October is a good time to highlight some of the more unusual items in our collection. It doesn’t get much more unusual than medicinal cannibalism, which is exactly what it sounds like: the practice of using human body parts as an ingredient in medicinal recipes.
“There has been sin in the universe ever since Satan tore Heaven asunder and hell was born, and hand to hand with sin, down through the aisle of time, both in sacred and profane history, has stalked ‘The Scarlet Woman’ – at once man’s creation, man’s sorrow and man’s curse.”
– "Missouri Republican", December 29, 1872
Candace O'Connor will present the 47th Historia Medica lecture on Thursday, October 22, 2015 at 4:30 p.m.
Ira J. Kodner, MD, Emeritus Professor of Surgery at Washington University, will present the 46th Historia Medica lecture on Thursday, September 17, 2015 at 4:30 p.m.
Some 25 miles outside of St. Louis, on a hill overlooking the Meramec River near Valley Park, there once operated a convalescent hospital for children. Overseen by St. Louis Children’s Hospital, this hospital on 127 acres in the Missouri woods was officially called the Country Department of the St. Louis Children’s Hospital, but was commonly known as Ridge Farm.
Do you pay any attention to the title pages in your books, or do you just skip past them to get to the text? Most of today’s books have the title and author printed right on the cover o
This fascinating 18th century natural history journal is in the Rare Medical Periodicals Collection of the Bernard Becker Medical Library (7). This journal was published by the oldest nationa
The Gustavus Richard Brown lecture notes in our archives include four notebooks of lectures made by Gustavus R. Brown while he was a student at the University of Edinburgh Medical School in 1766-1768. The four volumes in the collection are: 1-2. Lectures on physiology by William Cullen, 1766-1767; 3. Cullen’s practice [of physic] by William Cullen, and 4. [Read more]