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(by Melissa Grafe) Yale University’s Medical Historical Library is pleased to announce the acquisition of an important collection of ephemera, photographs, and rare books related to disability, the Robert Bogdan Disability Collection. Professor Robert Bogdan compiled an archive guided by the ideas of the field of Disability Studies, an approach that focuses on “disability” as a social, cultural, and political phenomenon. Bogdan, an early pioneer in that field, has taught courses related to it since 1971. He started collecting disability ephemera in early 1980s in order to advance his research and writing. As Bogdan began collecting he realized that although there were archives and collections related to specific aspects of disability and particular disability-related organizations, none took a broad Disability Studies approach. The collection is unique in being both broad in scope yet deep in particular areas. For example, there are over four hundred photo postcards of people with a range of disabilities participating in regular life, pictures that might be found in family albums. The people are photographed as family members, friends and loved ones, not as clinical types. There are over one hundred pieces related to begging, ephemera used by people with disabilities to solicit money. There are close to three hundred items related to charities soliciting money for people with disabilities. In addition, there are hundreds items associated with institutions where people with disabilities were confined.  As Bogdan explains, “The collection expands our understanding of the social history of disability as well as contains images that are esthetically challenging and engaging.” There are over 3,500 items in the collection. It covers the period from approximately 1870, when photographic images became widely available, through the 1970s, when the disability rights movement became an important force for social change. Most of the items are contained in 14 large three ring binders organized by topics.  Their format varies but the great majority of the materials are postcards, and most of those are photo postcards. Other photo formats include carte de visite, cabinet cards, as well as other larger photographs. These are complemented by pamphlets and other printed materials.  Please see the preliminary inventory of the collection.  The Medical Historical Library created this finding aid of the collection, which researchers can use to request materials to view in the Library's secure reading room. Bogdan’s work Freak Show is a classic in the field of disability studies, as are a number of his other publications. His most recent book, Picturing Disability, draws on images in the collection. Bogdan has received many honors and awards for his contribution to the field of disability studies.  He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Social Science and Disability Studies at Syracuse University. For questions concerning the collection, please contact Melissa Grafe, Ph.D, John R. Bumstead Librarian for Medical History: melissa.grafe@yale.edu

"In depression this faith in deliverance, of ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come—not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul."  -- William Styron If you're a Yale Health patient, you probably received an email announcing "October is Depression Screening Month." Many, if not most, of the readers of this post will have either struggled with depression at one point or have helped a loved one battle the disease. When a close family member suffered an episode of major depression a few years ago, I did a lot of reading on the topic.  One of the most vivid and eloquent first-hand accounts of depression is Darkness Visible:  A memoir of madness by the great novelist William Styron.  Styron and his family lived in Connecticut, and it was to Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH) where Styron was admitted, suicidal, at the nadir of his depression in 1985.  In part thanks to the care he received at YNHH, Styron was able to recover and went on to document his experience.  While the story of depression told in Darkness Visible is terrifying, Styron argues that there is hope for the suffering patient: "To most of those who have experienced it, the horror of depression is so overwhelming as to be quite beyond expression, hence the frustrated sense of inadequacy found in the work of even the greatest artists... If our lives had no other configuration but this, we should want, and perhaps deserve, to perish; if depression had no termination, then suicide would, indeed, be the only remedy. But one need not sound the false or inspirational note to stress the truth that depression is not the soul’s annihilation; men and women who have recovered from the disease—and they are countless—bear witness to what is probably its only saving grace: it is conquerable." You can borrow a copy of the book from Yale University Libraries using Quicksearch.  

