Item of the Month, December 2011: Sun Yat-sen and Sir James Cantlie

In March 1912 the provisional president of the newly created Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen, sent this letter to Mrs Mabel Cantlie, wife of the British tropical medicine specialist Dr James Cantlie. In it he surveys the enormous challenge the young republic faced less than three months into its existence. In fact Dr Sun was to play little further part in the immediate consolidation of the Chinese republic, as by the following year he was on the run from the military government of General Yuan Shikai, Sun’s successor as president, and self-appointed ‘Great Emperor of China’.

Dr James Cantlie (1851-1926), an Aberdeen trained physician, went to Hong Kong in 1887 at the invitation of Patrick Manson, whose medical practice he inherited. One of his earliest achievements was to assist Manson in establishing a medical training college for native students, one of the first of whom was the future president of China.

After graduating Sun Yat-sen remained in contact with the Cantlies, periodically appealing to the British government and public for support for democratic China through their good offices. The record of this involvement is reflected in Cantlie’s papers which were later donated to the Wellcome Library by his descendants.

Sun Yat-sen was already a well-known revolutionary agitator as a student, although still an assiduous enough scholar to graduate top of his class in 1892.

In 1895 he was part of small group of revolutionaries who planned to engineer an uprising in Guangzhou (Canton), only for their plot to be betrayed. Not for the last time Sun found himself a wanted man, escaping via Hong Kong to the United States, pursued by a banning order from the Hong Kong authorities. When the Cantlies returned to London the following year Sun Yat-sen moved to England, partly to benefit from the help and protection of his mentor. This was soon called in aid when Sun was kidnapped and imprisoned in the Chinese legation on Portland Place.

A high profile campaign in government and press was orchestrated by Cantlie to secure Sun’s release. The episode marked a turning point in Sun Yat-sen’s career, as it turned him into a celebrity, much in demand on the British lecture circuit, as this show card suggests.

His popularity in the UK was not reflected in Hong Kong, where the colonial authorities, anxious to maintain good relations with Imperial China, continued to warn Sun to stay away.

During the first decade of the twentieth century Sun Yat-sen was based mainly in Japan, one of the main centres of expatriate Chinese revolutionary activity, and Hawaii. There is little evidence of his activities during this period in Cantlie’s papers. In Tokyo Sun founded the party later known as the Kuomintang – the first political party of republican China. When a general insurrection spread across China during 1911 the Kuomintang was able to take power in Guangzhou in a bloodless coup in November.


Following events at a distance Cantlie was moved to upbraid The Times’s correspondent in Beijing, who was slow to comprehend the revolutionary moment.

Sun himself arrived in Shanghai on the 25th of December, setting foot in his homeland for the first time in sixteen years. He was elected provisional president four days later - so, one hundred years ago to this day - and sworn in on New Year’s Day 1912.

Sun Yat-sen, aware that he and his party had ridden to power on the coat tails of a military uprising, ceded the presidency to the military strongman Yuan Shikai, pending elections. When held in late 1912 these returned the Kuomintang as the largest party. Relations between the autocratic Yuan and his democratic opponents deteriorated rapidly; the parliamentary leader of the Kuomintang was assassinated at Shanghai railway station on Yuan’s orders in March 1913, one of the events that precipitated a lengthy, despairing telegram from Sun to Cantlie that was circulated in the press, and which is preserved in his papers.




By late 1913 Sun Yat-sen was again on the run, his party proscribed by Yuan.

Sun Yat-sen’s political career was far from over but the Cantlies had played their part. Their intervention to free him from the Chinese Legation in 1896 had no doubt saved his life. For this reason both Cantlie and London hold an honoured place in the foundation mythology of modern China, and during this centenary year the papers documenting Sun’s connection with his old tutor have been much in demand. They died within barely a year of each other, two lives that came together to change the world.





Images:
- Letter from Sun Yat Sen to Mrs Mabel Cantlie, 12th March 1912 (MS.7934)
- Hong Kong: College of Medicine for Chinese. Examination Papers in Anatomy: answered by Chinese Students. 1887. Page from Sun Yat Sen's examination paper, with
diagrams. (MS.2934)
- Excerpt from letter from Dr James Cantlie concerning Sun Yat Sen's imprisonment by the Chinese Legation in London, dated October 22nd 1886 (MS.7937/13)
- An episode in the revolutionary war in China, 1911: the march of the revolutionary army on Wuhan with two portraits of revolutionary leaders in roundels at top; the right one resembles Sun Yat Sen (Welcome Library no. 645607i)
- Telegram from Sun Yat Sen concerning the murder of Sung Chao-jen, leader of the Kuomintang political party, and the withdrawal of funds from the Peking government. Dated 2nd May 1913. Pages 1 and 2 (MS.7937/21)
- Portrait of Sun Yat Sen from 'Obituary and programme of memo for Dr Sun Yat Sen' (MS.7937/23)
- Sir James Cantlie. Oil painting by Harry Herman Salomon after a photograph (Wellcome Library no. 45529i)

Author: Richard Aspin

If not here, where?

It was the proud boast of London’s Windmill Theatre that “We never closed”: that throughout the Blitz, as bombs rained down on London, the theatre continued to provide nude tableaux for the entertainment of lonely servicemen and their like. The list of ways in which the Wellcome Library resembles the Windmill is a short one: limited, most of us would think, to being in London and beginning with W. The beauty of the digital age, however, is that we can add a third to this list and say that in a sense we too never close: even if the Library’s doors may be shut, all manner of online resources remain available, 24 hours a day, for as long as our web-servers have power.

