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Medieval medical manuscript available digitally

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The Osler Library’s copy of a medieval medical text written by Johannes de Sancto Paulo (John of Saint Paul) is one of our manuscripts that are available digitally. Bibliotheca Osleriana 7627 is a small early 13th century Latin manuscript containing the Breviarium medicine (“Breviary of medicine”) written by Johannes de Sancto Paulo (fl. 1180), as well as an excerpt from the Liber Pantegni compiled and translated from Arabic into Latin by Constantine the African (1020?-1098/99?). It was rebound probably in the late 19th century in vellum over boards with beautiful marbled pastedowns. The volume belongs to William Osler‘s original donation to the library and is catalogued in his Bibliotheca Osleriana (1). Osler acquired the manuscript from the rare books dealer Luigi Lubrano of Naples in October of 1915.

First leaf of the Breviary, with the incipit, an opening line written in red announcing the title of the text (referred to in this copy as the "Breviary of Hippocrates"). BO 7627.

First leaf of the Breviary, with the incipit, an opening line written in red announcing the title of the text (referred to in this copy as the “Breviary of Hippocrates”) and table of contents. BO 7627.

Johannes de Sancto Paulo was a physician active in Southern Italy during the late 12th and early 13th century. He is thought to be among the masters of the Salerno school of medicine, a center for medical teaching and knowledge production well-known for bringing the work of Arabic medical writers into Europe through Latin translation. The breviary, one of four known works by Johannes de Sancto Paolo, is a general guide to practical medicine written probably around the third quarter of the 12th century.

The text is divided into five books. The first book discusses some practical issues about diagnosing and understanding disease, for example, recognizing signs of illness. It also discusses diseases that affect the entire body, like leprosy and skin conditions such as erysipelas. The second book contains conditions relating to the head and upper body, including the respiratory system. In this book are descriptions of and treatments for “psychological” conditions like mania and lethargy, head pain, eye pain, impaired vision, coughs, and asthma.

Chapter on leprosy, De Lepra from BO 7627. A popular topic, one early reader has added a lot of notes in the margin.

Chapter on leprosy, De Lepra from BO 7627. A popular topic, one early reader has added a lot of notes in the margin.

Book 3 concentrates on the digestive system with entries on vomiting, stomach pain, diabetes, and more. Book 4 is on the reproductive system and women’s issues like retention of menses and womb suffocation (two worrisome conditions for medieval doctors). Book 5 is on different types of fevers, which medieval people identified as a disease in itself rather than a symptom of illness, as we understand it today.

The second text bound in the manuscript appears to have been written somewhat later than the first. It was often a common practice to bind single texts together in the same binding.

A short extract from the Pantegni section on medical theory, theorica, likely transcribed by a medieval medical student. BO 7627.

A short extract from the Pantegni section on medical theory, theorica, likely transcribed by a medieval medical student. BO 7627.

The title of the manuscript’s second text, the Pantegni, comes from the Greek words pan and techne, meaning “all the art,” referring to the art of medicine, and was a large compendium of both practical medical treatments and medical theory. These pages are possibly the work of a student copying an extract of this well-known medical textbook for his own reference purposes. In the margin above where the writing begins, the scribe has scrawled in a short plea–sancti spiritus assit nobis gratia. Que cordi nostra sibi faciat, the opening (although slightly garbled) lines of a sequence hymn for the Christian holiday of Pentecost: “May the holy spirit be with us now. May he fashion to him our hearts.”

 

Further reading:

See a digitized copy of the oldest manuscript of the Pantegni (probably written under the supervision of Constantine himself) from the Dutch National Library here.

To find out more about medieval medicine in general, take a look at Nancy Siraisi, Medieval & early Renaissance medicine: an introduction to knowledge and practice (Chicago, 1990) or Faith Wallis, Medieval medicine: a reader (Toronto, 2010).

A great (and entertaining) resource on medieval manuscripts is the blog Medieval Fragments. A good intro to understanding and researching manuscripts is Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham, An introduction to manuscript studies (Ithaca, NY, 2007).

 

References

(1) Sir William Osler, Bibliotheca Osleriana: a catalogue of books illustrating the history of medicine and science (Montreal, 1969).

(2) Monica H. Green, “Johannes de Sancto Paulo,” in Medieval science, technology, and medicine: an encyclopedia, ed. Thomas Glick, Steven J. Livesey, and Faith Wallis (New York, 2005).

