Ask a Librarian

News from the Archive

Outfitting a hospital, 1925

Alethea Drexler, archives assistant mcgovern@exch.library.tmc.edu Why, oh, why, didn’t I think to save last week’s post on Piltdown Man for April Fool’s Day?  Oh, well. *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   * Moving on from poor blog timing . . . this week takes us back into […]

Read More…

Stereoscopes, Hominids, and Hoaxes

by Alethea Drexler, archives assistant mcgovern@exch.library.tmc.edu I hope you’re sitting down, because this post is gonna be a wild ride. Archivist Philip Montgomery brought me a stereoscope image a few days ago and asked me to find out whether the fact that the card on which the photographs were mounted was curved was normal, or […]

Read More…

Pigeon Hole Parking, 1953

by Alethea Drexler, archives assistant mcgovern@exch.library.tmc.edu The following letter and brochure come from the Hermann Hospital estate collection, which is immense and has not yet been processed.  I had the project of transferring it into clean archival folders and boxes a few years ago, and I know there are some interesting things hiding among the […]

Read More…

Thingamajig

by Alethea Drexler, archives assistant We’re back with the answer to last week’s Thingamajig! Here it is, to refresh your memory: We got several suggestions about what this might be, including a snail race track (complete with “escargot”–car go–pun), a snake warmer, and, more seriously, a giant electrophoresis apparatus. Actually, the snake warmer guess wasn’t […]

Read More…

Thingamjig

by Alethea Drexler, archives assistant mcgovern@exch.library.tmc.edu We’ve gotten some new donations, which have included new Thingamajig fodder. The following came from the estate of Thomas Matney, M.D. (1928-2010). It’s almost three feet long and, although it’s made of aluminum, it’s pretty much cast solid and probably weighs fifty or sixty pounds. Phil commented that it […]

Read More…

Dr. Kenney's Surgical Suite

by Alethea Drexler, archives assistant mcgovern@exch.library.tmc.edu (Click on image for a larger version.) This image seems to have been a fairly recent acquisition for us: Phil’s predecessor got it on eBay, where it was described as a “patient’s room” at Dr. Kenney’s Sanitarium in San Antonio, from around 1920.  It’s obviously not a patient’s, room, […]

Read More…

Pneumothorax apparatus

by Alethea Drexler, archives assistant mcgovern@exch.library.tmc.edu We got a visitor on Monday who brought us a new gadget. Meet the pneumothorax apparatus:   (double-click on image for a larger version) This machine, which is a little over a foot tall and has a cylinder about six inches in diameter, was used to induce artificial pneumothoraces […]

Read More…

Sunset Hospital

by Alethea Drexler, archives assistant One of the things that I find persistently frustrating is the speed, ease, and totality with which older hospitals disappear. Many, many, times I’ve received inquiries about such-and-such a hospital and started looking around for information, only to discover that, not only do we not have any material about it […]

Read More…

Spoonful of sugar, stat!

by Alethea Drexler archives assistant We received an inquiry a few weeks ago that involved a question about nineteenth century medications, and it turned into a rather interesting fact-search.  While I have it on my mind, I thought we could take a look at one of our antique medicine cases. We have several doctors’ bags […]

Read More…

Steam sterilizer

by Alethea Drexler archives assistant We’re back! I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving weekend. This week’s post features our vintage Castle steam sterilizer: This one is a small model–the box is about a foot long and seven inches tall–that seems to have been popular for specialty instruments (which would have been used in smaller […]

Read More…