Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library Blog

The Bio-Social Ecology of Epidemics: Yellow Fever in Providence ca. 1800 Robert J. Frank, Jr., Ph.D. Professor, UCLA Department of History 12:30 p.m., Friday, 12 April 2013

Location: Rare Book Room, History & Special Collections for the Sciences, UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, 12-077 CHS

Seating is limited. To reserve a seat, please call 310.825.6940

Epidemics happen. And since Thucydides, historians and literati have written extensively and graphically on the chaos that epidemics bring. This narrative mode has largely characterized the voluminous writings on yellow fever outbreaks in the United States from 1790 to 1905, when it seemed that no coastal town or city—especially southern—was safe from “yellow jack.” As I started exploring the epidemics ca. 1800 in the port town of Providence, Rhode Island (the 9th largest city in the young U.S.), I discovered an unusually rich trove of thousands of documents from which I could write a similar detailed narrative.

But I also found an even more interesting story—of the way in which the epidemics, in their timing and course, were shaped by what I call the “bio-social ecology of disease.” This ecology, is comprised of many interacting components: the nature of the yellow fever virus, the detailed characteristics of its vector (the mosquito Aedes aegypti), how the two cause the clinical picture of yellow fever, the weather and climate of the town, the topography of the port, the patterns of trade to the Caribbean, the characteristics of the merchant fleet, the activist nature of the town’s citizens, their hands-on political institutions, the medical care delivered to patients, and the preventative measures (such as patient isolation and ship inspection/ quarantine) that the town put in place. My presentation will privilege the structural, rather than the narrative, elements of this case study.

This series provides opportunities for faculty, students, staff, and visiting researchers to present recent work or unfinished work-in-progress in an informal, presentation-and-discussion format. Seating is limited and is not guaranteed without a reservation. Reservations may be made by contacting History and Special Collections for the Sciences (voice: 310.825.6940; email: rjohnson@library.ucla.edu).

<submitted by Russell Johnson>

Need a pocket-, wallet-, desk-, or fridge-calendar for 2013? Download and print our Hoyt’s German Cologne & Rubifoam advertising trade card for 1889, which matches the coming year day-for-day.

History & Special Collections for the Sciences has a small but growing Collection of medical and scientific calendars (Biomed Ms. Coll. no. 511).  Many, like this one, carry a scrapbook-worthy image along with details about a health product of service and perhaps even a testimonial or two.

E.W. Hoyt’s Rubifoam was a liquid dentifrice for cleaning and polishing teeth. It was sold in small, elegant glass bottles, much like the manufacturer’s colognes. Freely-distributed trade cards – a little larger than baseball cards – helped establish brand-identification and consumer loyalty. Hoyt’s cards carried an added bonus—a drop or two of the actual cologne (which has long since evaporated, but would not digitize well for this blog posting anyway). For a well-illustrated history of the company and its products, see Cliff and Linda Hoyt’s This Card Perfumed with “Hoyt’s German Cologne”.

Click on the images below for printable reproductions of the 1889 Hoyt calendar:

Come to think of it, 1895 = 2013 as well, so we also offer:

And, coming soon, the pièce de résistance – Antikamnia’s 1907 calendar (because 1907 = 2013, too), not to be missed!

Russell Johnson
History & Special Collections for the Sciences
UCLA Library Special Collections
 

If you are looking for a calendar for 2012, consider downloading and printing one from 1888!  A wallet- or baseball-card-sized double-sided advertisement would do just the trick.  A variety of image sizes are available through the Patent Medicine Trade Cards database at UCLA Library Digital Collections, and may be used to generate wallet-sized, desk-mounted, or wall-hanging calendar prints.  The Patent Medicine Trade Cards collection is especially strong in images of pain & suffering, as well as images of pain relief.  These cards comprise part of our John C. Liebeskind History of Pain Collection.

Unfortunately, the advertisement’s lovely mother-and-cooing-baby tableaux was not necessarily entirely accurate.  Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, which was used to quiet teething infants, contained one grain (65 mg) of morphine per fluid ounce (see: Before Prohibition, a pictorial history by the State University of New York at  Buffalo’s Addiction Research Unit).  The Journal of the American Medical Association minced no words in its reports about the product: “Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, as every physician knows, is one of the morphin-containing [sic] ‘baby-killers.’ Before the federal Food and Drugs Act [i.e., the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906] went into effect, no hint of the presence of this dangerous drug was given the purchaser. Since, however, the alcohol and morphin content has, perforce, been declared on the label.” (Journal of the American Medical Association, May 18, 1912).

The American Medical Association vigorously pursued what it called the patent medicine industry’s “nostrum evil and quackery.” Morphine was removed from Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup and the reformulated product was advertised as a laxative, instead of a painkiller (and remedy for diarrhea), before it disappeared altogether.

Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup trade card (1888)

To download: http://unitproj.library.ucla.edu/dlib/medicinecards/display.cfm?ms=clum_311_s00433&i=1

Online viewer with zooming capability: http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/zz0002hm76

Patent Medicine Trade Cards

(UCLA Library Digital Collections)

http://unitproj.library.ucla.edu/dlib/medicinecards/index.cfm

Russell Johnson
History & Special Collections for the Sciences
UCLA Library Special Collections

Some handy advice today comes as a handwritten “receipt” or “medical recipe” to cure love by Thomas Hodgson, Chaplain of Queen’s College, Oxford and Sub-Rector of Bletchington (also known as Bletchingdon).  This note [Biomed Manuscript Collection no. 5.101] was acquired recently from Douglas Stewart, an antiquarian bookseller in Australia.

“Take 3 Ounces of the Powder of Sense; 15 Grains of the Spirits of Reason; 5 Drachms of the Juice of Discretion; mix these with 2 Ounces of the Syrup of Advice; the best you can get; & 3 or 4 Spoonfuls of the cooling Water of Consideration; make this into Pills; take 3 at Night going to Bed; & three in the Morning; continue it as long as you find Occasion.”

A handful of manuscripts with similar titles and tongue-in-cheek purpose appeared in England throughout the latter half of the eighteenth century.  Mr. Hodgson apparently was elected to the Chaplain post in 1755, according to The Letters of Richard Radcliffe and John James of Queen’s College, Oxford, 1755-83.