Directions for Preserving Health in St. Louis, 1874

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"Dr. C. H. Sanborn's Directions for Preserving Health in St. Louis, 1874." Osler Library Archives, P192

“Dr. C. H. Sanborn’s Directions for Preserving Health in St. Louis, 1874.” Osler Library Archives, P192

The Osler Library recently acquired a short manuscript booklet containing one doctor’s medical advice for patients moving out of town. Labelled “Dr. C. H. Sanborn’s directions for preserving health in St. Louis, 1874,” this tiny treatise provides advice and recipes for treating day-to-day complaints and guidelines for stocking the family medicine cabinet with the essentials.

Dr Charles H. Sanborn was a physician practicing in New Hampshire. Born in Hampton Falls in 1822, he graduated with an MD from Harvard Medical School in 1856 (1). He practiced medicine for over forty years in his hometown, where he also served as a Justice of the Peace and in local government (2). This autograph booklet appears to have been written by him for a family of three moving from New Hampshire to St. Louis, Missouri.

"The Pictorial Guide to St. Louis," 1877. From the .

“The Pictorial Guide to St. Louis,” 1877. From the Internet Archive.

During the second half of the 19th century, St. Louis was undergoing a population explosion that would make it the fourth largest city in the U.S. after New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Expanding sectors, such as the cotton industry, and new railroad connections attracted an influx of new residents, perhaps including Dr. Sanborn’s patients. The city was prone to cholera and had lived through an epidemic that killed more than 3,500 residents in 1866, just eight years prior to the writing of Dr. Sanborn’s pamphlet. (3)

Fittingly, Dr. Sanborn’s medical advice concentrates heavily on cholera and other, less acute gastro-intestinal complaints associated with moving to new climes. The first page of medical instructions deals with how to treat “Diarrhea, Dysentery or Cholera Morbus” in the youngest member of the family. Remedies include starch, castor oil, bismuth, and, in the case of feverishness, veratrum viride, a highly toxic plant sometimes used during the 19th century in the treatment of typhoid fever and yellow fever.

Up until the late 19th and early 20th century, the majority of medical treatment took place at home. Popular printed medical manuals would have been readily available for purchase and families would have expected to care for their sick themselves:

The skills, knowledge, and responsibilities of laypersons and physicians overlapped; trained physicians were in a functional sense always consultants–with the primary caregiver a family member, neighbor, or midwife.(4)

In the case of Dr. Sanborn’s patients, the father was perhaps the one responsible for making medical decisions and treating his family. Advice for particular ailments is oftentimes labelled “Baby” or “Self & Wife,” and includes detailed instructions for treating croup, “lung fever,” measles, the “Shakes,” “weakness sinking etc. etc.,” sore throat, painful menstruation, inflamed eyes, burns, and bug bites. A list in the back of the book ennumerates the items that should be kept on hand for medical usage.

SanbornBromoOne of the chemicals on this list attests to the persistence of the miasma theory of disease into the second half of the 19th century, even as germ theory was beginning to emerge in scientific circles around the same time. Disease, it was thought, was transmittable by poisoned air, marked by a bad smell. Dr. Sanborn suggests the use of bromo-chloralum, a harsh disinfectant, to “destroy most every poison in the atmosphere.” He urges it to be used liberally in the baby’s room and all around the house: “Don’t fail to use a pound of two in the first month or two.”

______________________________

This pamphlet is now available for consultation in our archives. You can find it listed on the Osler Library Archives database. For more information, please contact the library.

Further reading:

W. F. Bynum, Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

William G. Rothstein, American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century: From Sects to Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972.

Charles E. Rosenberg. Our Present Complaint: American Medicine, Then and Now. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

Charles E. Rosenberg, ed. Right Living: An Anglo-American Tradition of Self-Help Medicine and Hygiene. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

 

References

(1) Harvard University. Quinquennial catalogue of the officers and graduates, 1636-1930. (Cambridge, MA, 1930).

(2) Warren Brown, History of the Town of Hampton Falls, New Hampshire from the Time of the First Settlement within its Borders, vol. 1 (Manchester, NH, 1900.); The New Hampshire Register, Farmer’s Almanac, and Business Registry for 1871 (Claremont, NH, 1871).

(3) History of St. Louis, (1866-1904) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_St._Louis_(1866%E2%80%931904)&oldid=638231408

(4) Charles Rosenberg, ed. Right Living: An Anglo-American Tradition of Self-Help Medicine and Hygiene. (Cambridge, 1992), 4.

