History - Corpus

Scarlet Fever, 1941: a memoir

6 February 2017 1 Comment

Wendy Fearnley

In 1941, at the age of five, Wendy Fearnley caught scarlet fever and spent seven weeks in isolation at the Monsall Fever Hospital, Manchester, UK. She explains what that was like:

It was 1941, and I was five years old and living in Manchester when I contracted Scarlet Fever. My memory begins in a side ward, with a doctor giving me an injection and me whining, ‘that’s 13 injections. I don’t want any more.’ He replied, ‘Not many more.’ This was before penicillin was available and I think I was treated with sulphur.

A classic in the history of medicine: “A Midwife’s Tale”

19 December 2016 Leave a Comment

Barbara Brookes

A Midwifes Tale ‘I was Calld to Mrs Howards this morning for to see her son. Find him very low. Went from Mrs Howards to see Mrs Williams. Find her very unwell. Hannah Cool is there. From thence to Joseph Fosters to see her sick Children. Find Saray & Daniel very ill. Came home went to the field & got some Cold water root. Then Calld to Mr Kenydays to see Polly. Very ill with the Canker. Gave her some of the root. I gargled her throat which gave her great Ease. Returned home after dark. Mr Ballard been to Cabesy. His throat is very soar. He gargled with my tincture. Find relief & went to bed comfortably.’ [Read more…] about A classic in the history of medicine: “A Midwife’s Tale”

Seeking health away from home

12 December 2016 Leave a Comment

Barbara Brookes

The idea of retreating from the world in search of health is alive and well today. People imagine that holidays from everyday routine will renew their health and vigor, and specialised retreats, involving meditation and yoga, offer a more introspective way of achieving health. As Jocelyn Harris’s post about Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon notes, seaside resorts and spas towns as places to seek health have a fascinating history. While pondering the alienation of the working class, Karl Marx, for example, treated his ailments (and perhaps his hypochondria) by visits to the spa at Karlsbad in Central Europe in the 1870s.^[1]

I’m currently working on the American idea of a ‘sanitarium’, a word coined by John Harvey Kellogg, MD. Today the name Kellogg is synonymous with cornflakes but the Seventh Day Adventist Dr Kellogg built his career as the man in charge of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan.

The Spedale Degli Innocenti: Florence’s Foundling Hospital

28 November 2016 3 Comments

Bruce Summers

I have always considered it a crime, when attending international medical meetings, not to escape the academic ambience of seminar rooms, Powerpoint presentations, labelled lanyards and corporate coffee for the real and less organised world outside. Despite the excellence of the biennial Sixth International Clinical Skills Conference at Monash University in Prato, I felt little guilt in bunking off an afternoon session to visit Florence, just a 25 minute train journey away. I have visited Florence several times before, attracted, like so many other visitors, to the Renaissance art and architecture that is liberally scattered throughout the city, and so accessible, even if a wait, sometimes long, is involved for some of the main tourist attractions.

I was intent however on visiting the Spedale Degli Innocenti, the Foundling Hospital in Florence, construction of which started in 1419 and which continued as an orphanage until 1875.

Dangerous innovations: health professions for women

14 November 2016 Leave a Comment

Barbara Brookes

First Women's Medical College Building. Drexel University College of Medical Archives and Special Collections — First Women’s Medical College Building. Drexel University College of Medical Archives and Special Collections

Recently, at the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, I opened a textbook on The Principles and Practice of Nursing by Joseph S. Longshore, published in 1842. Longshore’s book preceded Florence Nightingale’s much more famous 1859 Notes on Nursing. Joseph Longshore is the brother of a woman about whom I’m writing a biography. To my delight the fly page of the book was inscribed ‘To Hattie, With the Compliments of the Author’. Suddenly, with his handwriting there before me, I felt in touch with this remarkable man in a very personal way. To touch a page an author has inscribed is a tactile experience that digital archives lack.

Healing the scars of persecution

10 October 2016 1 Comment

Barbara Brookes

How do people heal the scars of persecution? This question arose for us when visiting Dachau, where a relative spent about a month in late 1938. Unlike many others, he was fortunate in being released, promising to leave Germany. In fact he had been trying to get his family out for some time, but being over 40 made it difficult to get entry anywhere (New Zealand had turned him down earlier in 1938). Acceptance came—for about 800 Jewish refugees—from the Dominican Republic, where the dictator, Trujillo, accepted immigrants while at the same time treating Haitians ruthlessly. Trujillo’s dictatorship is brilliantly depicted by the Peruvian novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa, in The Feast of the Goat. [Read more…] about Healing the scars of persecution