Category Archives: extra extra!

Dr. Rolando Del Maestro to Give McGovern Award Lecture

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American Osler Society MeetingDr. Rolando Del Maestro, Chairperson of the Standing Committee of the Osler Library, has been honoured with the John P. McGovern Award Lectureship by the American Osler Society at the 45th Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore from April 26 to April 29. The Lectureship was established in 1986 in honour of physician and historian of medicine Dr. John P. McGovern through the generosity of the John P. McGovern Foundation. The Lectureship is awarded yearly to a significant contributor to the field of medical humanities and the Oslerian legacy. Dr. Del Maestro is the first to receive the Lectureship from McGill University and one of only a few Canadians to be awarded the distinction. His lecture, entitled “Leonardo da Vinci and the Search for the Soul,” will be given on Monday, April 27th, and will focus on both the historical and present concepts related to neurological cognitive integration.

 

Here is a list of all of the recipients of the John P. McGovern Award Lectureships since its inception in 1986:

McGovern Award Award

Reprints of past John P. McGovern Award Lectures can be found in the pamphlets collection of the Osler Library. A complete listing can be found here. A collection of 18 past McGovern lectures was published in 2004 by Lawrence D. Longo: Our lords, the sick: McGovern Lectures in the history of medicine and medical humanism.

The American Osler Society was founded in the 1960s as for the purpose of bringing together members of the medical and allied professions who are, by their common inspiration, dedicated to memorialise and perpetuate the just and charitable life, the intellectual resourcefulness, and the ethical example of Sir William Osler. Since January 9, 1981, the Osler Library has been the official repository for the archives of the American Osler Society, a full description of which can be found here.

 

 

 

Announcing the Edward H. Bensley Research Travel Grant recipients

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Dr. Edward H. Bensley (1906-1995)

Dr. Edward H. Bensley (1906-1995)

The Osler Library is pleased to announce that we have selected three researchers out of a very worthy pool of applicants to receive this year’s Dr. Edward H. Bensley Research Travel Grants to support their work at the Osler Library. This year’s recipients are Dr. Sasha Mullally, Dr. Elma Brenner, and Emily Lockhart.

Dr. Mullally is a professor of history at the University of New Brunswick. She holds a doctorate in history from the University of Toronto and is a specialist in the social history of medicine and health in Canada and the US. She is currently co-investigator on a study of the history of medical diasporas in Canada, a SSHRC- and AMS/Hannah Foundation-funded research project. Her work at the Osler Library will investigate the history of physicians immigrating to Canada in the second half of the 20th century.

Dr. Brenner works at at the Wellcome Library in London as a specialist in medieval and early modern medicine. She was previously a post-doctoral research fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, where she also earned a Licence in Medieval Studies. She holds a doctorate in history from the University of Cambridge and has published on the history of leprosy in the Middle Ages. At Osler she will be looking at a number of early printed works on the “French Disease,” a disfiguring illness roughly equivalent to modern-day syphilis.

Emily Lockhart is Toronto-based photographer, designer, and curator. As a travel grant recipient, she will continue her work on a historical photographic project with McGill’s School of Architecture. The project explores the spaces of medical instruction at McGill in the wake of World War I and today by reproducing a collection of 146 glass plate negatives taken by McGill medical student James R. Lockhart (1890-1980) after the war and rephotographing the places that appear in the historic photographs as they now exist.

Congratulations to all of our 2015 recipients!

The Dr. Edward H. Bensley Research Travel Grant is endowed through generous gifts from the McGill Medicine Class of 1936 and the Pope-Jackson Fund. The grant honours Dr. E. H. Bensley’s place in the history of the Osler Library, as a former dean of the Faculty of Medicine at McGill who devoted the latter part of his life to the study of the history of medicine. For more information about the research travel grant, please see our website.

Dr. William Feindel, 1918-2014

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Dr. William Feindel

We are sorry to announce the death of Dr. William Feindel, who passed away on Sunday, January 12th at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital after a brief illness.

Born in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, he received a B.A. in Biology from Acadia University in 1939, a M.Sc. from Dalhousie University in 1942, and an M.D., C.M. from McGill University in 1945.  He was then awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and earned his D. Phil From Oxford in 1949.

Dr. Feindel had a long and very illustrious career, spending many years with the Montreal Neurological Institute, where he founded the William Cone Laboratory for Neurosurgical Research and became the first William Cone Professor of Neurosurgery and then Director of the Institute from 1972 to 1984.

Dr Feindel  was a great lover of medical history and a mainstay of the Osler Library, serving as Honourary Osler Librarian, Curator of the Penfield Archive and as a member of the Board of Curators and its Standing Committee for a number of years.  His support and love for the library was second to none. He was also a true renaissance man and showed great musical ability and appreciation.

The library will very much miss his kind and generous presence, his wise advice and his vision, and extends its deepest sympathy to his family and friends

Mary Louise Nickerson Fellowship

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The Osler Library is currently accepting applications to our Mary Louise Nickerson Fellowship. The fellowship was established in 2011 by Granville H. Nickerson, M.D., C.M., in honour and in memory of his wife, Mary Louise, who was an inspiration to many of Dr. Nickerson’s classmates of McGill’s Medicine Class of 1945.  The fellowship will allow a scholar to carry out research with the Neuro History archival and artifact collections at McGill University, the centrepiece of which is the Penfield Archive in the Osler Library, as well as other resources available at the Montreal Neurological Institute and the McGill University Archives. The Osler Library’s collections are listed in the McGill Library Catalogue and the Osler Library Archives Collection website.

