The History of Medicine Division at the
National Library of Medicine (NLM) has launched a new blog entitled
Circulating Now. The goal is to
"encourage exploration and discovery of one of the world’s largest and most treasured history of medicine collections".
Circulating Now
will being with a series of posts about NLM’s and others’ medical history collections by focusing on a particular historical event of significance to the history of medicine and the history of the United States. The series topic is all about "the assassination of, and attempts to save, the twentieth president of the United States, James A. Garfield, which occurred 132 years ago this summer".
All you history of medicine buffs ~
explore and enjoy!
Labels: history of medicine, history of the United States, medical blog, medical history, National Library of Medicine, NLM
"Among the most beautiful and sought after objects of antiquity are the books and manuscripts created hundreds of years ago, and carefully preserved in libraries."
For those of us unable, or unwilling to wait to travel to the
British Library or the
National Library of Medicine; a handful of exquisite classics from the historical biomedical literature may now be explored virtually!
Click on the post title to begin your journey by scrolling through
The Edwin Smith Papyrus,
"the world’s oldest surviving surgical text,..written in Egyptian hieratic script around the 17th century BCE, but probably based on material from a thousand years earlier. The papyrus is a textbook on trauma surgery, and describes anatomical observations and the examination, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of numerous injuries in exquisite detail."
Labels: British Library, classical medical literature, Edwin Smith papyrus, medical history, National Library of Medicine, Turning the Pages
"1850: Florida physician John Gorrie uses his mechanical ice-maker to astonish the guests at a party. It's America's first public demonstration of ice made by refrigeration."
A Florida physician certainly ~ but born in Nevis!
Click on the title to read the interesting if chilling story for this hot July day, from WIRED magazine... Labels: Caribbean, Dr. John Gorrie, history of refrigeration, inventors, medical history, Nevis, physicians
