Forceps and Drills and Stones. . .oh my!

Just click on the "Powell and Leland No. 1 Stand Microscope" for a virtual look at the Robert A. Brown History of Medicine Collection http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/hsl/history/. Housed on the lower level of the Health Sciences Library on the South Campus, this collection includes an impressive array of historical and rare books in the health sciences, as well as an awe-inspiring, if not fearsome, collection of historical medical instruments.

Highlights from the McGuire Instrument Collection include the "Auzoux papier mache ear, eye and larynx models." These colorful models served as educational tools in the 1800s and are works of art in their own right. If dental visits aren't high on your list of fun things to do, imagine what it must have been like for patients lucky enough to go under a "thumb operated drill!"

The Bonnie and Vern Bullough History of Nursing Collection contains nursing artifacts and rare books, including works by and about Florence Nightingale. The title page of a journal called The Trained Nurse, which began publication in Buffalo in 1888, is here, together with a sterling folding medicine spoon circa 1880 and a Nelson's earthenware inhaler.

The History of Medicine Web page can connect you to other history of medicine links on the Web, including image collections from the National Library of Medicine's History of Medicine Division http://wwwihm.nlm.nih.gov/ and the Bodelian Image Collection in Oxford, England http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/imacat.html. There's also local medical-history information, such as bibliographies of the assassination of President McKinley and the influenza outbreak of 1918-19.

For more information on the History of Medicine Collection, please contact Linda Lohr, Manager of the Collection at 829-3024 or lalohr@acsu.buffalo.edu.

-Sue Neumeister and Lori Widzinski, University Libraries