Medical College in Beijing. There, he served as chief resident in surgery in 1938 and  [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

A Hospital Food Revolution

By — July 27, 2017

Marian Sizelove and Joyce Gibbons, dieticians at Barnes Hospital, wrote in 1949 that “One of the age old complaints of hospital patients is that the hot foods [they are served] are not hot and that the cold foods are not cold.” Frank Bradley, director of Barnes Hospital from 1939-1962, worked with the hospital dieticians to  [Read more]

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