 

“In Flanders fields” at the Osler Library

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“In Flanders fields the poppies grow / Between the crosses, row on row”

John McCrae’s poem remains one of the most influential pieces of Canadian literature and gives us our most enduring World War I imagery: the red poppies. Born in Guelph, Ontario, McCrae was a career soldier and practicing physician. Before the war, he worked at the Montreal General and the Royal Victoria Hospital, and taught at McGill. Although McCrae was a trained physician, he joined an army fighting unit at the outbreak of the First World War. FlandersFieldsThere, he experienced some of the first chemical weapons attacks during the second battle of Ypres in Belgium. The story goes that McCrae penned his poem after the burial of a close friend and medical school colleague, when he noticed the poppies growing over the graves. This manuscript, written in McCrae’s hand, was left to the Osler Library among the literary archives of fellow physician and McGillian John Andrew Macphail. In this manuscript, McCrae ends the first line with the word “grow.” This is a change from the published version, in which the line finishes “blow.” McCrae wrote out this copy of the poem in a 1916 letter to a friend, Carleton Noyes, modestly mentioning that this piece had achieved some notoriety.

The library also has a second early copy of the poem. It is found in the diary of Clare Gass, which recounts her experiences as a nurse with the Canadian Army Medical Corps in France and England in 1915 and 1916. Gass was born in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, on 18 March 1887. She left home for Montreal to train as a nurse at the Montreal General Hospital School of Nursing from 1909 to 1912, working afterwards as a private nurse. After a brief training period in Quebec, she left for Europe in May of 1915 as a Lieutenant nursing sister with the Canadian Army Medical Corps, No. 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill). In her diary, “In Flanders Field” is copied out in an entry dated October 30th— nearly six weeks before the poem’s first publication in the magazine Punch on December 8, 1915. After that, it quickly became the most popular piece of poetry of the age.

 

 

Osler Library Guide: Almanacs

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This is part of a series of posts designed to expose readers to the range of materials we have here at the Osler Library and provide tips on how to find and use specific resources. These various installments will form the basis of a comprehensive Osler Library user guide. Your questions and feedback are welcome!

 

About

The Osler Library has a large collection of medical almanacs, for which we are still actively acquiring. The almanacs date from 1840 to 1977, with the largest number of holdings falling between 1900 and 1925. The almanac is an old genre of ephemeral—temporary or non-durable publications—that traces its history to the medieval period. These popular Cleopatreitems originally consisted of calendars with events, religious holidays, moon phases, and astronomical tables that provided an outlook on the upcoming year. Medical almanacs in particular were an important facet of premodern medicine as doctors took astrological information into consideration in the diagnosis and treatment of their patients. By the mid-18th century in the US and towards the end of the 18th century in Canada, almanacs were popular household books that provided health and home tips along with calendrical features. As such, they are an important source of information on lay medical culture.

The majority of our almanacs are published in Canada, the oldest of which is Le livre de songes de Cléopâtre (Cleopatra’s book of dreams), published in French in Brocktown, Ontario, and Morristown, New York, sometime between the years 1857 and 1881. The oldest almanacs are American, such as The phrenological almanac for 1841, published in 1840. British almanacs make up a much smaller subset, with a few almanacs published

The phrenological almanac of 1842

The phrenological almanac of 1842

simultaneously in Canada and the U.K. and a couple homeopathic tractates from the 1970s. The majority of the almanacs in the collection are what is known as patent medicine almanacs, used by drug manufacturers as an advertising medium. Nearly 200 of the almanacs were originally purchased from a Montreal collector and acquisitions are ongoing.

 

Finding information

Our medical almanacs can be located through the McGill online library catalogue. The almanacs have historically been kept in a separate database, accessible through this website. The database is now no longer updated and new accruals are being catalogued in the McGill Library catalogue. Most of the almanacs that were previously only findable through the Almanacs database have now been added to the McGill catalogue as well.

An easy way to find almanacs in the library catalogue is by using the Classic Catalogue (also linked to on the library homepage) and the name of Almanac Collection, Osler Library. Once in the Classic Catalogue, you can select an Advanced Search, which will give you the option of selecting either “Advanced,” “Expert,” or “Browse.” Select the “Browse” tab and enter in the name of the collection (inside quotation marks to indicate it is a phrase): “Almanac collection, Osler Library.” Click on the link to the collection that should appear on the top of the list. Once you are inside this list of almanacs, it is possible to modify your search by using the “Limit Results” function (accessed through the pink button above the results listing).  From here, you can pare down the list of almanacs by entering a keyword, date range, year of publication, or language.