In the past various resources such as online journals or the Hospital Records Database have been highlighted in blog posts. A less well-known project whose data can be used via the Library website, was the Medical Archives and Manuscripts Survey, or MAMS.
When the Wellcome Library began collecting modern archival material in the 1970s, it rapidly became one of the first ports of call for researchers trying to locate the papers of particular individuals, or on particular subjects. The Hospital Records Database, a collaborative project between the Library and the National Archives, grew out of the need to answer questions like this. However, as its name suggests it deals only with hospital documentation, and as regular Library users will know the range of material that can be considered “medical” goes far beyond that – beyond the records of practitioners of scientific medicine and into issues such as nutrition, hygiene, demographics, complementary medicine, and so forth. The Medical Archives and Manuscripts Survey began in the latter 1980s by sending questionnaires out to repositories, and then, when it became apparent that the respondents could not be expected to spot the potential medical implications of every possible source in their holdings, moved in the early 1990s to sending Library staff out to survey archives in situ. By the mid-1990s, well over 100 London institutions holding archives had been surveyed: some, like the Royal Colleges, specialising in medicine; some, like the various Borough record offices, covering a wide range of subjects but limited to a specific geographic area; and others still drawn from all manner of specialisms, from the Alpine Club to the Zoological Society of London via the Marx Memorial Library and any number of other points between.

The 1990s, of course, was a time of radical change in information management and presentation. When MAMS began the aim was to publish the results as a printed directory, like a specialised and more detailed version of Janet Foster and Julia Sheppard's British Archives. By the mid-1990s it was apparent, as the infant World-Wide Web took off, that the way forward for these projects was as web-mounted databases rather than print. To recast the data gathered into granularised database fields, however, rather than the freetext reports that were its current form, would have meant a level of editing work almost as lengthy as the initial survey process had been. As the Web developed, too, increasingly direct access to archive catalogues was possible, and although this did not provide the sort of considered bringing together of medical sources that was achieved by the Library’s surveys, it was another factor in reducing the project’s attractiveness to publishers. In the end the Library decided that at the very least it could make all the information gathered available to researchers in a quick and simple fashion by mounting the various survey reports on the Library website, both as single documents – for those interested in sources available at a particular venue – or as one unified searchable listing, for people interested in a particular topic wherever it was to be found.

So, to the data. The terms of reference were simple: material of some medical or health relevance (“relevance” defined as widely as Sir Henry Wellcome would have done: very widely indeed), between the years of 1600 and 1945. 1600 was chosen as the start date reasoning that material before this tended to be used by a more narrowly defined research community (for example, before this date a knowledge of Latin is increasingly important); 1945, since the post-war landscape of health and medicine was radically different, most notably because of the setting up of the National Health Service. Between these two dates, pretty much anything went. The reader should be aware that the reports are now over 15 years old for the most part and that new material will have come in, contact details may have changed and so forth: but at its core the survey records a great tranche of hugely varied material awaiting the medical historian.

There are, of course, long reports for the obvious sources: the National Archives, the various Royal Colleges for the medical specialisms, the Wellcome Library itself (an overview of archive sources necessary at the time because this predated our online catalogue) and London Metropolitan Archives. These hold the riches that the researcher would expect. The beauty of the MAMS project, however, is in the unexpected material it throws up in those repositories that may be off the beaten track for the medical historian. The numerous borough record offices of the capital hold, as well as the expected local government material (administration of drainage and sewerage, Medical Officer of Health reports, and so forth) and local hospital records, a wide variety of other papers, both business and personal. Examples, plucked at random from the typescripts of completed entries, would include: the 1696 probate inventory of a Dorking physician held at the Minet Library, Lambeth; or the Bryant and May Company records that deal with employees’ conditions and phosphorus poisoning, held at Hackney Archives Department. Croydon Archive Service holds the transcripts of a court case brought against Croydon Corporation following an outbreak of typhoid in the borough in 1938. In the same year, the International Union of Local Authorities met at Finchley sewage works, a brochure and menu from the occasion being held by Barnet record office.

One item in Lewisham’s archives department serves as a splendid illustration of the way in which archival material can travel far from its place of creation, making a guide like this necessary: the personal papers of M.H. Hogg, Medical Superintendent of Grove Park Hospital in the borough, include lecture notes taken at Aberdeen University. Similar examples of travelling material, which may or may not be explained by simple administrative or personal links, occur in other borough record offices: descriptive notes about Tooting Bec Asylum at Lewisham, or the 1914 annual report of Enfield Cottage Hospital at Sutton.

Most satisfying was the discovery of relevant material in specialist repositories whose remit was not ostensibly medical: the type of unexpected find that makes a subject survey essential. A historian of medicine might not think to check a repository whose slant is religious, but papers relating to doctors who were religious non-conformists may be found in the archives of the Religious Society of Friends or in Dr. Williams’s Library. The subjects discussed in the extensive correspondence held by the Royal Geographical Society include the health implications of different climates and medicinal plants from around the world. Finally, one can be reasonably certain that a historian of medicine in Bradford would not automatically head for the British Architectural Library at RIBA, yet there one may find a Bradford apothecary’s recipe book.

Less overtly medical material can also be fruitful for the researcher: for example, the papers of the banker Hastings Nathaniel Middleton (1781-1821), held by the City of Westminster Archives Centre, turn out to go into some detail on the mental illness of his mother.

The survey is, of course, the tip of the iceberg. Similarly varied material will exist in repositories outside London: it was the intention to carry MAMS beyond the capital, but the changing technical landscape halted the project before this happened. More material will have arrived at record offices since these surveys were carried out. There will, also be material from outside the date-span of the survey. In this last category comes a favourite example of the sheer unpredictability of medical archive sources: in the London Borough of Hillingdon’s archives at Uxbridge Library is a report, dating from the 1970s, on the movements of foxes in the borough. The medical relevance is that the fox is the main carrier of the rabies virus in continental Europe: the report was prepared to assess the rapidity with which rabies might spread by this means if the virus gained a foothold in Britain. As this illustrates, the medical implications of archive material may not superficially be obvious; but once one’s eyes are opened, almost all repositories will hold something worth recording and worth pointing out to the researcher. There is a wealth of material out there and much of it is recorded in the MAMS reports – we recommend readers to start exploring.

