Archives Blog

It’s always been a bit distressing to me to know that all of the fascinating things I find in the MedChi archives just disappear back into the stacks, never to be seen again.So, in an effort to have them see the light of day, via pixels floating through the ether, I’ve started yet another blog! It’s called MedChi Archives, and here is the link.

Several people asked about the portrait I posted the other day. This is John Hawkins Patterson (1816-1893).

Here’s what I know:

John Hawkins Patterson was born in Baltimore on August 10, 1816. His father, William Presbury Patterson, was a native of Scotland. Dr. Patterson studied medicine in the office of Dr. Ashton Alexander who was one of the founders of the Faculty, and also Provost of the University of Maryland. Dr. Patterson graduated from the University of Maryland Medical School in 1837, and went to work in partnership with Dr. Alexander.

On the death of his preceptor (basically a tutor), Dr. Patterson became heir to a large amount of Dr. Alexander’s practice. He was the friend as well as the physician of many prominent families in this city, among whom he practiced for more than half a century. But he found time also for unremunerated work among the poor.

For more than 30 years, he was physician to St Paul's Orphanage where he was held in grateful remembrance. He was described by one who knew him well as genial and cordial in manner, unremitting in the care of his patients and commanding the love and respect of his brethren in the profession.

Dr. Patterson died May 25, 1893. His portrait was presented to the Faculty by his daughter, Mrs. Mary F. Birch, in 1897 and these remarks were made by Dr. Samuel C. Chew at the presentation of the portrait, which was painted by J. Dabour.

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia

We have a ghost at our offices and her name is Marcia. It’s actually Marcia Crocker Noyes. Marcia was the librarian at MedChi, The Maryland State Medical Society where I work, and when our current offices were built in 1909, an apartment was built for her on the top floor. In essence, a penthouse!

Marcia started her library career at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore and then took a position at MedChi in 1896, when MedChi was located in a building several blocks from our current location. She was in her mid-20’s when she started and the library had about 7,000 outdated volumes.

In 1889, Sir William Osler, one of the founding physicians at the newly opened Johns Hopkins Medical School, arrived in Baltimore and set to work with Marcia to revive MedChi’s library. He was a noted bibliophile and had a large personal collection of books on various topics. Sir William and Marcia worked to create a library, and when our building was erected in 1909, a large four-story stacks library was created that was renown in the world’s medical community.

Her apartment, on the top of our building, was a lovely four room flat, with lots of light, big windows, a working fireplace and a view out over the city. She kept a vegetable garden in what is now our parking lot. Her apartment was considered the first penthouse in Baltimore!

Marcia worked diligently to create a state of the art library and at her death, 50 years after she arrived, the number of volumes totaled more than 65,000! She was well-known in the emerging field of medical library sciences, and in fact, the highest award for a medical librarian is named for her. She became become the first woman and first non-physician President of the of Medical Librarians Association in 1933.

In her 50th year of service to MedChi, a large party was given in her honour. The doctors knew she was dying and pushed to have it earlier in the year, although her anniversary was in November. She was still living in the apartment on the top floor, and working in the library, although an elevator and a dumbwaiter had been added to make things easier for her.

She died in her apartment in November of 1946, 50 years after she arrived. Her funeral was held in Osler Hall, named for her dear friend, Sir William Osler, and 60 doctors were honoured to act as pallbearers.She’s still here in spirit, if not more. There are documented cases of her being seen in Osler Hall, and odd things happen in our buildilng. In her old offices, you can hear someone typing on the keyboard, even when no one’s there. If she doesn’t like the song on the iPod, she changes it to a new tune. As I approached our old elevator the other week, the door magically opened – no one was around and I hadn’t heard it arrive. When we did our tour of our building on October 30th, I was talking about Marcia and all that she did, when suddenly, the lights dimmed, flickered and went out. There was no one near the switch, and you couldn’t dim the light-bank even if you tried. We think that it was Marcia letting us know that she was there. Wheels squeak in the stacks, and you can hear muffled footsteps. Things turn up, even though they were NOT there before… like the painting I found a few weeks ago!

