February is Black History Month and we will be celebrating it all month long here at the Duke Medical Center Archives. On our blog this month, we will highlight some important people and events in Black history at Duke Medicine.
We encourage you to check out the Archives’ research guide African American History at Duke Medicine. The guide aims to introduce researchers to materials documenting the history of African American faculty, students, and staff at Duke Medicine. Included are oral histories, archival collections, photographs, audiovisual materials, and publications, selected key dates and key figures, and links to recommended digital resources.
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The Medical Center Library & Archives is happy to announce that the National Library of Medicine’s traveling exhibit, “Pictures of Nursing: The Zwerdling Postcard Collection” is display through February 25th. It is now accompanied by a display of “Pictures of Nursing at Duke” featuring pictures from the Duke Medical Center Archives.
Nurses and nursing have often been the subject of postcard art for over a hundred years; thus, the postcards from the Zwerdling Collection provide insight into popular social and cultural perceptions of the nursing profession. In conjunction with these artistic renderings of nurses, the “Pictures of Nursing at Duke” display provides archival photographs of nurses working and studying at Duke Hospital and the School of Nursing respectively. ...
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Today President Obama will deliver his farewell speech as he prepares to leave office and President-elect Trump prepares for his inauguration on January 20th. In this time of transition, there have been many news stories about the cabinet members, policy advisors, and the many 4,000+ jobs that the new administration must fill. There are a lot of people that work in the White House with varying backgrounds and responsibilities—including doctors! The White House Medical Unit is an important, but perhaps lesser known department that provides important healthcare services for the president, his employees, and everyone who visits the White House each day.
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The Archives is happy to announce that the Elbert L. Persons Papers, 1923-1970, are processed and open to researchers. The collection is organized into the following series: Personal Papers, 1951-1969; Correspondence, 1946-1970; Duke Medicine, 1931-1970; Professional Papers, 1923-1970; United States Armed Forces, 1934-1970; American College of Physicians (ACP), 1943-1970; Diets, circa 1940-1949; and Audiovisual, 1964, undated. The papers contain professional and personal correspondence, grant materials, records pertaining to Persons’ time with the 65th General...
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This summer, during a seemingly innocuous project to add more description to our finding aids, an intern pulled a box from the Arthur A. Morris Papers, a Duke alumni who helped found the Neurosurgical Society of America, and was confronted with one of the worst four letter words in archives: mold. This fungus grows on the surface of its host and feeds on living organisms and dead organic matter. Once these fungal spores are present, along with sufficient moisture and nutrients, they will germinate. Elevated temperatures, poor air circulation, dim or no light, and accumulated dirt all accelerate the growth of mold. Without the presence of moisture, mold spores will lie dormant. After inspecting the Morris...
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The Duke Community was saddened to learn of the passing of Dr. H. Keith H. Brodie earlier this month. As both chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and president of Duke, he had a profound impact on Duke University and Duke Health.
There have been several well-written tributes to Dr. Brodie and his legacy in the past couple of weeks, so rather than attempt to write another, we thought that we would share some of his own words. We conducted an oral history interview with Dr. Brodie in 2004 that hopefully provides a glimpse of the type of leader that he was.
When asked about his continued dedication to psychiatry, Dr. Brodie shared the following:
“It’s been fun. You know, I’ve always felt...
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When looking for items for our recent Halloween event, we made an interesting and unexpected find that we wanted to share. In a folder titled “The Effect of Radiation on the World's Most Precious Material” in the Charles W. Shilling Papers, we not only found Dr. Shilling’s speech notes with
the aforementioned title, but also an informational pamphlet about Professor Heckler’s Trained Flea Circus at Hubert’s Museum in New York City, shown on the left. We are not exactly sure why Dr. Shilling had this brochure in his...
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On November 8, 1973, the Duke Eye Center (now called the Wadsworth Eye Center) was opened and dedicated. The $3.7 million project was the result of more than eight years of planning. Prior to its construction, patients with serious or unusual eye diseases often had to be referred to eye centers in distant places like New York, Baltimore, or Miami.
The three-story structure built in 1973 contained a 43-bed inpatient unit, operating rooms, a 22,000-square-foot outpatient clinic and one complete floor of research laboratories. It was built from funds received from individuals, foundations, and other private sources. The fact that no government funds or tax money was used on the project was a big source...
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Next Monday is our annual Halloween event and we are so excited about sharing all the spooky (and silly) things that we have in our collections. In anticipation of next week’s event, we are highlighting one group of materials that will be on display at the event—fallout shelter plans and pamphlets.
One thing that scared many Americas during the 1960s was the prospect of nuclear war. Consequently, many plans were made across the country for the building or preparation of fallout shelters. These were sites “intended to give some protection against fallout radiation and other effects of a nuclear explosion, either an existing area such as a basement or tunnel, or a structure specially constructed for this purpose” (Dictionary of Energy, p. 218). In the...
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October is a month of cooler temperatures, changing leaves, and Halloween candy, but also Archives Month! This annual celebration promotes archives, the materials they preserve, and people who work in them. All month events have been held across the country to celebrate. For example, on October 5th, archivists responded to questions on Twitter with the hashtag #AskAnArchivist. Upcoming on October 26th & 27th, the National Archives will host a live, two-day, virtual Genealogy Fair via webcast on Youtube. And this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of events!
On a state level, the Society of North Carolina Archivists sponsors Archives Month events every year. In fact, Gov. McCrory...
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It Came from the Archives! Halloween Highlights from the Duke Medical Center Archives
Location: Medical Center Library & Archives, Level 2, Room 212E
Date: Monday, October 31, 11am – 2pm
In honor of Archives Month in October, the Duke University Medical Center Archives is hosting its third annual Halloween event at the Medical Center Library & Archives featuring a selection of eerie, fascinating, and rarely seen materials from their collections. Brave souls are invited to gaze upon spine-chilling artwork, stare into the faces of frightening death masks, behold macabre medical artifacts and instruments, and much more! Halloween candy will be available…for those who haven’t lost their appetite.
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This summer, the Archives received an addition to the Department of Arts & Health at Duke Records collection that individuals familiar with the Morris Clinic Building at Duke South will recognize: the Gathering in the Stories installation. It was curated by Linda Belans and the Health Arts Network at Duke (HAND) with photographs by Jim Lee and Leah Sobsey. This exhibit, installed from 2006 to 2016, displayed 12 large portraits of Duke University Hospital employees and 35 smaller transparencies comprised of both text and images in which the Duke University Hospital employees discussed the impact Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement had on their lives. Because of...
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In the spring of 2016, the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center (NCDHC), a statewide digitization and digital publishing program that promotes and increases access to North Carolina’s cultural heritage, put out a call for submissions of audiovisual materials repositories wanted digitized and shared online in the Sights and Sounds Collection...
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This is the third blog post in a three part series about Dr. Jay M. Arena. (To see the previous posts ...
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The Medical Center Archives Spring/Summer 2016 newsletter is now available. To read it, visit: /newsletters or click on the image below.
In this issue:
To subscribe to our newsletter, email us at: dumc.archives@mc.duke.edu
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