Note: contact details given in the MAMS reports were accurate at the time of the survey but may have changed since: for up-to-date information on addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail and web addresses, etc., readers should consult the National Archives' Archon directory.

Images, all repositories covered by the MAMS project. From top:
1/ Battersea Library, home of Wandsworth Heritage Service. Photograph copyright Christopher Hilton, made available under Creative Commons Licence via the Geograph website.
2/ The Royal College of Surgeons of England, c.1813: painting by George Dance, from Wellcome Images.
3/ Bishopsgate Institute. Photograph copyright David Bradbury, made available under Creative Commons Licence via the Geograph website.
4/ Minet Library, home of Lambeth Archives. Photograph copyright Stephen Craven, made available under Creative Commons Licence via the Geograph website.
5/ Dr Williams's Library, Gordon Square (a near neighbour of the Wellcome Library). Photograph copyright David Hawgood, made available under Creative Commons Licence via the Geograph website.

HMS Beagle's Naturalist

On the 27th December 1831, one of the most famous expeditions of the nineteenth century was launched, as it was on this day, 180 years ago, that the second voyage of HMS Beagle begun. As such, let's mark this anniversary by briefly highlighting a manuscript we hold, written by the naturalist on board the Beagle at the start of its voyage. Quick question first - what was this person's name?

If your answer is 'Charles Darwin', then the wailing of the klaxons of QI be upon you - the correct answer, and the man who also held the post of ship's surgeon, was Robert McCormick (1800-1890).

McCormick's diary for the years 1830 to 1832, held in the Wellcome Library as MS.3359, helps to elucidate McCormick's relationship with both Robert FitzRoy (the Beagle's captain) and Charles Darwin (who was on board as a gentleman companion to FitzRoy, albeit one with a knowledge of geology and the natural world).

McCormick's diary forms the basis of a recent monograph published by the British Society for the History of Science: 'He is No Loss': Robert McCormick and the Voyage of HMS Beagle by Emily Steel.

The monograph - which also includes a transcription of McCormick's diary - examines McCormick's attitude to Fitzroy and Darwin and why it was McCormick left the Beagle in April 1832.

McCormick's diary may not be as famous as some of our other holdings, but its (relative) unfamiliarity is arguably a virtue: it's one of the manuscripts held by the Wellcome Library that directly reminds us that there can be disputed accounts of 'familiar' historical events.

Abbey Christmas

Clammy hands? Trouble sleeping? Counting down the hours until Christmas day? Like many of the library staff, you might be suffering withdrawal from medical history docu-drama and all-round national treasure Downton Abbey. That’s right, folks, medical history. Those of you who’ve managed to tear themselves away from Cousin Matthew’s puppy-dog eyes will surely have noticed the show’s preoccupation with all things sickly. The first series saw Lady Crawley’s miscarriage, Mrs Patmore’s cataract surgery, Bates’ ill-corrected limp and Isobel pressurising Dr Clarkson into performing pericardiocentesis on a dropsy patient. (Editor's note: we're drawing a veil over Mr Pamuk and his untimely ending at the erm, hands, of Lady Mary). But it was in the second series, set during the great war, that the medical storylines really started stacking up, with everything from gas-blindness to the poisons register getting a mention. With nine whole months to survive between Sunday’s Christmas special and the promised third series, Downton addicts will be casting around for something to feed their habit. And what better place to start than the Wellcome library?

Downton’s transformation into a convalescent home is evocatively suggested in two albums of photographs. In the series Lady Sybil trains as a VAD (voluntary aid detachment) nurse to tend to injured servicemen. Our albums come from slightly less privileged stock: Grace Mitchell was the daughter of tenant farmers in Theydon bois, Essex, and worked as a nurse during and after the war, in England and France and at casualty clearing stations in Cologne. Dorothy Waller was from a medical family - her brother Wathen was serving as a Surgeon-Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Both Grace and Dorothy took photographs during their time at the 3rd southern general hospital, which included Oxford town hall and the Oxford examination schools. Pictured is Grace with patients in Oxford.

Downton’s shell-shocked Valet Mr Lang’s condition is brought to life in a 1917 film War Neuroses: Netley Hospital which has been digitized and is available on the Wellcome Film youtube channel. The library also holds a collection of reprints of articles by Charles Samuel Myers, who coined the term “shell-shock” as well as diaries and notes made by Charles McMoran Wilson, when he was a medical officer on the Western front, which led to the publication of his The Anatomy of Courage in 1945.

The series climaxed with a perilous outbreak of Spanish flu, with Lady Grantham, faithful butler Carson, and Lavinia Swire all struck down. The 1918 medical officer of health report for Kingsclere, close to Highclere castle where Downton is filmed, reveals how closely art imitates life - the influenza outbreak there ‘increased with the cold damp September till in October and November it was of alarming frequency causing 31 deaths.’ A further 5 deaths were attributed to the resulting pneumonia, against a total of 122 for the year. A public service film and a documentary with archival footage also record the outbreak.

If all of that’s piqued your interest but you’re still too lethargic to leave the house, why spend some of your Christmas book tokens on one of these:

Dismembering the male: men's bodies, Britain, and the Great War by Joanna Bourke

War, disability and rehabilitation in Britain: "soul of a nation" by Julie Anderson

A war of nerves by Ben Shephard

Spike Island: the memory of a military hospital by Philip Hoare

Women in the war zone by Anne Powell

As for “Patrick Crawley”’s amnesia and Matthew’s miraculously cured paralysis? We’re as stumped on those as you are…

Images:

A neo-Gothic building used as a hospital, with an ambulance in the drive. Watercolour by Walter E. Spradbery, Wellcome Library 47357i

Photograph from the album of Grace Mitchell, Wellcome Library 675224i

Compiled by Wellcome library staff and written by Jo Maddocks

Forthcoming attractions

January 1st in the archives is a time not only for new resolutions and new projects, but for new raw material: at the start of each year, a batch of material that has been closed for Data Protection reasons is opened for readers to work upon. The precise contents of this year's batch, of course, are still secret for a little over a week. We can, however, give at least the bare-bones information from the archive catalogue about these forthcoming attractions. They include:

More material from the papers of Lord Moran, Churchill's physician (PP/CMW), to join that released on 1st January 2011.

