To mark International Women’s Day (8th March) the archives of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh has published an interesting blog on the little-known story of a pioneering female doctor, Caroline Nompozolo, “the first woman of colour from the Union of South Africa to qualify in medicine”. (Children’s Newspaper, Oct 1943)
The blog can be read at https://rcsedlibraryandarchive.wordpress.com/2017/03/08/celebrating-dr-caroline-nompozolo-on-international-womens-day/
Iain Macintyre
The Triple Qualification (TQ) examination of the three Scottish medical colleges, established in 1884. provided a medical qualification recognised by the GMC. It was used by individuals and groups who were unable, for a variety of reasons, to gain entry to university medical schools. Prominent among these groups were women in the 1880s and 90s and refugees from the Nazis in 1930s and 40s. To mark Holocaust Memorial Day on the 27th of January, the archive of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh has published this account of the stories of some of these refugees.
https://rcsedlibraryandarchive.wordpress.com/2017/01/27/i-am-a-refugee-of-nazi-oppression-the-scottish-royal-medical-colleges-and-medical-refugees/
Iain Macintyre
The red goggles shown above were used until the 1960s. What was their purpose?
The answer will be added to this post mid February.
Mike Collins
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.
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 (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.
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.
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)