Feature Story
History Finds
Nine medical-related collections worth seeking out.
By Carmen Peota
When the topic of Minnesota’s medical history comes up, several names come to mind—Will and Charlie Mayo and C. Walton Lillehei are likely to be among them. But medical history includes far more than the accomplishments of a few medical and surgical superstars. It’s entwined with the stories of small towns and big cities, of academic institutions and businesses, of organizations and individuals. Medical history is a part of general history.
Perhaps that’s why the manuscripts, artifacts, and documents of our medical past are scattered across our state rather than housed in a central repository. As a result, locating them can be a lot like hunting for treasure: not easy but worth the effort. With a little perseverance and the aid of search tools, you can find riches in museums, archives, libraries, and hospitals and clinics throughout the state. We’re highlighting a few that you won’t want to miss.
The Owen H. Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine
The crown jewel of Minnesota’s medical history collections is the University of Minnesota’s Owen H. Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine. Located on the fifth floor of Diehl Hall on the university campus, the library contains ancient and rare books, manuscripts, and artifacts from around the world as well as from Minnesota. The oldest works date from the 1400s, the newest from the 1930s.
The collection started because the university’s first faculty members and librarians had the foresight to begin accumulating anatomy and biology works. The university first officially opened its medical history library in 1964; in 1971, it was named for surgeon/educator Owen Wangensteen, M.D., who not only donated his own collection but encouraged colleagues, patients, and friends to create endowments for the future purchase of items.
Now with nearly 70,000 volumes, it is considered to have one of the country’s finest collections of rare biological and medical books. Items include such things as medicine receipt books from the 1600s (see “Her Grandmother’s Remedies” below), a 1665 Chinese textbook on acupuncture, and the letters of a medical student in Philadelphia in the mid-1800s.
To Access Materials: To retrieve one of the Wangensteen’s rare books or view an object, you will need help. That’s the job of either Elaine Challacombe, who has been the museum’s curator since 1989, or librarian Lois Hendrickson. Both are intimately knowledgeable about what books, manuscripts, and artifacts are in the library. And both have a missionary-like zeal to introduce would-be historians to them.
Once you describe to them the nature of your research interests, they’ll go into the stacks, retrieve your book, then place it in a velvet cradle on one of the tables in the library’s reading room, where you’ll be allowed to carefully handle it with your bare hands—Challacombe says turning pages while wearing gloves does more damage. They’ll likely have suggestions about other books and articles to read as well.
Her Grandmother’s Remedies—A 17th Century Medical Compendium
By Elaine Challacombe
Among the growing collection of medical receipt (recipe) books in the Wangensteen Library is a particularly fine and legible compilation of recipes from 1637 to 1661. Before the 20th century, health care often was delivered in the home, and recipes for remedies included ingredients that were available in nearby fields, imported by apothecaries, or brewed at home.
The book contains several hundred prescriptions for a range of ailments, from “megrim” (migraine) to “syattica.” Alongside copious precautions against the plague, French pox (syphilis), and the King’s Evil (scrofula) is a section called “The Woemans Book,” which is devoted primarily to obstetrics.
The author’s identity has not been traced, although the name Mary Pewe or Carewe is obscured on one of the beginning leaves of the book and may possibly correlate to the initials MC, which are found next to many of the recipes. Personal information about the author can be gleaned from the book such as the fact that she survived the plague in 1625 thanks to something called “Guido’s treacle” and that she learned many of the recipes from her grandmother.
The majority of the ingredients are herbal or vegetable and prepared with various wines, waters, oils, and ales. In addition to medical recipes, there are numerous pieces of dietetic advice including guides “to make a man slender that is grosse.” The book also contains recipes for cosmetic treatments that provide hints on how “to get a waye wrinckles spots and other deformities” or “to make one seem young a great whyle.”