Two items from the Queen's Nursing Institute (SA/QNI): a volume of the Queen's Roll, on which inspections of nurses were recorded, covering 1926-1927; and - from the card index that replaced the original bound Roll - a microfilm of nurses' records on cards from 1907 to 1927.

A file from the Brain Research Association (SA/BRA) explaining the Association's position regarding the 1979 Protection of Animals (Scientific Purposes) Bill and the 1979 Laboratory Animals Protection Bill.

Files from the Beit Memorial Fellowship (SA/BMF) on various candidates for a fellowship, discussed in 1927.

A file from the papers of the psychiatrist Donald Winnicott (PP/DWW) relating to a few adult patients whose papers found in a small file of predominantly child patient notes from the 1920s.

The full list is as follows. Only a little while to go....

MS.8155; Christo P. Popoff; 1957; letter to Dr. C. Allen of the Seamen's Hospital, Greenwich, London. Popoff writes about a case of schizophrenia and enquires about the effectiveness of Largactil in stabilising patients suffering from this condition.
PP/CMW/D.9/1; Moran's Notes; 1950-1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/2; 1951 Recommendations; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/2/1; London Teaching Hospitals and Regions 'For meetings, 7/2/52 & 6/3/52'; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/2/2; Index to 1951 recommendations; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/3; 'Notes 1951'; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/3/1; Birmingham I, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/3/2; Wales, Leeds, Sheffield; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/3/3; North East, North West Metropolitan Region; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/3/4; South East, South West Metropolitan Region; 1951.
PP/CMW/D.13/3/5; Specialities, London Regions and Teaching Hospitals; 1951.
PP/DWW/F/1; Adult Clinical material; 1920s; A few cases of adult patients found in a small concertina file of predominantly child patient notes from the 1920s (now in PP/DWW/E.2/1) and separated out here.
PP/HUN/C/1/23; Cysticercosis; 1932-1943.
SA/BMF/A.2/109; Hacker, Henry Pollard; 1927.
SA/BMF/A.2/110; Winton, Frank Robert; 1927.
SA/BMF/A.2/111; Wooldridge, Walter Reginald; 1927.
SA/BMF/A.2/112; Morgan, Walter Thomas James; 1927.
SA/BMF/A.2/113; Eggleton, Philip; 1927.
SA/BMF/A.2/114; Marrian, Guy Frederick; 1927.
SA/BMF/A.2/115; Fee, Archibald Roderick; 1927.
SA/BRA/C.1/3/2; Brain Research Association response to the 1979 Protection of Animals (Scientific Purposes) Bill and the 1979 Laboratory Animals Protection Bill (Includes papers from the Committee for the Reform of Animal Experimentation, The Physiological Society, the Research Defence Society, The Royal Society, and the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare); 1980-1981.
SA/QNI/J.3/35; The Queen's Roll: 8301-8550; Oct 1926-Jul 1927.
SA/QNI/J.4/1; The Queen's Roll on cards; 1907-1927; 3055-8499.


Image: 19th century wood engraving from the Wellcome Library's Iconographic Collections.

Merry Christmas!

The Wellcome Library closes today for the festive period at 6pm and re-opens at 10am on Tuesday 3rd January 2012.

We would just like to take this opportunity to wish all Library readers and followers of the Library Blog, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Image: A snowballing scene with boys playing in the snow. On the reverse of the picture is an advertisement for Onnen's German Fever and Ague Mixture. 1890s (EPH 348)

Frequent flyers

If it could collect air miles, then some of the material inthe Wellcome Library would have a pretty impressive stash of them by now. In 2011, Library material travelled a totalof 10,168 miles on its way to and from various different loans to museumsaround the world.

Countries lent to include The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland,Germany (on quite a few occasions), France, the Czech Republic and Canada, aswell as numerous loans within London and the UK. All of these exhibitions have been temporary,lasting on average around 6 months, and the number of items lent has variedbetween 1 and 12. Click on the map belowfor more details:

It’s not just the collections that are well travelled – we send acourier for most of our loans, and Library staff have notched up an impressive 19,928miles this year in round trips carrying out this important role.

So what exactly is involved in lending the Library’scollections? It all starts with aninitial request from the borrowing institution, giving details of theexhibition and what they would like to borrow. Our Conservation department then assess the item(s) to ascertain if theyare robust enough for loan, and what, if any, work needs doing to them in orderto make them safe for travel and display. After final approval from the Library’s Senior Management Team, therethen follows lengthy discussion between the Library’s Exhibition Liaison andthe borrower regarding display and security conditions, any costs involved,transport etc.

Couriering has already been mentioned, and this is the area oflending that many find most interesting. It can seem quite glamorous , and it’s true that it certainly beats aday in the office, but it can also be very tiring with early starts and manyhours of travelling. Professional arthandlers are always used to transport loans,and their preferred method of transport within Europe is usually by truck. Therefore, if accompanying a loan to adestination in Europe, the courier will travel in the truck, spending manyhours, sometimes even days, on the road. If travelling by air, it is necessary to arrive at the airport hours inadvance of the flight in order to witness the crate containing the loan beingloaded up. This involves going behindthe scenes to the cargo shed at the airport, donning a high-vis jacket andhaving your wits about you in order to avoid the many forklift trucks andlorries that work in these areas.