Value varies depending on the project, to a maximum of $10,000.  More than one fellowship may be awarded during each fiscal year.  The fellow is required to carry out research in Montreal during the 2014-15 fiscal year (May 2014-April 2015).  May be renewable.

We invite applications from a variety of individuals, including graduate students, scholars and professionals.  Preference will be given to applicants spending at least one month in Montreal and who take advantage of the rare and unique materials held in the Osler Library and McGill University.  Fellows are required to submit a report of their work suitable for publication in the Osler Library Newsletter and may be requested to give a brief presentation at the University.

Please find full application instructions on our website.

All documentation must be received by February 1st, 2014.

 

Pivnicki Award

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Applications are currently being accepted for this research travel grant to the Osler Library

The Dr. Dimitrije Pivnicki Award in Neuro-History is offered by the Osler Library and the Montreal Neurological Institute and Library to support research in the field of neuropsychiatry and neuro-history. The award was established in 2012 by the family and friends of Dr. Pivnicki (1918-2007), who practiced and taught psychiatry at the Allen Memorial Institute of McGill University from 1956 to 1996. With degrees in law and medicine, he had a wide and eclectic interest in classic and modern languages and literature, and a keen appreciation of the history of neuropsychiatry, an area of scholarship that will be advanced by this award.
The award supports a student or scholar wishing to carry out research utilizing the rich archival and monographic holdings at McGill University, such as the Penfield Archive in the Osler Library, and other resources available at the Osler Library, the Montreal Neurological Institute and the McGill University Archives. The Osler Library’s collections are listed in the McGill Library Catalogue and the Osler Library Archives Collection website.

Terms: The value varies depending on the project, to a maximum of approximately $4,000. The recipient is required to carry out research in Montreal during the 2014-15 fiscal year (May 2014-April 2015). The award may be renewable.

Requirements: We invite applications from a variety of individuals, including graduate students, scholars and professionals. Recipients are required to submit a report of their work suitable for publication in the Osler Library Newsletter and may be requested to give a brief presentation at the university.

Deadline is February 1, 2014. Information on how to apply is found on our website.

 

New issue of the OLN

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PenfieldHomunculusThe latest issue of the Osler Libary Newsletter can now be found in electronic form on our website. Articles from no. 119 include a look at how Renaissance doctors predicted the future, a comparison of William Osler and Norman Bethune’s religious heritages, an investigation into our collection of smallpox vaccination literature, and  a history of Wilder Penfield’s famous homunculus.

 

New issue of the OLN

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Osler specimen 23. Acute infectious endocarditis. Maude Abbott Medical Museum.

Osler specimen 23. Acute infectious endocarditis. Maude Abbott Medical Museum.

The latest issue of the Osler Libary Newsletter can now be found in electronic form on our website. Articles from no. 118 include a look at the Iconographique photographique de la Salpetrière, an examination of Vesalius’ legacy and Osler’s medical humanism, a list of Canadians who graduated with an MD from the University of Edinburgh in the first half of the 19th century, a discussion of the early years of the Montreal Neurological Institute and its connection to the Neurological Institute in Breslau, a glimpse of McGill’s Maude Abbott Medical Museum, and more.

 

World Leprosy Day

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January 30th is World Leprosy Day. Observed either on this day or the nearest Sunday, the day is designed to raise public awareness of leprosy, historically one of the most stigmatized illnesses.

Portrait of Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen (1841-1914), a Norwegian physician best known for identifying Mycobacterium leprae, the bacterium that causes leprosy, or Hansen’s disease. (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1912.) From the Osler Library Prints online.

Portrait of Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen (1841-1914), a Norwegian physician best known for identifying Mycobacterium leprae, the bacterium that causes leprosy, or Hansen’s disease. (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1912.) From the Osler Library Prints online.

See an article from the current issue of The Lancet about the success of eradication strategies in Iran. (McGill users)

The authors write:

Although leprosy was officially eliminated more than a decade ago, the disease has not been completely eradicated and the scars from the past linger on. Iran, with an annual incidence of less than 100 cases, is among the regions in which strategies recommended by WHO have been implemented successfully thanks to the availability of free multidrug therapy and leprosy elimination campaigns.

 

Read all about it with some resources from our circulating collection:

Boeckl, Christine. Images of leprosy: disease, religion, and politics in European art. Kirksville, Mo. : Truman State University Press, 2011.

Liang, Qizi. Leprosy in China: a history. New York : Columbia University Press, 2009.

Rawcliffe, Carole. Leprosy in medieval England. Woodbridge, UK ; Rochester, NY : Boydell Press, 2006.

Demaitre, Luke. Leprosy in premodern medicine: a malady of the whole body. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

 

Or take a virtual tour of New Brunswick’s 19th century leper hospital here. Between 1844 and 1949, 327 patients with leprosy were housed and treated at this lazaretto.