How should the History of Medicine be studied?

The teaching of Medical History in Medical Schools has largely been a token gesture and with increasing pressure on the curriculum many have given up any attempt at formal teaching. Considering the scope of the subject and the practicality of producing a comprehensive teaching course, this is not surprising, And yet, most doctors feel that a knowledge of our medical past is important in our practice of medicine today. So how can we continue to enthuse and impart details of our medical heritage to our successors when it is more essential that they are exposed to the clinical skills of practising medicine.

It will perhaps be of interest to hear how we are approaching this problem in Sheffield University Medical School. At the very beginning of the MB ChB programme students undertake a 6-week ‘Student Selected Component on the History of Medicine’ in which they choose one essay title from a list of 270 that span the history of medicine from Ancient Egypt to the present day. The primary purpose of this assignment is to encourage students to develop their generic skills in information searching and synthesis, critical analysis, academic writing, the use of referencing systems and the avoidance of plagiarism. The history of medicine was chosen as the focus for this assignment as a topic that is hopefully of interest to all medical students at the very start of their careers, giving them a chance to consider medicine’s roots as they embark on their journey to become its future.

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Over the past three years, history of medicine exhibitions have also been displayed in the medical school foyer. This started with ‘Sheffield Cares for the Wounded’ in 2014, commemorating the role of Sheffield doctors in a field ambulance on the Western Front in World War One as well as those caring for the wounded returning to Sheffield. Apart from the history of their own medical school, students learnt about the evacuation techniques developed then and refined today. This was followed by more focussed exhibitions on ‘Blood Letting’ dealing with leaches, cupping and scarification and more recently with ‘Inoculation and Vaccination’. Such exhibitions require a secure, alarmed, display cabinet which was obtained with financial support from the Medical School and Sheffield’s Charitable Trusts and which, although initially expensive, now enables us to borrow documents and precious artefacts from private and public collections as well as facilitating display of items from our own Medical School’s past history.

We think this dual approach is one way of keeping alive the study of the History of Medicine in our medical schools. Although requiring enthusiastic volunteers and financial support, it is, we think, more likely that attractive exhibitions such as these will more easily capture the interest of the average medical student than didactic teaching.

Derek R. Cullen , Consultant Physician Emeritus
Julian L. Burton, Senior Teaching Fellow, Academic Unit of Medical Education.

The UK Medical Heritage Library – a free on-line resource of 19C published work

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The UK Medical Heritage Library (UKMHL) is now available as an open access collection via the Historical Texts service: https://ukmhl.historicaltexts.jisc.ac.uk

The collection has been produced through a three year project funded by Jisc and Wellcome Library to digitise over 15 million pages of 19th century published works. Encompassing over 65,000 publications, the subject areas covered are broad and include topics such as consumer health, sport and fitness, food and nutrition as well as medicine and medical practices, providing a valuable resource for study in the medical humanities and beyond.

A range of visualisations have also been created to help researchers explore the data in various ways.

  • Image wall: displays all of the images extracted from publications in your search results
  • Hospital map: enables you to identify and explore content related to specific hospitals
  • Timeline: displays events that occurred in the time period of your search results
  • Ngram: compare word frequencies
  • Dendrograms: for body parts and medical conditions
  • Sunburst diagrams: for body parts and medical conditions

The UKMHL collection is currently in a separate Labs area of the Historical Texts service, but it will also be added to the main service (http://historicaltexts.jisc.ac.uk ) in 2017. So, for institutions that subscribe to Historical Texts, it will be cross-searchable alongside the existing Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and 65,000 texts from the British Library 19th Century collections. The collection will continue to be freely available to the general public as well though.

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Image link: https://data.ukmhl.historicaltexts.jisc.ac.uk/view?pubId=ukmhl-b21273832&index=ukmhl&pageId=ukmhl-b21273832-117  (publication is in the Public Domain)

Susan Anderton
Service Manager (Historical Texts and Journal Archives, JISC)

Pills, prescriptions and pharmacists: creating a new pharmacy history course

©Royal College of Physicians, photography by Mike Fear ©Royal College of Physicians, photography by Mike Fear

When I was asked by the Faculty of History and Philosophy of Medicine and Pharmacy at the Society of Apothecaries whether I would consider programming an entirely new 3 day course in pharmacy history, I jumped at the chance.  Working with my co-course director, Dr Stuart Anderson, we had the opportunity to shape a mini course from scratch.  But what to include from an enormous history with a very broad reach?  And would anybody be interested in attending?

We decided firstly to focus on British pharmacy history, although the course began with a very brief overview of the global story up to 1500.  We were keen to include various strands in the programme including the pharmaceutical industry, the growth of the pharmacy profession and (as I’m a museum curator) plenty of access to original sources.  We also decided on a multi-venue approach to appeal to delegates and make the most of the wonderful resources in London.

Day 1 at the Wellcome Trust and Library included sessions on alchemy, business history, and law and ethics, but also a very popular session from Peter Homan demonstrating various dispensing techiques and introducing us to prescription registers from the Library collection as historical sources. Day 2 was at the Royal College of Physicians with lectures on the pharmacopoeia, pharmacognosy in the 19th century, and delftware drug jars.  Delegates were then treated to a tour of the RCP’s medicinal garden, and a chance to get up close to a selection of their rare books.  The day ended with a tour of the new Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum.  The final day was at Apothecaries’ Hall with an account of their history, an exploration of their manufacturing operations, and a tour of the current building.  The final afternoon comprised a lecture on the development of the pharmacy profession in the 19th and 20th centuries, and two sessions on the growth of the pharmaceutical industry.

It was an incredibly rich and packed 3 days with some excellent speakers, all of whom had written their lectures especially for the course, and some fantastic visits and source-based sessions.  And the 37 delegates were, thankfully, suitably inspired and impressed.  Typical feedback has been “the combination of talks, visits and displays was well balanced, refreshing and stimulating” and “the event was excellent and covered such an interesting range of material and locations.” Maria Ferran, Faculty Coordinator, has already received enquiries about running the course again, which is extremely pleasing.  If you might be interested in attending a future course, contact Maria facultyhp@apothecaries.org

Briony Hudson

Records of Medical Professionals

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Records digitised by the Wellcome Library, which cover more than a million medical professionals, are now available for searching online. The data collections include:

UK & Ireland

Medical Directories 1845-1942
Queen’s Nursing Institute Roll of Nurses 1891-1931

UK

Dentist Registers 1879-1942
Medical and Dental Students Registers 1882-1937
Physiotherapy and Masseuse Registers 1895-1980
Roll of the Indian Medical Service 1615-1930
The Midwives Roll 1904-1959

More information can be found at: ancestry.co.uk.

Edward Wawrzynczak

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