Once the courier reaches their destination with the loan safely intow, they must witness it being unloaded and securely stored into the borrowinginstitution’s premises, and then they will usually return the following day toinstall the item(s). Installationinvolves witnessing the loan being unpacked, condition checking it to ensure ithasn’t been damaged en route, and then supervising its placing in the displaycase or hanging on the wall. Dependingon the number of items being lent, and how complicated they are to install,this process can take anything from an hour to a couple of days. Then it’s back to the UK, with a de-brief onthe trip when the courier returns to work. The whole process then takes place again, but in reverse, when it istime for the loan to be returned.

With requests already received from various museums in the USA,Spain and UK, 2012 looks set to be another busy year for the loan of Wellcome Library material.

Author: Rowan De Saulles

Years in the archives

When the Library surveys readers to assess their level of satisfaction with our service, a common comment is to highlight the helpfulness of the staff (a comment for which we are extremely grateful). We’d like to think that this begins with recruiting the right people; but it’s also a result of a stable staff, long-serving Library employees building their experience and skills as time passes, and sharing this knowledge with readers and colleagues. On that note, today we’d like to mark twenty years’ service to the Library by Dr Richard Aspin, the Head of Research and Scholarship.

Richard joined us from Lambeth Palace Library in 1991, arriving in a library very different from today’s. His role initially was as Curator of Western Manuscripts, head of a department of just two people looking after pre-1900 archival material: twentieth-century material was looked after by the then Contemporary Medical Archives Centre. Since that time we have seen the merger of those two bodies into today’s Archives and Manuscripts department; the introduction of a database to make archive catalogues visible and searchable online; the refitting of 183 Euston Road not once but twice; and now, the impending transformation of our reader experience by mass digitisation and the collection of born-digital archives. Throughout these changes, one constant has been Richard’s combination of level-headedness, diplomacy and scholarship worn lightly. We, and our readers, have been the beneficiaries.

Author: Chris Hilton

Spades, Hearts, Diamonds

A game of cards. Oil painting by Stephen Jenner. Wellcome Library no. 47409i

In England in 1840, Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, Charles Dickens published The Old Curiosity Shop, and a certain E. Estridge passed the time by drawing on playing cards. He (or she, but perhaps more probably he) took a complete pack manufactured by the firm of Hardy & Sons, and doodled contemporary scenes on each of the numbered cards, using the pips (the spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs) as human heads. Each of the royal cards carried a letter or number which together spell out "E. ESTRIDGE 1840".

The complete pack was acquired by the firm of Abbott & Holder from whom the Wellcome Library has acquired three cards, thus adding a new and bizarre species to the variety of genres represented in the Wellcome Library's collections. In the Wellcome Library they have the number 780448i and they can be found in the Wellcome Library catalogue here.

The Two of Spades (left) must be either a meeting or a confrontation between two black figures (since Spades and Clubs are black). Estridge has shown them as two black pugilists exercising the science of boxing. Many books had been published about the science of boxing, including Captain John Godfrey’s A treatise upon the science of defence of 1747 and Thomas Fewtrell’s Boxing reviewed; or, the science of manual defence, displayed on rational principles, London, 1790. And at some stage boxing acquired the sobriquet "the sweet science". The Oxford English Dictionary also gives as the meaning of spade “Slang (orig. U.S.) depreciative and offensive. As a term of contempt or casual reference among white people: a black person, esp. a black man. Formerly (among African Americans): a very dark-skinned black person.” But as the earliest quotation given is American and dates from 1928, it would surely be incorrect to read that meaning into this English drawing.

The Three of Diamonds (right) contains three figures: what about two people helping a third? Estridge does that by showing two men carrying an injured person on a stretcher "To Guy’s", i.e. to Guy’s Hospital, then as now in Southwark, near London Bridge. This patient there follows in the tracks of those Southwark residents who had recently been taken to Guy’s and immortalised in the pages of Richard Bright’s Reports of medical cases (1827-1831).

The Ten of Hearts suggests a team game with ten players or a well-ordered ceremony of some sort. Estridge makes it a post-mortem examination (above), conducted by a Georgian surgeon in a wig, in the presence of eight other witnesses. Several other scenes in the pack also show people in Georgian dress, suggesting that Estridge was old enough to recall life from before 1800. His post-mortem examiners are not modern medical coroners of the Thomas Wakley generation, but perhaps members of the old Company of Surgeons, dissecting a body in Surgeons' Hall in the Old Bailey, and living on in folk memory into the reign of Victoria. The subject has certainly given the artist a lot of amusement in turning hearts into heads, with the closed eyes of the deceased contrasted with the staring eyes of the watchers.

'Monkeyana' and the book that never was

As we come to the close of the year, 2011 saw not one but two films concerned with attitudes to our ancestors - Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Project Nim. Fiction, as well as legislation, has a long history of interest in interspecies relations and the Library contains some classic examples, including The Island of Dr Moreau and Tarzan. Many of these works show the influence of Charles Darwin's notion of evolution and importantly its antithesis - devolution or degeneration.

If humans had developed from apes could some of us occasionally revert to our primitive former selves? This theme lies behind such titles as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (see previous post) and The Time Machine. More recently, films of the 20th century continued to refer to the idea of reverting to a more bestial type (atavism), including Cat People which I have to confess, is one of my favourite movies. The original, by Jacques Tourneur, features a quote in its opening sequence from 'The Anatomy of Atavism' by Dr L. Judd:

Even as fog continues to lie in the valleys, so does ancient sin cling to the low places, the depressions in the world consciousness.

Alas, any search for this intriguing tome will prove fruitless as it, like Dr Judd, the psychiatrist in the film, never existed. Judd, played by Tom Conway lives on in film history because with his pipe, cigarettes and urbane charm he is a great example of early filmic portrayals of this profession. Here are two film clips: one from Cat People in which Judd archly smokes at a wedding party, and this trailer for the sequel Curse of the Cat People which has a Christmas theme (albeit one with threats of infanticide).