There is much to be admired about this woman who worked so hard for us, who was beloved by all – her employees stayed with her for years – and who did much to advance library science. She was the Google of her day, being available to doctors 24/7 for 50 years. She’s a benign presence here and still a revered figure in her chosen field.

Ex Libris

Where I work, we have archives dating back to the late 1700’s and about 250 boxes filled with ephemera that’s both deadly boring and endlessly fascinating. I am working on a timeline for a long hallway and need to find a lot of visuals to create a picture of our history. So, I’ve been searching our archives, which are located on the top floor of our four-story stacks library… where the ghost lives.

One of the boxes I opened contained hundreds of bookplates. At one point, our librarian had sort of an exchange program set up with physicians and medical colleges around the world where they would trade bookplates.

I noticed that the ones I have fall into several distinct categories. First, the medical-related ones with skulls and microscopes.

And I can’t resist sharing this one from an OB/GYN featuring a set of Fallopian tubes, the rabbit, lab rats, famous physicians and scientists, some stirrups and a speculum.And just in case you were worried about where he went to school, there’s the Tulane University seal! That’s a lot packed into a 3x4 inch piece of paper!

And who wouldn’t love this charming butterfly resting atop a human skull?

The second variety is the crest, whether real or created for the occasion.

Lots of stags, lions rampant and other beasts.

Then there all of the monograms with the intertwined letters and the fantastic lettering.

I love the brain capping off the piece!

Finally, there’s a genre of ye olde-style bookplates.

I keep finding so many fascinating things that I am thinking of starting a blog on the history of Maryland Medicine so that these pieces aren’t lost to history. I do put some of them on my FB page, but that doesn’t have nearly the audience that a blog would. If I wrote it, would you read it?

PS – sorry about the awful quality of the images. I photographed these instead of scanning them, as scanning involves quite a bit more effort, including standing on a stool to see the scanner bed!

Haunted Tour

As you may know, I work for an organization which is 214 years old, and our offices are in buildings which were built in 1900 and 1909. For about 30 years, our librarian, Marcia Crocker Noyes, both lived and worked in the 1909 building. Some say she’s still here.

On October 30, the Baltimore Architecture Foundation will be joining with MedChi, The Maryland State Medical Society, to tour these historic buildings.

For more information on the tours, e-mail me, or the Baltimore Architecture Foundation, here.

What’s Up?

When I conducted the survey in August, one of the suggestions I received was to let people know about events before they happened, rather than after. So, I am going to make more of an effort to do that.

First up… Historic Homewood House, one of the house museums of Johns Hopkins University, is having its Harvest Ball & Fall Frolick on Saturday, October 12th. I’ve been invited to go as the guest of some friends and am really looking forward to it. Although it’s black tie, guests are also encouraged to come in period finery. You can be pretty sure I am not showing up in something like this…

However, something like this might be involved.

If you can’t make it to the drinks and dinner portion of the evening, the Fall Frolick begins at 8:30 p.m. For more information and tickets, click here.

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I am a big fan of the Cylburn Arboretum in Baltimore, and they’re having a carved pumpkin day at the mansion on October 25th. For a small fee, people can bring their carved pumpkin to be added to a walk near the mansion and then enter them into a contest. It sounds like lots of fun, and if I didn’t have at least eight million other things to do, I’d be working on carving and drilling one of those hedgehog pumpkins I showed yesterday. Information about the Ar-BOO-retum’s pumpkin parade and contest is here.

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Although I will be en route to High Point for these two events, I wanted to mention them, regardless.

On October 19th, Clifton Mansion, another one of Baltimore’s great houses, is having an open house and celebration.  The house, which was owned by the actual Johns Hopkins, and was the proposed location for his university campus, has for the past number of years, been used as a city parks and recreation office, and golf course caddy shack. It’s now being returned to its original state and should be amazing when it’s finished. I am told that the view from the tower is fairly amazing. Click on the image for more information.