Several cures for the same ailment are grouped together, implying that if the first recipe fails, the patient should try the one that follows and so on. Some recipes are copied from printed sources or physicians who were named in the book. Specific practitioners mentioned include Dr. Barker, Dr. Saunders, and “Dr. Hulsy from Italy.”
In many instances, the author includes the initials of the individual who proved a treatment (“probatum est MW”) and occasionally the date on which the recipes were either proved or taught.
Although the book’s authorship is not certain, there are clues in the text that the author was a woman: for example, “A drinke to be taken for the rheume … docter Barker taught my husband to take thes things in the year 1610.” The large number of female contributors reinforces the supposition that the author is female. Women from a variety of social stations are credited with many of the remedies: Anna Carre contributed “a rare powder” while “Cordialls or Restoratives” come from “ye La[dy] Kayes.” Readers are instructed to keep secret the recipe for “Losenges a gainst the wind,” for the woman whose invention it was had refused to share it at any price. Other medical texts of the time written by university-educated males would rarely include or credit remedies from women.
Elaine Challacombe is the Wangensteen Library’s curator.
Minnesota Historical Society
345 Kellogg Boulevard W., St. Paul
www.mnhs.org
In addition to its exhibits about Minnesota’s milling history, the state’s participation in the Civil War, and the lives of the people who’ve made Minnesota what it is today, the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul is home to a vast library that includes collections of books, manuscripts, photographs, audiovisual materials, diaries, and newspapers.
Although the library doesn’t have history of medicine focus, it boasts a list of medical-related items that is 56 pages long. On the list are holdings such as the “Prescription Book of the Sick Hospital at Fort Snelling” from 1835. A favorite of reference archivist Ruth Anderson is the collection of more than 1,600 photos from the Abbott and Northwestern hospitals in Minneapolis dating from 1887 to 1981. Anderson says the Historical Society’s collections attract a range of medical historians, from people working on Ph.D. dissertations to individuals persuing a personal interest in medical history.
In addition to the library, the History Center also houses artifacts donated by individuals and organizations. These collections are laid out on steel shelves in climate-controlled rooms as big as gymnasiums three stories below ground. According to curator Matt Anderson, the museum has approximately 2,800 pieces of old medical equipment including medical bags and cases, bandages and splints, and dental, examination, and laboratory equipment.
To Access the Collections: You can search the library’s card catalog or look for photos online. But it’s likely that during the course of your research, you’ll make a trip to the library’s reading room on the History Center’s third floor. Before entering, you’ll be required to register, present a valid photo ID, and check your bags in a locker. Once inside, you’ll use the finding aids such as the online catalog to determine which boxes, books, or photos you want, then request those items from the reference desk. To find out more about the artifacts, contact curator Matthew Anderson at 651/259-3256.
University of Minnesota Archives
Elmer L. Andersen Library, Ste 218, 222 - 21st Ave. S., Minneapolis
special.lib.umn.edu/uarch
The University of Minnesota Library system has a number of special collections that contain pieces of interest to those studying medical history. The University Archives, located in the Elmer L. Andersen Library on the university’s West Bank, are a vast repository of all things documenting the development of the University of Minnesota, including the medical school and Academic Health Center (see “Protecting the Past,” p. 16). In addition, the university’s digital conservancy (http://conservancy.umn.edu/community-list) allows online access to reports, papers, and other documents about the university and its various colleges, schools, and centers.
Hennepin Medical History Center
Tucked away in the basement of Hennepin County Medical Center’s (HCMC) Blue Building in downtown Minneapolis are two small collections that represent a huge undertaking on the part of some former employees. In the mid-1970s, two nurses, Hillie Prose and Audrey Kuhne, had the foresight to save artifacts, papers, and photos before a wrecking ball demolished them along with the old Minneapolis General Hospital. Over the years, volunteers have spent long afternoons sifting through those pictures and papers, creating exhibits, and organizing books into what are now the Metropolitan Medical Center (MMC) and HCMC collections. Together, they chronicle the evolution of the hospitals that have stood near the intersection of Seventh Street and Park Avenue in Minneapolis for more than a century.