Film fans may appreciate our new e-book Icons of Grief (available to registered readers) which examines the work of Val Lewton, writer of both Cat People and the equally wonderful 'I Walked with a Zombie' (a re-working of Jane Eyre set on a tropical island). Lewton was a Russian emigree and the nephew of Hollywood star Alla Nazimova who allegedly coined the term 'sewing circle' to describe the clandestine affairs of tinsel town's bisexual and lesbian actresses.


For books that do exist concerning current legislation readers can see Marie Fox's chapter 'Legislating Interspecies Embryos' inside our new acquisition The Legal, Medical and Cultural Regulation of the Body. Fox highlights how tricky it is coining the right term to express what many consider a contestable area of research: mixing the cells or gametes of human and non-human animals. Terms like 'chimera' and 'hybrid' are often used by journalists and authors as they sound more dramatic.

Illustrations: Fantasy - human-fish hybrid. Fantasy artwork of swimming chimeras with fish heads with human legs. Credit: Diane Harris, 2002 Wellcome Images B0004399
'Monkeyana' satirical cartoon from Punch, 18 May 1861, p.206 Wellcome Images L0031419
A group of cats dressed as gentry dining in a restaurant. Watercolour. Wellcome Images V0021521

Guest Post: Exploring Health and Medicine in Early Modern Wales

Dr Alun Withey is an academic historian of early modern medicine, technology and the family. Here, he describes the inspiration and contexts of his new book, Physick and the Family: Health, Medicine and Care in Wales, 1600-1750, which includes research carried out in the Wellcome Library.

I never set out to be a medical historian. Whilst studying for my History BA, I was struggling to find a topic for my dissertation. I knew I wanted to do something connected to Wales and the seventeenth century, and settled upon the Civil Wars. I visited a local record office, and was introduced to a source that nobody had done much work on…a commonplace book. Amongst the notes and jottings were several medical remedies that looked interesting to the untrained eye. My curiosity was piqued and I decided to look into it further. Seven years, and a PhD later, I’m still looking!

Welsh medical history, at least in terms of the early modern period, has often been overlooked. In 1975, the editor of a collection of essays on the subject concluded that there were problems caused by a lack of medical sources for Wales. Such work that had been done tended to concentrate on the folkloric and magical elements of medicine in Wales, doubtless an important element of Welsh heritage, with the legendary ‘Physicians of Myddfai’ and their remedies garnering a lot of attention. The problem with ‘folklore’, however, is that it is a loaded term; Although magical remedies, symbolism and the ‘cunning man’ were important components, I felt that they also somehow contributed to a rural caricature, and made Wales seem remote, cut off from the wider world by its language and sometimes awkward terrain.

Physick and the Family, the first academic monograph on early modern Welsh medical history, set out to give what I see as the other side to the story of Welsh medicine. In doing so I not only wanted to write a new medical history of Wales, but also to use Wales as a test-bed to address much broader questions in medical history. In this sense, a new study wouldn’t just fill in gaps, but could provide a credible new investigation of the experience of sickness, health and care in the early modern period.

In many ways, the sources, dictated what questions could be addressed and answered. Contradicting the earlier view about Welsh sources, it soon became clear that there was actually a wealth of source material – much of it untapped. The book draws upon Welsh remedy collections, of which a good number survive – one especially rich example surviving in the Wellcome Library, known as the ‘Welsh Leech Book’ (MS.417). A study of the types and derivations of Welsh recipes proved insightful into the movement of medical knowledge both into, and within, early modern Wales, and not least in changing medical terminologies in the Welsh language. Diaries and letters yielded much useful information about sickness, the ways in which people described their symptoms, and also important factors such as the social rituals and conventions of sickness and the sufferer.

But the book also uses different types of source material, and it was often this that yielded the most interesting and surprising results. A detailed study of probate inventories, for example, looked at evidence for medical paraphernalia in the early modern home, but also for evidence, in shop inventories, of medicines for sale. From studies of shop inventories in three Welsh counties, it is clear that even small, remote village shops often sold a range of medical goods.

Other records such as those of the Old Poor Law were revealing in matters of care. Who, for example, cared for the sick, and what measures did the parish take to look after its own sick poor? The survival of some astonishingly detailed poor law records for one particular Welsh parish, allows for a detailed case study of the often sophisticated structures of care available to the early modern patient.

The book is intended to have a broad appeal, and not just to those inside the Welsh borders. It has been written to speak to anyone with an interest in medical history certainly, but also in social history more widely, since it is at heart a book about the experiences of ‘ordinary’ people. But as a regional history, it also encourages a more nuanced view of the early modern medical world, and one that takes into account the often important variations that could be caused by topography and geography, as well as language and literacy.

I said earlier that this was the first book of its kind; technically it is. But it is also worth mentioning a hidden gem in the Wellcome Library archive. In the 1920s an eminent physician, Dr David Fraser-Harris, was busy compiling his ‘History and Lore of Kymric Medicine’ – a richly detailed study of Welsh medical history and one in many ways far ahead of its time. Sadly, he died before it was completed and it now survives only in many boxes and unfinished drafts. In seeking to say something new about Welsh medicine we obviously shared a similar goal. I hope that he would have approved of my modest efforts some 90 years later.

Author: Alun Withey

Medical Officer of Health reports to be digitised

The Wellcome Library has received JISC funding towards the creation of a major free online dataset covering public health in London from the mid-19th century to the late 20th century.

This project is based on the reports of the Medical Officers of Health (MOH) in Greater London between 1848 and 1972. Of all the collections in the Wellcome Library the MOH reports have the greatest research potential for the study of public health history in 19th and 20th century Britain, and are one of the most heavily consulted collections at the Wellcome Library. Online access to this resource will vastly increase their impact on research and would be invaluable to public health researchers, epidemiologists and practitioners, as well as medical and social historians.

