Providing Remote Services and Support

By , March 24, 2020

The Center for the History of Medicine’s Holmes Hall reading room is currently closed due to COVID-19 precautions, but staff continue to provide remote support. Please contact chm@hms.harvard.edu for more information.

Incunabula volume, 1496

Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum et medicorum, 1496

Center staff provide the following services:

  • Schedule comprehensive consultations online (Zoom) or phone
  • Provide support for students, researchers and faculty during online office hours. (Please sign up in advance and a link will be provided.)
  • Assist in making arrangements for future visits and projects.

Online Resources:

Start your research remotely with the help of our collections’ online finding aids, and LibGuides. Other useful digital resources include:

  • OnView: the Center’s primary portal to digitized content and exhibits
  • Medical Heritage Library: online access to thousands of rare books, journals, pamphlets, and other items digitized as part of the Medical Heritage Library, Inc.’s consortium
  • Dataverse: Research data available from Center collections
  • Colonial North America: A Harvard Library project involving manuscript materials that relate to 17th- and 18th-century North America including items relating to science, medicine and health
  • Fredrick Stare papers: In collaboration with the University of California, San Francisco, the professional collection of Fredrick Stare, founder of the Department of Nutrition at the now T.H. Chan School of Public health, is digitally available.
Warren Anatomical Museum Gallery

Warren Anatomical Museum Gallery

For even more open access resources provided through Harvard Library, please check this evolving list.

 

Follow us for further information and updates on Twitter and Instagram @HarvardHistMed

Meet the Staff: Stephanie Krauss

By , November 26, 2019

My name is Stephanie Krauss and I have learned so much since starting my job as a Reference Archivist in January 2019. As the reference archivist, I staff the reading room, work with researchers, and assist with exhibitions and events. Since I have started, I have learned a lot about the history of medicine’s intersections with society, specifically with feminism and race. The Center receives a myriad of questions regarding the history of family planning, as we have the papers of John Rock, Abraham Stone, and other physicians involved in the creation of birth control. Each question that comes in gives me an opportunity to learn something new about this important topic!

Additionally, I have really enjoyed working with our rare book collection. Having the opportunity to explore early medical text such as Vesalius and Avicena is such a unique experience. One highlight was when the Center hosted its annual Anatomy Day, gives which the whole Longwood community a chance to explore these early medical texts. I loved having the opportunity to talk to my colleagues and peers about these influential texts and drawings. I am already looking forward to next year’s event.
In my free time, I enjoy running and hiking. I am currently trying to hike all the 4,000 foot mountains in New Hampshire and visit all the United States national parks. I recently started trail running, and I am enjoying exploring trails in the Boston area.

I look forward to continuing to work with the faculty, staff, and students here at the Center for the History of Medicine.

Checking in from the field: Donna Drucker

By , November 5, 2019

Guest Blogger Donna J. Drucker, MLS, PhD, Technische Universität Darmstadt, 2018–2019 New England Research Fellowship Consortium Fellow

Advertising Contraception in the 1970s and Beyond

Before the legalization of the hormonal pill, advertising of contraceptive methods to U.S. women in the 1930s and 1940s left much to the imagination. Even after the Supreme Court legalized the use of contraception as prescribed by physicians in November 1936, manufacturers mostly depicted the hands and arms of women preparing spermicides and diaphragms (http://www.technologystories.org/materializing-gender-through-contraceptive-technology-in-the-united-states-1930s-1940s/). At most, the instructional packaging would show a sketch of hands placing a diaphragm or spermicide applicator inside the woman’s body. Did the tone of advertising change after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the pill for contraceptive use in June 1960? Looking at examples available in the Countway Library of Medicine’s collections shows that manufacturers continued to advertise only to a limited group of women for decades afterward.

One example is the image used on a September 1970 flyer for Parke, Davis’s hormonal pill, Norlestrin.

Norlestrin, 1970

 The instructional booklet contained no images of women’s bodies, only images of women’s heads and hands with wedding rings prominently displayed. The woman on the front cover looks thoughtfully at a dandelion in her hands. When the FDA first approved the pill, its approval extended only to married women, and the instructional packaging reflected the company’s consciousness of that fact. Doctors could legally prescribe the pill only to married women until March 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court’s Eisenstadt v. Baird decision extended the right to privacy to unmarried people.

That conservative streak in advertising continued in commercial contraceptive product advertising long after Eisenstadt. The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective (BWHBC) Subject Files contain multiple examples of such contraceptive advertising from the late 1970s through the mid-2000s. One of those was in a November 1979 instructional flyer for a Koromex diaphragm.