The HCMC collection is composed of photographs, manuscripts, and artifacts from the Minneapolis City Hospital, Minneapolis General Hospital, and Hennepin County General Hospital. A number of items are on display in a small gallery including equipment from the days when blood was filtered through gauze, pill bottles were made of glass, and needles were sterilized and reused. Its brochure encourages visitors to: “Come see our iron lung, uniforms, medical instruments, and photographs.” The MMC collection includes photos, documents, and artifacts from Swedish Hospital, St. Barnabas Hospital, St. Andrews Hospital, and Metropolitan Medical Center. In October of 2009, the two collections merged with the goal of preserving the legacy of HCMC and its predecessor hospitals.
To Access the Collections: Many of the photographs in these collections have now been digitized and can be viewed on the Minnesota Reflections website (reflections.mndigital.org). The HCMC collection (formerly known as the museum) is open on Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The MMC collection (formerly the library) is open Tuesdays from noon to 2 p.m. It’s recommended that you make an appointment before visiting (call 612/873-6485).
Minnesota Reflections
If the Minnesota Digital Library Coalition, an independent group of museums, libraries, and other organizations based at St. Cloud State University, succeeds, the state may eventually have a central repository for Minnesota’s historical documents and photos. Its first project, Minnesota Reflections, has already amassed digital images of more than 40,000 photographs, maps, journals, documents, letters, and works of art and put them into a searchable database.
Marian Rengel, who does outreach for the Digital Library, says about half of the state’s county historical societies already have portions of their collections included in Reflections, which is being funded through the federal Library Services and Technology Act.
To Access Minnesota Reflections: The database can be searched by topic, collection, or region. A search of health and medicine turns up items such as early photographs of Mankato’s Immanuel Hospital compliments of the Blue Earth County Historical Society, all 102 pages of the first annual report of the state’s Board of Health from January 1873, and photographs from the Hennepin Medical History Center.
Mayo Clinic History of Medicine Library
The Mayo Clinic History of Medicine Library is a specialized unit within the Mayo Medical Library that is home to several thousand volumes of rare medical classics (from 1479) and early journal literature (from 1665). It includes primary literature on all aspects of medicine and its allied fields. Among the holdings are especially good collections related to anesthesiology, cardiology, dermatology, immunology, ophthalmology, and neurology.
In addition to books, early medical imprints and more recently published histories, biographies, facsimiles (see illustration), and other support materials comprise the remainder of the 23,000-plus volume collection. The library’s special collections include medical bookplates, Vanity Fair caricatures of physicians and scientists, photographs of selected Nobel laureates and Mayo Clinic staff, caricatures of medical specialists by Bavarian wood-carvers, Mayo Clinic-related cartoons, and medical philately and heraldry.
To Access the Collection: The library is technically closed to the public. However, with prior approval, researchers may gain access to them. To use these materials, contact the library’s coordinator, Hilary Lane, at lane.hilary@mayo.edu or 507/284-3676. The library is open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Mayo Clinic Historical Suite
Third floor, Plummer building, mayo clinic, Rochester
A museum dedicated to the history of the Mayo Clinic is located on the third floor of its Plummer Building. That floor was once home to the offices of William J. and Charles Mayo and the room where Mayo’s board of directors met. Today, the rooms are arranged as they were when the Mayo brothers used them. On display are photos and other memorabilia chronicling Mayo history. The Historical Suite is also home to Mayo Clinic’s archives, which include institutional records, personal papers of physicians, and one-of-a-kind items such as a letter and gift from Sir William Osler to Will Mayo.
To Access the Collection: The archived materials are intended for Mayo Clinic use. However, others may be allowed to use them. To do so, email Renee Ziemer at Mayohistoricalunit@mayo.edu.