The Medical Officers of Health systematically monitored and oversaw the provision of disparate services that contributed to the well-being of local populations. The Officers – individually and as a group – were one of the most influential agents of social and medical reform in Britain over a period of more than a century. Their reports contain a wealth of information (especially statistical data) and there is a long pedigree of advanced research using MOH reports as primary source materials for a wide range of subjects including (but not limited to) food and food safety; maternity and child welfare; housing; pollution; manufacturing (e.g. the inspection of workshops); shops and offices; sanitation; social care; civil liberties; demography; engineering and meteorological conditions.

Digitising these extensive holdings will not only improve access to an important body of research material, but will offer opportunities for new approaches to text and data mining. Digitisation and text encoding will be carried out in 2012, and will be made freely available on the Wellcome Digital Library website in early 2013. For more information you can read the project plan on the JISC website.

Random Edition on BBC Radio 4

In this week's episode of BBC Radio 4's Random Edition, presenter Peter Snow marked the 150th anniversary of the death of Prince Albert.

The programme focused on how the Prince Consort's death was reported in one issue of the London Daily News, but also featured recordings made at a number of relevant locations to Prince Albert's life and legacy, such as Osborne House, Windsor Castle and the Royal Albert Hall.

One segment of the episode was recorded here at the Wellcome Library, in which Peter Snow came face-to-face with the painting shown above, a vast canvas depicting Prince Albert on his deathbed. The programme concludes with a discussion over competing theories over the cause of the Prince Albert's death.

Random Edition: Prince Albert is available on the BBC iPlayer to listeners in the UK until Wedensday 21st December.

Image: The last moments of HRH the Prince Consort. Oil painting by Oakley under the pseudonym Le Port, ca. 1861. (Wellcome Library no. 47371i).
See also W. Schupbach, 'The Last Moments of H.R.H. The Prince Consort', Medical History, 1982, 26, pp321-324 (free to access PDF)

ALCS and PLS to provide ‘rights identification service’ for book digitisation

As described in a press release issued today, the Wellcome Library will be working in collaboration with the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) and the Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) to identify rights holders of in-copyright books for digitisation. This project is part of the Wellcome Digital Library pilot programme, focusing on the digitisation of around 1,700 key works relating to the history of modern genetics that are known to be, or likely to be, in copyright.

Dr Simon Chaplin, Head of the Wellcome Library, explains: "As a library that supports the understanding of medicine in culture, providing access to key scientific texts for historians is of paramount importance to our mission. By working with rights-holders and their representatives, we hope to create a robust and sustainable model that meets the needs of researchers, authors and publishers."

The Wellcome Library has published a list of authors online and encourages copyright holders represented on this list to make contact. Rights holders may be added to this list from time to time if and when we add books to the scope for digitisation, or come across new copyright holders during the identification process.

An outbreak of Mad Cow Disease in the archives

The Wellcome Trust ’s mission is to foster human and animal health. Sometimes these two areas converge. The BSE crisis of the late 1990s was one such occurrence.

Sir John Pattison, former vice-provost of University College London School of Health, and National Health Service Head of Research and Development, was right at the centre of this crisis. As Chairman of the Government’s Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC) from 1995-1999, Sir John had a unique view of the political decisions taken at this time.

SEAC provided advice on a number of issues, including the safe consumption of meat and milk, and the suitable treatment of animal carcasses by slaughterhouses. The committee remained in operation until 30 March 2011, when it was replaced by the ACDP Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy Risk Assessment Subgroup.

In December 2010, Sir John Pattison presented a memoir of his time in charge of SEAC to the Wellcome Library , along with a set of committee minutes, and supporting documentation. The minutes, and the documentation that Sir John used in compiling this memoir are now available to Wellcome Library researchers. The memoir itself will be available in the near future, once we have put in place facilities to allow user access to born-digital archival material.

The supporting documentation includes correspondence with politicians, members of the public, and the families of patients with Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease (CJD). There are also press releases issued on behalf of the committee and other bodies, as well as information on potential tests for, and causes of, CJD.

More information on can be found via the Archives and Manuscripts online catalogue. The reference for this collection is PP/JPN .

The SEAC website can be accessed through the UK Government Web Archive .

Merman resurfaces in Regent's Park

After a recent sighting in Bromley, a merman once owned by Henry Wellcome, and now in the collection of the Horniman Museum, is making an appearance north of the Thames at the headquarters of the Royal College of Physicians, beside Regent's Park in London.

As part of this loan, next Tuesday 20th December sees a free lunchtime event at the Royal College of Physicians, Fakes, Forgeries and Quacks. The event will consist of two talks: Ross MacFarlane, Wellcome Library, will place the merman in the context of Henry Wellcome's wider collections and Paolo Vascardi, Horniman Museum, will trace the history of mermaids and reveal a tale of fraud, bankruptcy and shipwrecks.

The event starts at 12.30pm and will last just over an hour. No booking is required and directions to the Royal College of Physicians are available from their website.

Image: A grotesque mermaid, amidst luxurious cushions and drapes, and framed by two shells. Coloured lithograph by E. Purcell, 1822 (Wellcome Libary no. 3332i).

Conservation in Action: Ripley Scrolls

In the first of a new series, Conservator Amy Junker Heslip talks us through the conservation treatment she undertook on some of the Wellcome Library’s alchemical manuscripts.

The Ripley Scrolls are manuscripts which illustrate the pursuit of the Philosopher's Stone. George Ripley was a Augustine Monk from Yorkshire (c.1415-1490) but was additionally renowned as an alchemist. His name is associated with these scrolls as his allegorical poetry is included in many of the versions. There are approximately 21 scrolls worldwide, produced after Ripley’s death, dated from the 16th-17th centuries.