(by Erin Travers*) Drawing after Jacob van der Gracht's Third Figure, Cushing Manuscript, Yale University. Early-18th century. Red and Black Chalk On the back of a letter from the antiquarian and bookseller Menno Hertzberger, dated 29 March 1927, Harvey Cushing recorded his observations concerning a manuscript of Jacob van der Gracht’s printed drawing book, the Anatomy of the outer parts of the human body (The Hague, 1634; Rotterdam, 1660), which had been sent to Boston from Amsterdam. This text, prepared by the seventeenth-century Dutch painter and engraver for the use of “Painters, Sculptors, Engravers, and also Surgeons,” brought Van der Gracht renown during his life, and continues to be his most well known work today. The manuscript version contains twenty-two pages of text and illustration, including a handwritten version of Van der Gracht’s preface, a section on the bones taken from André du Laurens, fragmented comments on the muscles, and explanatory registers for the accompanying illustrations of skeletal and écorché figures that mimic those published in Andreas Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Basel, 1543). Hopeful that the drawings may have been preparatory works for the engraved plates, on inspection, Cushing found that the use of red and black chalk to demarcate the flesh and bones of the figures, while visually pleasing, was not conducive to the medium of print. Moreover, he writes that the larger scale of the figures and the presence of the registers on the back of the illustrations, made it unlikely that these were the final cartoons from which Van der Gracht worked, though they may have been an earlier experiment by the seventeenth-century Dutch artist. Contemplating whether a previous owner may have added the text to the illustrations at a later date, Cushing noted, “The paper, however, in the original seven leaves of text bears the same watermarks as that on which the drawings are made. It would be interesting to know the date and place of this paper.” During my time at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University as a Ferenc Gyorgyey Travel Research Grant recipient, I have pursued Cushing’s curiosity and investigated the watermarks hidden in the paper of the Van der Gracht manuscript to determine the date and location of its production.  Using online databases, including the Memory of Paper,  compiled by the Bernstein Consortium, my research makes use of resources that were not available to Cushing in the early twentieth century. Moreover, it is only with the relatively recent publications on Dutch watermarks, such as Theo and Frans Laurentius’s study of the Zeeland archives, or Nancy Ash, Shelley Fletcher, and Erik Hinterding’s works on Rembrandt’s prints, that this type of research is possible. Yet, despite the advances made in this field since the early twentieth century, this method for dating a work on paper should be approached with caution, as the medium is both geographically and temporally transient, and therefore should be considered as a general guide for attribution. Fleur-de-lys watermark "IV" countermark Together, watermark analysis and study of the formal properties of the drawings offers complementary evidence through which we can determine the relation of the manuscript to the published drawing book. The Cushing manuscript offers a clean and consistent watermark of a Strasbourg Bend, a shield with two diagonal bands that is mounted by a fleur-de-lis, and a countermark of the letters “IV."  Indicting the initials of the paper maker Jean Villedary (1668-1758), the countermark, design of the watermark, their size and relation to the vertical chain lines of the paper are consistent with samples dating from Amsterdam and London between 1718 and 1722, making it likely that the manuscript was produced in the first quarter of the eighteenth century (Churchill, no. 437 and Heaward, nos. 73 and 78). Given this date, the possibility that the drawings could have been executed prior to the publication of the printed text is unlikely, and visual analysis of the figures confirms this hypothesis. The process of engraving in the early modern period entailed the incision of a design into a copper plate, which was coated with ink and then pressed onto a piece of paper, transferring the image and resulting in the reversal of the initial example. Essentially, the preparatory work and final print should appear as mirror images of one another. However, in the case of the Cushing manuscript, the figures share the orientation found in the final prints.  Carefully adhering to the model provided by the prints, the drawn figures that occupy the Cushing manuscript are copies made at a later date, and as such offer information concerning the continued engagement with and changing expectations of these types of illustrations by artists and anatomists. Questions concerning this shift are addressed in my on-going dissertation research, which examines the exchange and adaptation of pictorial knowledge between artists and anatomists in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. I am grateful to the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library for its support of my project, and greatly appreciate the opportunity to investigate an inquiry first raised by Cushing nearly one hundred years ago. *Erin Travers is a PhD candidate, history of art and architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara, and a 2016 Ferenc Gyorgyey Fellow

On June 3, 2016 the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library hosted a talk titled "Harvey Cushing and John Fulton: Two Founders Bonded By Science, Medicine, And Books."  The focus of this event was a conversation between Drs. Dennis D. Spencer and Gordon M. Shepherd, moderated by Cynthia Tsay, YSM ’18. The panel spoke about the personal and professional relationship of these men, and touched upon the founding of the Yale Medical Library and how they worked together to make it a reality.   At the post-lecture reception, we also took a few photos of attendees with Harvey Cushing himself: Dr. Cushing's great-grandson, Harvey Cushing Dr. Frank Lobo and Sharon McManus Dr. Dennis Spencer and Harvey Cushing Library Curator of Prints and Drawings Susan Wheeler L to R: John Gallagher, Cushing's great-great-grandson Kevin Cushing, Dr. Gordon Shepherd, Cushing's granddaughter Kate Whitney, Dr. Dennis Spencer, Cynthia Tsay

The spring 2016 issue of Nota Bene: News from the Yale Library is now available online. This issue has a particular focus on the work of the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library as it marks its 75th anniversary this year.  In addition to telling the story of the Medical Library, the issue profiles some of the current projects, resources, collections, and exhibits that are making an impact at Yale and in the medical community worldwide.