Northeast Minnesota Historical Center
University of Minnesota-Duluth Library, Annex 202,
416 Library Drive, Duluth
www.d.umn.edu/lib/nemhc
The Northeast Minnesota Historical Center, part of the University of Minnesota Duluth Library, is a manuscript repository containing photographs, architectural records, manuscript collections, family papers, business and organizational records, oral histories, dozens of serial titles, and books and pamphlets. Its focus is St. Louis, Lake, Cook, and Carlton counties. Although it doesn’t have a medical focus per se, curator Patricia Maus says it contains a number of things that might interest a medical historian. For example, it houses the records of the Lake Superior Medical Society Alliance from 1912 to 1993 and the personal papers of Anderson C. Hilding, M.D., a Duluth physician who lived from 1892 to 1977 and did research on lung cancer. The Historical Center’s collection spans the 1830s to the present.
To Access the Collection: A detailed listing of the center’s holdings can be viewed at www.d.umn.edu/lib/nemhc/guide.htm. Accessing these materials may require going to the center, where staff will retrieve materials for you. Some of the center’s photographs and maps have been digitized and can be found through the Minnesota Reflections website (reflections.mndigital.org).
The Bakken Museum
3537 Zenith Avenue S., Minneapolis
www.thebakken.org
Set in a castle-like mansion on the west shore of Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis, the Bakken Museum plays up its Frankensteinesque feel, which is entirely appropriate for a museum focused on the role of electricity and magnetism in the life sciences and medicine. Although the museum is often thought of as a destination for families (kids love the hair-raising experience of touching the museum’s electrostatic generator), it also is a repository of all things medical-electrical, including books and manuscripts as well as instruments and gadgets.
Named for Medtronic founder and pacemaker inventor Earl Bakken, who during the 1960s began collecting old books and medical machines, the museum now has approximately 11,000 books, journals, and manuscripts and a collection of approximately 2,000 artifacts ranging from leyden jars to electric belts and hairbrushes. Of interest to physicians might be its collection of early X-ray equipment.
The Bakken’s library includes books and manuscripts dating from the 13th century and advertisements, programs, postcards, broadsides, circulars, and pamphlets from the 19th and early 20th centuries as well as various scientists’ letters. There are also about 400 trade catalogs and product price lists for medical equipment and scientific instruments from 1850 to 1930.
Research Tips
Know the rules. Food, beverages (including water), and ink pens are forbidden in these museums and libraries. Laptop computers are usually OK. Ask before taking photographs.
Go for the day. These are not lending libraries. Expect to spend time onsite.
Bring cash. It’s likely you’ll want to make photocopies.
Ask for help. The curators and librarians who staff these places know and love their collections and have a strong desire to see that they get used.
Be gentle. Keep your hands clean and dry. Handle materials gently, if allowed.
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To Access the Collections: The collections are open to any researcher free of charge. But it is strongly recommended that you make an appointment with the librarian, Elizabeth Ihrig (ihrig@thebakken.org), or the curator of instruments, Juliet Burba (burba@thebakken.org), depending on which collection you are interested in seeing. Books from the library do not circulate. For a modest fee, a limited numbers of photocopies, scans, or photographs may be made for you by the staff.
History is Where You Find It
Hidden historical gems can be found in all kinds of places, according to Jennifer Gunn, Ph.D., acting director of the University of Minnesota’s history of medicine program. Many county and local historical societies have materials related to medicine—for example, a doctor’s papers or a hospital’s records, as do University of Minnesota entities such as the Social Welfare History Archives, the YMCA Archives, and the Immigration History Research Center. Gunn herself has done extensive research using the collections of the Iron Range Research Center, which were housed at the recently closed Minnesota Discovery Center. The Science Museum of Minnesota, which now owns the collection of the former Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, is another potential resource as are public libraries. The central St. Paul Public Library, for example, has early health surveys in its special collections room. And because religious groups started many of the hospitals and health care organizations in Minnesota, the offices of the various Catholic women’s orders or protestant denominations may have records about their medical work and missions. MM
Carmen Peota is managing editor of Minnesota Medicine.