 

General information

The almanacs may be used by in-house visitors only. Researchers are welcome during our opening hours. It’s recommended to make an appointment, but not necessary. You will be asked to leave coats and bags in our coatroom, fill out a form with your information, and leave a student card or other piece of identity with us during the time that you’re consulting materials. Only pencils can be taken into our reading rooms and staff will instruct you on proper handling of fragile materials.

Happy researching!

 

 Further reading

Thomas A. Horrocks, Popular print and popular medicine: almanacs and health advice in early America. Amherst, MA: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 2008.

Time, tide, and tonics: the patent medicine almanac in America. National Library of Medicine online exhibition.

John B. Blake, “From Buchan to Fishbein: the literature of domestic medicine.” In Guenter B. Risse, Ronald L. Numbers, and Judith Walzer Leavitt, eds., Medicine without doctors: home health care in American history, 11-30. New York: Science History Publications, 1977.

Elizabeth Hulse, “Almanacs.” The Canadian Encyclopedia

 

Osler Library FAQs

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Welcome back! As an introduction, or reintroduction, to your friendly, neighborhood history of medicine library, here are some questions I get asked frequently in the tours and classes I do here in the library. I’ve answered them here for your enjoyment and edification!

 

Do people actually use the books here?

OslerNiche_BooksSmaller copyAbsolutely! We have lots of readers come in to consult our rare books and archives, from various levels and fields. Many McGill profs use our collections in their research and McGill students use them for theses and research projects. We also receive visiting scholars from all over, some of whom are winners of our travel grants. You are not required to show academic credentials to use our collection, but if you are unused to working with fragile rare items, we will instruct you in how to use them in a way that doesn’t damage the books and contribute to their deterioration. Please feel free to write to us about your research project and make an appointment to consult our materials.

 

How did William Osler manage to collect all these books? Was he ridiculously wealthy?

Osler was a successful doctor, but certainly didn’t have the means it would take to accumulate a comparable collection today. 19th century physicians were generally paid according to what we would call a sliding scale. And since Osler was a famous physician in his day (he wrote one of the most famous medical textbooks), he had many well-to-do patients who remunerated him accordingly. Still, his love of books was so overwhelming that he describes in letters borrowing money from a rich brother to pay for his habit. Beyond that, though, the end of the 19th century and before WWI was something of a golden age for book collectors—rare books were still pricey items, but not nearly as expensive as they are today.

 

What is your oldest book?

Assyrian_tablet

Fragment of cuneiform tablet (c. 700 BCE). B.O. 53.

Our oldest “book” is actually a clay tablet, probably written sometime during the 8th century BCE in Assyria (an ancient kingdom in modern day Iraq). The tablet is an example of one of the earliest forms of writing, done by forming tablets out of clay, impressing letters into them with a sharpened stick (called a stylus) in an alphabet called cuneiform, and letting the tablets bake in the sun so the writing is fixed. This tablet lists medical recipes made out of plants and animals. Here’s one particularly appealing example, a treatment for eye problems: “slay a scorpion, pull out its tongue, cut off its head, and with its blood anoint the inflamed eye; [the patient] will live.”

 

What is your most expensive book?

Copernicus Revolutionibus 02

Copernicus (1473-1543), De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium (The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), Nuremberg, 1543. B.O. 566. Woodcut f.9v depicting the heliocentric model.

It’s hard to say exactly, but this might be a contender: have a look at what this first edition copy of Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres sold for at auction last year. We also have a first edition of this 1543 work in which Nicolaus Copernicus, the famous Polish Renaissance astronomer, describes for the first time in modern history the revolution of the planets around the earth. The Ptolemaic, or geocentric, model of the universe that dominated scientific had by the Renaissance period become extremely mathematically complicated in order to explain the movement of the planets that had been observed and recorded for generations. In this book, Copernicus demonstrated that his heliocentric model could simply and elegantly explain planetary motion.

 

Why is there one window in the stained glass that is different from the others?

One of these panes is not like the others...

One of these panes is not like the others…

Good question! This window was designed along with the rest of the Osler Room by Montreal architect Percy Nobbs in the 1920s. It features two symbols with medical significance. First is the staff of Asclepius, the Greek patron god of medicine. Asclepius was thought to be a son of Apollo. Temples to Asclepius were found throughout the classical world, and sick petitioners would visit them to sacrifice to the god, spend the night in the temple’s inner sanctum, and receive ritual healing from the temple priests. The symbol’s serpent and staff are thought to represent healing and rejuvenation. The second symbol is a book held out by a heavenly hand. The book represents the university, learning, scholarship, and the idea of medicine as knowledge transmitted through the ages. So why is there one book that has no writing on it? What do you think: mistake or message?