Koromex diaphragm, 1979

The flyer advertised the spermicidal jellies, creams, and foams that the Holland-Rantos Company recommended women use with the diaphragm. Two of the spermicide packages showed a young, white, blond woman smiling, and two others showed daffodils. A second late-1970s example was for VCF spermicidal film, known in the United Kingdom as C-Film, also depicted the head and hand of a young, white, blond woman. She holds a package of the film with a serious expression, but the film itself is not visible.

VCF spermicide, late 1970s

While spermicides are still available in the U.S. and are marketed for use with barrier methods, they never caught on as methods to use alone.

The last example from the BWHBC Subject Files is an empty package for a product called the Bikini Condom, which appears to have been designed by an Emory University professor of obstetrics and gynecology called Robert A. Hatcher in 1990–1991. In a letter to the company International Prophylactics, Inc. (IPI), Hatcher claimed that “it empowers women,” and that “it has a good future as a contraceptive.”

Bikini Condom, 1990

The package has two images: one of a smiling white brunette woman looking off into the distance and another of the bikini condom itself. IPI briefly manufactured it, but it never seems to have caught on more widely.

By examining these examples of contraceptive advertising for women, it seems that manufacturers only envisioned white, middle-class, well-groomed women using their products. Of course, contraception was a concern of anyone desiring to prevent a pregnancy and engaging in behavior where sperm and egg could meet, but neither major nor minor manufacturers included broader representations of potential customers on their packaging.

Donna may be based in Germany, but check into what she is working on via Twitter @histofsex

Apply now for a 2020-2021 New England Regional Fellowship!

By , November 1, 2019

The New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC) is now accepting applications for 2020-2021 research grants.

This collaboration of thirty major cultural agencies will offer at least twenty awards in 2020–2021. Each grant provides a stipend of $5,000 for a minimum of eight weeks of research at three or more participating institutions beginning June 1, 2020, and ending May 31, 2021. The Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine and its Center for the History of Medicine is a NERFC member. Visit the NERFC website for more information and list of participating institutions.

Special award in 2020–2021: The Colonial Society of Massachusetts will underwrite a project on the history of New England before the American Revolution.

Application Process: All applications must be completed using the online form.

Deadline: February 1, 2020

Questions: Contact the Massachusetts Historical Society:
Phone at 617-646-0577 or Email fellowships@masshist.org

Apply Now for a 2020-2021 Boston Medical Library Fellowship!

By , November 1, 2019

Feldtbuch der Wundtartzney
(Gersdorff, Hans von, -1529. / Strassburg, Durch Joannem Schott, 1517) f RD151.G32 Boston Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine

Since 2003, the Boston Medical Library (BML) in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine has sponsored annual fellowships supporting research in the history of medicine using Center for the History of Medicine collections. BML Fellowships in the History of Medicine at the Countway provide stipends of up to $5,000 to support travel, lodging, and incidental expenses for a flexible period between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021. Besides conducting research, the fellow will submit a report on the results of his/her residency and may be asked to present a seminar or lecture at the Countway Library.

The collections of the Center for the History of Medicine enable researchers to contextualize, understand, and contribute to the history of human health care, scientific medical development, and public health; they reflect nearly every medical and public health discipline, including anatomy, anesthesiology, cardiology, dentistry, internal medicine, medical jurisprudence, neurology, obstetrics and gynecology, pharmacy and pharmacology, psychiatry and psychology, and surgery, as well as variety of popular medicine topics and public health subjects such as industrial hygiene, nutrition, and tropical medicine. The Center serves as the institutional archives for the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and the Harvard School of Public Health, and is home to the Warren Anatomical Museum, which includes anatomical artifacts, pathological specimens, instruments, and other objects. Through the Center, researchers have the opportunity to use the rich historical resources of both the Harvard Medical Library and Boston Medical Library.

Fellowship proposals (no more than 5 pages) should describe the research project and demonstrate that the Countway Library has resources central to the research topic.
Applications should include:
• CV
• Length of visit
• Proposed budget and budget breakdown (travel, lodging, incidentals)
• Two letters of recommendation are also required

Electronic submissions of materials may be sent to: chm@hms.harvard.edu

Boston Medical Library Fellowships
Center for the History of Medicine
Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine
10 Shattuck Street
Boston, MA 02115.

Application deadline is Friday, February 14th.

Please see our website for more information and details about previous research recipients. Awards will be announced in early April.

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