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History of Medicine

Revisiting the Mary Pauline Root papers

Nov 29, 2023

Caitlin "KT" Abadir-Mullally details the process of reparative archives and necessity revisiting the Mary Pauline Root Papers

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Thomas Lindsley Bradford (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

Hear ye, hear ye! Bradford’s “labor of love” now digitized for all!

Oct 21, 2014

Dr. Thomas Bradford, librarian and lecturer on the history of medicine at Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia, completed his "labor of love," Biographies of Homeopathic Physicians in 1918 - 36 volumes of scrapbooks with any found information on homeopathic physicians. This blog post explores the successes and failures of uploading the scrapbooks to Internet Archive.

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Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy, 1918 (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

Working with the Sources: The American Women’s Hospitals in the Near East

Oct 03, 2014

Full article following initial blog post written by Virginia Metaxas, Ph.D., Professor of History and Women’s Studies, Southern Connecticut State University and Legacy Center 2010 M. Louise Carpenter Gloeckner Fellow, about the American Women's Hospitals efforts in helping war torn Greece rebuild their country. 

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Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy, 1918 (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

Working with the Sources: The American Women’s Hospitals in the Near East

Sep 12, 2014

This blog post is an excerpt from Virginia Metaxas, Ph.D., Professor of History and Women’s Studies, Southern Connecticut State University and Legacy Center 2010 M. Louise Carpenter Gloeckner Fellow, about the American Women's Hospitals efforts in helping war torn Greece rebuild their country. 

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Hartwig Kuhlenbeck (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

The Mystery of the Shrunken Head

Jul 23, 2014

The Hartwig Kuhlenbeck collection contains materials from Dr. Kuhlenbeck, a professor at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania who travelled all around the world and collected cultural objects, including a shrunken head from the Jivaro people in South America. This blog post disputes the authenticity of the tsantsa, through research.

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Hahnemann Hospital and Nurses’ Building, 15th Street, circa 1910 (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

PACSCL Hidden Collections comes to DUCOM

Jan 07, 2014

The Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections (PACSCL) started a new phase of uncovering "hidden collections" in small archives. The Legacy Center joined in this phase with processing materials from Hahnemann Medical College, including papers from former deans, faculty members, and academic departments.

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Illustration of "The Goblin Germs" from Jack O'Health and Peg O'Joy: A fairy-tale. (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

Woman's Medical College vs the 1918 Flu Pandemic

Sep 18, 2020

In the aftermath of the 1918 Flu Pandemic, health officials struggled on defining ways to better help individuals. Without immunization in sight for influenza, physicians needed to turn to different ways to better support their patients.

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Dorothee Gold document (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

Impermanence

Aug 08, 2017

Doris Phillips Wheeler was a 1941 Austrian graduate from Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania who began medical school during the Third Reich. This blog post explores how archives are places where lost stories and new insights can be found, such as that of Doris Phillips Wheelers life in coming to America before a major war broke out in her homeland.

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Bound volumes of Obstetrical Society of Philadelphia meeting minutes (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

On the Evolution of Meeting Minutes: Formality and Degrees of Richness

Jan 19, 2017

Founded in 1868, the Obstetrical Society of Philadelphia started as an educational organization for those who were interested women diseases and health issues. This blog post explores the importance of minutes to show the inner workings of the medical society.

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Elizabeth Hocker, MD circa 1917 (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

"We called them our boys": Primary Sources on WWI Caregiving

Nov 29, 2016

Diana Lewis, 1912 graduate of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania Nurse's Training School served in the American Expeditionary Forces as a Base Hospital nurse in France during the Great War in 1917-1919 and kept a scrapbook as a record of her time. This blog post explains how the study of Nurse Lewis's scrapbook led to the discovery of Dr. Elizabeth Hocker's letters that spoke to how the women physicians and nurses surrounded by the male soldiers (wounded and dying) felt emotionally connected to them.

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Members of the class of 1944 of Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania pose with Dr. Kuhlenbeck at Somerton Airport (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

Tuberculosis Strikes the Class of 1944

Feb 02, 2015

Tuberculosis is caused by a bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis or one of a number of related bacteria. It most often affects the lungs, but can also cause harm to other parts of the body while spread through the air. This blog post shows how the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania Class of 1944 was affected by the disease with only 12 of the original 41 students graduating on time, and some never did graduate.

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Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania students in dissecting room, 1897 (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

Gross Anatomy: Now and Then

Apr 22, 2013

The Gross Anatomy Lab at the College of Medicine is where medical students are assigned a cadaver and spend the fall and spring terms learning about the human body in a hands-on experience. This blog post follows the history of the gross lab at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania through photographs taken in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Hahnemann Medical College (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

Philadelphia: World’s Medical Centre

Mar 18, 2013

In the 1930s, over 63 hospitals and medical schools operated in Philadelphia, including Hahnemann Medical College, one of Drexel University College of Medicine's predecessors. This blog post describes a project to map locations of Philadelphia hospitals showing what the location looked like in the 30s versus now.

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Mary Walker, 1910 (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

Mary Edwards Walker Part II

Mar 04, 2013

Dr. Mary Edwards Walker was a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, suffragist and dress reformer. This blog post follows up from the previous blog post and continues with Dr. Walker's life after the Civil War. Part 2 of 2 posts.

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Mary Walker, 1890 (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

Mary Edwards Walker, Part I

Jan 28, 2013

Dr. Mary Edwards Walker attended Syracuse Medical College after spending some time being a schoolteacher. After her marriage and practice failed, she joined the Union Army as a nurse and later surgeon. She was later captured and accused of being a spy. Part 1 of 2 posts.

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Drug advertisement from the Medical Women's Journal, 1924, featuring viburnum. (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

From the Collections: Drugs

May 21, 2009

Advertisements for pharmaceutical drugs in print media is a decades old phenomenon. This blog post features several pharmaceutical advertisements featured in The Medical Woman’s Journal and The Journal of the American Medical Women's Association between 1924 and 1958. It pokes fun at their dated quirks and points out the advertising ambiguities such as who they are marketed two. The blog post also points out the clear gendered marketing present in the drug advertisements.

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Letter from a patient to Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania Dean Dr. Rachel Bodley, 1886. (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

From the Collections: A Nymphomania Cure?

Apr 10, 2009

Dr. Rachel Bodley was a prolific chemist and botanist who served as Dean of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania from 1874 to 1888. This blog post concerns a letter discovered in her collection written by an anonymous patient suffering from nymphomania. “The Patient” as she was known, was under the care of neurologist Dr. Charles K. Mills at the Women’s Nervous Wards at Philadelphia Hospital. As the blog explains, The Patient began a correspondence with Dr. Bodley and requested that upon her death, her body be dedicated to helping find a cure for nymphomania. The blog post covers the unusual archival item, and poses the questions of what became of The Patient after the letter was sent.

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Correspondenzblatt der Homoeopathischen Aerzte, October 22, 1835. (The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections)

From the Collections: Correspondenzblatt der Homoeopathischen Aerzte

Feb 17, 2009

The Correspondenzblatt der Homoeopathischen Aerzte was a shortlived publication put out in 1835 and 1836 by the North American Academy of the Homeopathic Healing Art (better known as the Allentown Academy). The Correspondenzblatt was the first homeopathic medical journal published in the United States, and was edited by one of the founding homeopathic physicians in America, Dr. Constantine Herring. This blog post discusses what the journal is, where it came from, and what it wrote about.

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