Category: Archives and Rare Books

Archives and Rare Books

Leonhard Thurneisser and the Secrets of Alchemy

By — October 16, 2023

There are plenty of treasures scattered throughout our rare book holdings, but we’re currently enamored with Leonhard Thurneisser zum Thurm’s Quinta Essentia, a wonderfully illustrated alchemical poem that’s a definite highlight of the Robert E. Schlueter Paracelsus Collection. Like Paracelsus himself, Thurnheisser led an itinerant life. Born in 1531 in Basel, he learned the craft  [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

The Humors and You! Medieval Health, Diet, and Humoral Theory

By — August 31, 2023

Practitioners of humoral theory took the idea of a balanced diet to a whole new level as they incorporated the consumption of food and drink into their medical belief system. A prevalent medical practice in medieval and early-modern Europe, humoral theory has its roots as far back as Hippocrates and Galen in ancient Greece. The four  [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

Travel Scholarships Available for Archives and Rare Books Collections Use

By — July 21, 2023

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]

Archives and Rare Books

All the World’s A Stage: The Academic Dialogue in Print

By — May 12, 2023

One of the joys of reading primary sources is that it can provide us with a direct window into the past—browsing through an old distillation manual can lead down the path of researching medicinal cannibalism, or mentions of moon phases can provoke a segue into medical astrology. But it isn’t just the words that can  [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

Comprehensive index to WU medical center publications now available to researchers

By — May 9, 2023

  An extensive index to Washington University Medical Center publications is now available via the Becker Archives. This new resource consists of nearly 7,000 index headings for faculty, staff, departments, programs and events related to the School of Medicine and its affiliated hospitals. Collectively, the headings point to over 35,000 unique citations in medical center  [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

Vaccinae vindicia: an 1806 defense of vaccination

By — April 24, 2023

Some say that the coronavirus vaccines are a ploy to inject the public with microchips that will constantly track your location; others claim that they’ll hook you up to the 5G network and make you explode. Some people think that the vaccine will rewrite your DNA in order to work, while others tweet about how  [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

Student Tour of Italy

By — April 20, 2023

On March 18, sixteen intrepid Phase I medical students headed to Italy to spend spring break exploring the connections between anatomy and art in Renaissance Italy. Spending three nights in Venice and three nights in Florence, they went on a whirlwind tour of some of the most important sites in the history of medicine and  [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

Becker Archives acquires Jerome Cox papers, documenting medical computing at WashU

By — April 11, 2023

The Becker Archives has acquired the collected papers of Dr. Jerry Cox (1925-2023), who founded the Biomedical Computer Laboratory at the Washington University School of Medicine in 1964. This impressive acquisition comprehensively documents his four-decade career at the university, which included pioneering research and developments in biomedical computing, PET scanning, and computer technology applications in healthcare.   [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

Beyond “In Their Own Words”: Stories of Black Excellence and Resources on the Intersection of Race and Medicine

By — March 20, 2023

Becker Library’s newest exhibit, “In Their Own Words: Stories of Desegregation at Washington University Medical Center,” highlights the experiences of Black people and their allies who faced institutional racism and fought for change. Learn more about the stories and topics presented in the exhibit with these resources.

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