by Alethea Drexler, archives assistant
mcgovern@exch.library.tmc.edu
Happy Hallowe’en from the McGovern Historical Collections and Research Center!
Archivist Phil Montgomery suggested that, this year, we should set up an exhibit for Hallowe’en. Since we’re a medical school archive, we probably have an unfair advantage when it comes to selecting creepy artwork.
The first item in our little exhibit is a “death book” from Hermann Hospital. It’s a logbook of deceased patients. This one is dated 1950, but we have several others and they’re all plain black composition notebooks. Somehow, that they’re so understated makes them sadder and more unnerving.
The rest of our exhibit is made up of artwork by Joseph “Joe” Schwarting, a Houston artist who was once the only fine arts major on the University of Texas football team[1], and apparently was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles[2]. These originally accompanied articles published in The Psychiatric Bulletin in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Schwarting was the foremost illustrator for Houston’s Medical Arts Publishing Foundation.
The McGovern Research Center also has a collection of his illustrations for The Heart Bulletin, which can be seen here[3].
The following have been divorced from the articles they accompanied so I cannot provide any context, but I hope you enjoy their eeriness.
You can’t have Hallowe’en without a devil:
The one below reminds me very much of both James Thurber’s The Thirteen Clocks[5], and of the illustrations that often accompany writings by Edgar Allan Poe[6] and J. Sheridan Le Fanu[7].
Didn’t I see this in an old Disney movie?
Works consulted:
[1] LIFE magazine, November 17, 1941, page 115.
[2] College Football Reference.
[3] Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library, John P. McGovern Historical Collections and Research Center, Medical Artwork collection, The Heart Bulletin.
[4] LIFE magazine, November 17, 1941.
[5] Wikipedia, The Thirteen Clocks.
[6] Edgar Allan Poe Museum.
[7] Wikipedia: Sheridan Le Fanu.