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My long-time friend John Gutierrez died several years ago after a very brief battle with cancer, and his partner and family have put together an annual walk to raise money for the Memorial Fund in his name, which supports local arts projects. This year’s walk is October 19th. As you might imagine, this is dear to my heart and I am sad to be missing it. John’s brother Richard was the first person I met on the first day at college, and we have been best friends ever since. More information on the walk is here.

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As I have mentioned, I am headed to High Point for the Furniture Market again this fall as a sponsored blogger. I am honoured to have again been chosen and am looking forward to seeing lots of new things and meeting lots of new people. I have a jam-packed schedule already and I can’t wait to share what I see and do with you. In anticipation of taking hundreds of pictures, I bought a new camera with lots more bells and whistles. Technology changes so fast that my two-year old camera is completely obsolete!

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On October 30, the Baltimore Architecture Foundation and MedChi are sponsoring a tour of my offices! We are doing this tour to show off our building during Architecture Month (October) and close to Halloween, so people might have the chance to meet our resident ghost, whose name is Marcia!

Hope that you can join us!

This and That

When I posted yesterday about our boating trip around the creeks near Baltimore, one of my commenters chided me for not reporting some wreckage I saw along the shoreline. Since it was a wood-hulled boat, I presumed that it had been there for decades, and that someone else had probably already rung it into the Department of Natural Resources. I also figured that since the Coast Guard is right along the other side of the creek, they might have noticed some rotting wood wrecks littering the creek. Turns out they’ve noticed it already and have even conveniently marked the location on the chart. I might sound like I am being sarcastic, but I’ve been reading navigational charts all of my life, and we had charts (in electronic form) on the boat. It’s essential that things like wrecks and submerged pilings, cables, buoys and marks, and any other impediments and aids to navigation are noted on the charts for reasons of safety. Of course, it’s a whole other thing if the boater doesn’t understand the chart, or what the symbols or lights mean. Tragedy comes of not knowing. Here.

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I am working with a researcher to find information on a man who was very influential in medicine in Baltimore for about 15 years. He was very involved in creating our medical library, at one time, the largest collection in the US. Of course, that necessitates hunting through our archives, which are only very loosely documented. But it’s fun to hunt, regardless. The other afternoon, we unearthed several files of old receipts which were just such fun to read. When you parse the sentences, they’re quite funny. They offer rates to both City and Country merchants. They have the most reasonable terms. And they take rags, which will be made into paper.

Here’s another classic one. Items will be made in a “Tasty and Faithful manner, with Dispatch”. As you can see, we got a lot of printing done, as we were publishing medical journals, books, pamphlets, and lists of members.

Most of them have beautiful engraving, either of their goods or their building. Others have some fanciful motif on them. But all of them are pretty small – most measure less than an inch or two in either direction. Here are some of my favourites.

Of course, how could I resist this one?

This one says that the stone used for the engraving will remain the property of the printer, who was still in business up until the last decade or so.

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I keep finding paintings around our offices, and today, I found this gal hanging on a wall.

None of the women in our portrait collection are marked with any identifying information. It really bothers me.

All for now! Ta!

Cursive, A Dying Art?

I have been hearing that schools are no longer teaching cursive or script or joined-up writing, and I think it’s a shame. When you think about beautiful handwriting, you usually don’t think about someone’s printing skill, you think of their script, flowing and elegant.

As I was searching the archives at work today for an obscure physician who joined our membership in 1858, I saw so many gorgeous examples of old scripts.

There are thousands of cards in our card catalogue, many of them hand-written.

I found old ledger books, beginning with our founding in 1799, where even the simplest of words are beautifully written.

Although the handwriting isn’t great, it was fun to come across an original copy of the nomination of one of my ancestors to be President of the organization where I now work. This would have been in the 1830’s or so.

These lists of our members from the early 1820’s are so beautifully written. All done by hand, with very few mistakes.

An interesting letter reporting someone practicing medicine without a license in 1818.

I still take pride in the fact that I have good handwriting, especially my cursive. Although I find myself writing less and less, I think it’s important to know how to write in print and cursive. Do you?