 

Why aren’t you wearing white gloves?

whitegloveGenerally, it’s no longer the accepted practice in the rare books world to wear white gloves when handling materials, except in some particular cases (like delicate photographs). The theory behind gloves was that the natural oils on peoples’ fingers would wear down the books over time. This may be true (we still try to avoid touching the written and printed text itself and only touch the blank margins of a book’s pages), but it’s counterbalanced by the fact that pages are a lot harder to turn in bulky gloves and the risks of tearing a page are a lot higher. Better to just come with clean hands.

 

Are Osler’s ashes really there?

Yes. But no, sadly, you can’t see them.

 

 

A Look into the Osler Library Artifact Collection

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tg1

This tonsil guillotine (otherwise known as a tonsillotome) is one of hundreds of relics of the history of medicine housed in the Osler Library artifact collection.

Developed in the decades following the French Revolution, the tonsil guillotine has one glaring similarity to its much more sinister cousin: a sharp, fast-moving blade designed to cut the afflicted mass from its bulk. This much smaller blade is fastened in between two fixed steel plates, and attached to a moveable handle that slides it through an auxiliary ring intended to fit around the infected tonsil.

The instrument was originally developed as an adaptation to Benjamin Bell’s (1749-1806) uvulotome, which was similarly used to excise an inflamed and elongated uvula. Bell describes the use of this tool in his System of Surgery, “that part of the uvula intended to be removed being passed thro the opening of the body of the instrument, the cutting slider, which ought to be very sharp, must be pressed forward with sufficient firmness for dividing it from the parts above.”

uvulotome

Instruments for removing the uvula and small tumors from the throat, from Benjamin Bell’s System of Surgery. 3rd ed. Edinburgh: C. Elliot & T. Kay, 1789.

The physician Philip Syng Physick (1768-1837) used this same device in treating a patient with a relentless cough in the spring of 1826. After noting the patient’s elongated uvula, Physick followed a popular treatment that involved partly removing the infected area. Up until that point, he, among other physicians, had used scissors or ligatures for such operations. Dr. Physick instead decided to try an old instrument in order to make the process easier. His design was very similar to that of Bell’s uvulotome: a sharp sliding blade would pass through two plates into a round opening at the end of the instrument to remove the uvula in one smooth motion. In subsequent years Physick adapted this instrument for use in excising infected tonsils, enlarging the aperture of the ring and making slight modifications to the steel body. The guillotine in our artifact collection follows Physick’s early design of a pointed and movable cutting blade between two steel plates. On one end of the device is a bone handle and ring used to position and slide the blade within the patient’s mouth. The steel hoop at the opposite end of the instrument may have been covered by a strip of wax linen to achieve a cleaner cut, and the thin needle lying flat above the blade would have kept the infected tonsil in place during the operation.

 

tg3

tg2At this time, tonsillectomies were considerably restricted by inadequate anesthetic, so surgeons made every effort to perform the operation as quickly as possible. This is perhaps why the guillotine became a popular tool for the operation; contemporary alternatives involved the use of curved scissors (which often led to excessive hemorrhaging) or the use of a wire ligature to slowly separate the tonsil from the inside of the mouth (a long and excruciating process without viable painkillers). In contrast, the guillotine could perform the excision in one even movement.

Further modifications of the tonsil guillotine were made by Morel Mackenzie in the 1860s, popularizing the instrument for wider use. It remained the preferred method for tonsillectomy until the early twentieth century, until it became more common to perform complete rather than partial removal of the tonsil. A technique involving removal of the tonsil with a scalpel and forceps proved much more effective and precise, and tonsillectomy using the guillotine eventually fell out of favor with most physicians.

 

References

Benjamin Bell. A System of Surgery. Edinburgh: C. Elliot & T. Kay, 1789.

J. Mathews, J. Lancaster, I. Sherman, and G. O. Sullivan. “Guillotine tonsillectomy: a glimpse into its history and current status in the United Kingdom.” The Journal of Laryngology & Otology 116 (Dec. 2002): 988–991.

Neil G. McGuire. “A method of guillotine tonsillectomy with an historical review.” The Journal of Laryngology & Otology 81, no. 2 (Feb. 1967): 187-195.

