Published by Sally Monroe. The history of bladder stone removal is both long and stomach-churning. Also known as calculi, the Latin word for “small pebbles,” these stones have plagued countless victims since the dawn of humankind. The earliest known bladder stone was found in the pelvis of a mummy at El-Amrah in Egypt; it is … Continue reading A Note from the Collections: The Lithotomy: A Sordid History
Published by Sally Monroe. In the International Museum of Surgical Science’s permanent collection, we have a great deal of forceps of all kinds—obstetrical, arterial, tubing, and so on. Despite their varied purposes, all are fairly similar in form, owing to the fact that forceps are essentially medical tweezers. As I went about cataloguing several drawers … Continue reading A Note from the Collection: The Chamberlen Family Secret
Published by Sally Monroe. The Thorek Manuscript and Rare Book Collection is home to Melchior Weikard’s Der Philosophische Artz, a book which is perhaps most famous in the medical community for containing the first accurate description of what we now call Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Published in 1790, the Museum’s copy of Der Philosophische Artz happens … Continue reading A Note from the Library: Prominence and Peril as a Royal Court Physician
Published by Sally Monroe. Cinco de Mayo is here, and to celebrate the occasion we are delving into our collection to examine what may be the earliest Mexican contribution to modern medicine: a Tlatilcan figurine thought to have been sculpted between 1200 and 700 BCE. The Tlatilcans were a pre-Columbian people who lived in a … Continue reading A Note from the Collection: The Pretty Ladies of Tlatilco
Published by Sally Monroe. When we catalogue texts at the Thorek Manuscripts and Rare Books Collection, one of the pieces of information we are sure to record is a book’s provenance. Often, this means looking for the name of a donor. Recently, it came to my attention that one of the most prolific donors to … Continue reading A Note from the Library: Dr. Louis Shapiro, International Man of Medicine
Published by Sally Monroe. One of the most exciting things about the Thorek Manuscripts and Rare Books Collection is that it contains no shortage of strange and enigmatic books. One of these unusual texts is, according to the inscription on its spine, Pfann’s Receptbuch.[1] Written in both Latin and German in a beautiful, ornate script and dated … Continue reading A Note from the Library: Dr. Paulus Pfann’s Mysterious Book of Medical Recipes