Ronald Alastair McNeill. “A History of Tonsillectomy: Two Millenia of Trauma, Haemorrhage and Controversy.” The Ulster Medical Journal 29, no. 1 (June 1960): 59-63.

Philip Syng Physick. “Case of Obstinate Cough, occasioned by elongation of the Uvula, in which a portion of that organ was cut off, with a description of the instrument employed for that purpose, and also for excision of scirrhous tonsils.” The American Journal of the Medical Sciences 1, no. 2 (1828): 262-265.

World No Tobacco Day, 31 May

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Today seems a fitting day to take a look at an oldie-but-goodie from the Osler Library Newsletter, no. 15, February 1974.

An article by then-cataloguer Janis Shore describes an exhibit on the history of smoking:

Prompted by a suggestion from one of our overseas correspondents, the Library staff organized an exhibit on the history of smoking. There was little problem in finding sufficient materials within the Library as Dr. Osler expressed great interest in the use of tobacco and selected 30 books for the Osleriana collection that dealt with this subject.

 

One sixteenth-century book in particular was responsible for much of what Europeans knew about tobacco.

Monardes, Nicolás, ca. 1512-1588. Historia medicinal. En Seuilla : En casa de Alonso Escriuano, 1574. 4º. Osler Library, B.O. 3431.

Monardes, Nicolás, ca. 1512-1588. Historia medicinal. En Seuilla : En casa de Alonso Escriuano, 1574. 4º. Osler Library, B.O. 3431.

Written by Nicolas Monardes in 1574 and titled ‘Primera y segunda y tercera Partes de la Historia medicinal de las cosas’, it states that the tobacco plant would cure coughs, asthma, headache, cramp in the stomach, gout… and malignant tumours.

 

 

Another book,  ‘A Counterblaste to Tobacco’ issued by King James I of England, represents one of the earliest stop-smoking campaigns, highlighting an important premodern reason to quit.

Many monarchs were as concerned as King James because smoking had drastically increased the hazards of fire and hundreds of European villages were being destroyed because of careless smokers.

 

Reader's annotation in a 1644 compendium including a Latin translation of James's Counterblaste, among other works. Osler Library, B.O. 2550. "Tobacco! Injurious herb, an oily plant with horrible smoke."

Reader’s annotation in a 1644 compendium including a Latin translation of James’s Counterblaste, among other works. Osler Library, B.O. 2550. “Tobacco! Injurious herb, an oily plant with horrible smoke.”

 

William Osler himself recognized certain dangers related to over-indulgence in tobacco and warned against it (though he was far from a non-smoker himself).

 

Lady Nicotine in William Osler's speech "A Way of Life", 1913. Typed manuscript, Osler Library, B.O. 7653.

Lady Nicotine in William Osler’s speech “A Way of Life”, 1913. Typed manuscript, Osler Library, B.O. 7653.

Read the whole article here.

To check out other issues of the OLN, see our website.

 

“Nous portons tous des microbes”

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World Tuberculosis Day fell yesterday, March 24th. The choice of date commemorates the day Dr. Robert Koch announced his discovery of the TB bacillus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In 1882, the year of Koch’s announcement, TB was responsible for seven million deaths.

Cracher à terre est un Danger. From the Osler Library Prints Collection.

Cracher à terre est un Danger. From the Osler Library Prints Collection.

This “image d’Épinal” is part of a series called “Propagande pour l’hygiène publique.” It was part of a wide campaign in the first half of the 20th century to sensitize the French public to tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, infant mortality, and alcoholism: the inevitable scourges that decimate humanity. “Images d’Épinal” were popular prints that illustrated traditional or country life. In this example, entitled “Cracher à terre est un Danger (Spitting on the ground is a danger),” a young instructor named Monsieur Ledoux visits a country home, where he is alarmed to see the sick grandfather spitting on the floor. He explains that tuberculosis germs are found in saliva and can be easily be transmitted through the air, as when the young wife sweeps the floors and sends up microbe-filled dust.

Monsieur Ledoux’s three crucial pieces of advice? Don’t sweep the floor when it’s dry, make sure people don’t spit on the floor, and give pocket spitoons to sick people.

 

Refs.

Robert Koch and Tuberculosis: Robert Koch’s famous lecture. December, 2003. Nobelprize.org.

Albert Calmette. La propagande pour l’hygiene sociale par le cinematographe. L’art à l’école. Bulletin de la Société Française de l’art à l’école, 78 (1922): 81-82.