The Wellcome Library holds two of these scrolls, MS.692 and MS.693 and they are listed on the library catalogue as being on restricted access due to their fragile nature. They are dated from the 17th century, copy of a 15th century copy, and are water colour, wash and ink on heavy weight handmade wove paper. Both scrolls are mounted on linen and are stored rolled with wooden rollers at each ends, housed in wooden boxes. They are long with dimensions of 3280 x 400mm.



On closer inspection I was able to assess the physical condition of both objects. While the condition of MS.693 was stable and only required re housing (a new box), MS.692 was in a far worse state. The upper section had sustained a large amount of water damage, resulting in staining to the primary support and multiple losses to this upper section. The verso of this upper, lifting section had been lined with a heavy weight board in an attempt, one can only assume, to support these losses on the verso. Throughout the scroll, there are lifting areas of the primary support. The bottom of the scroll has been detached from the roller and re attached with tabs of paper.



The ink tested positive for iron gall ink and other colours proved very water sensitive upon testing. Although I was reasonably convinced that I could remove the linen backing dry, the relining would involve unnecessary exposure to moisture.

The board attached to the upper layer of the reverse of MS.692 was removed manually with a scalpel and immediately relived the tension added by this support so the upper section could lie flat again. The linen revealed below was heavily degraded and so was relined with a very strong but light weight silk crepeline. On the heavily water damaged areas on the front of the object the lifting areas were adhered using cold gelatin, to avoid unnecessary moisture contact with the iron gall ink, and in filled with a similar toned Japanese paper. The bottom roller of MS.692 was re-adhered more securely, with an extension of a medium weight repair paper added so the scroll could be comfortably opened up to its fullest extent.



Both items have now been rehoused into custom made boxes and are now stable. While they are both accessible again to Wellcome Library readers, it has been decided that their restricted status will be retained (due to the oversize nature of the material), so they can be viewed in an appropriate environment.



Images:
- MS.692 prior to conservation
- MS.692 during conservation (two photographs)
- MS.692 after conservation

Sources:
McCallum, Professor R I, The Ripley Scroll [online] Available at: http://www.rcpe.ac.uk/library/read/collection/ripley/ripley.php [Accessed 7th December 2011]

The Ripley Scroll [online] Available at: http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2009/01/ripley-scroll.html [Accessed 7th December 2011]

Author: Amy Junker-Heslip

New Post: Specialist, Medieval and Early Modern Medicine

Applications are welcomed for a new post at the Wellcome Library as a Specialist in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine.

Candidates should have a higher degree in History with specialisation in pre-modern medicine or science and must be able to demonstrate the following:

- A strong academic profile
- Knowledge of relevant collections, including those outside the Wellcome Library
- Knowledge of current academic work in fields relevant to the Library's pre-modern collections
- Excellent communication skills, both written and oral, including the ability to engage non-specialist audiences
- Strong influencing and persuading skills
- Good networking skills
- An aptitude for collaboration and team-working
- A reading knowledge of Latin and at least one other relevant foreign language.

Full details of the post - and details on applying - are available from the 'Current Vacancies' section of the Wellcome Trust's website (direct link).

The closing date for applications is 21st December 2011.

Henry's Cats

In 1936, readers of the Liverpool Echo were intrigued to read of the death of a London millionaire who apparently chose to live in a Portland Place hotel while maintaining a palatial Regents park residence for the sole occupancy of his three beloved cats. This individual was none other than Sir Henry Wellcome.

Over the past year, whilst celebrating the 75th anniversary of Wellcome Trust's foundation, we have learned much about the life, work and achievements of Henry Wellcome. We have been reminded of Wellcome the collector, entrepreneur, philanthropist and even inventor, but this report hints at another side of his character - Henry Wellcome was an archetypal cat owner, with the eccentricities to match.

The claim may seem surprising, implausible even, but a search around in the Wellcome Library's archives quickly unearths more evidence for the great man’s devotion to his feline friends...

With the winter holidays approaching, many of the cat owners amongst us will be contemplating time away from our pets and find ourselves writing novella-length notes for those brave souls entrusted with their care.

Henry Wellcome, it seems, was no different. Nestling in the recesses of his personal papers are page after page of instructions for successive pet-sitters; those whose task it was to keep the little darlings happy had no small job on their hands. One memo notes that the cats were "accustomed to eating cooked beef, ox & lamb liver & kidney, boiled hake and cod, salmon & sardines", and, occasionally, "a little raw beef, if it is finely cut up" (from WA/HSW/PE/A.30).

Fresh meat and fish was delivered to No. 6 Gloucester Gate daily by Wellcome’s butcher and fishmonger (‘NOT from a ‘cats meat’ butcher”) and were cooked there and then by Wellcome’s staff to be enjoyed with fresh milk and water. On Sundays, by which time the patience of the cook was presumably wearing thin, the cats were treated to a tin of salmon. “Under NO circumstances must they be given pork or pork liver or kidney”, demand the instructions. Potatoes were also strictly, if inexplicably, forbidden.

Neither were their sartorial needs neglected: when the cats travelled they took their brushes and beds with them and it was Wellcome’s "special desire" that the cats should be "well cared for and not teased or abused in any way".

As the 75th anniversary comes to a close it’s interesting to discover a heretofore overlooked aspect of Henry Wellcome’s personality and one that helps us relate to the great man on a more personal level. And, whilst you cat owners out there buying Hill’s Science Diet food can take note of Henry’s cat care legacy, the cat-sitters amongst us can gain some comfort from not having to face the terrible responsibility of minding Henry Wellcome’s pampered pets!

Images:
- Cutting from the Liverpool Echo, 1st August 1936 (from WF/M/GB/29/32/02)
- An example of HW’s holiday care instructions
- 'Pip' with one of her kittens

Authors: Jo Maddocks and Sharon Messenger

HIV/AIDS at 30: Spreading the Word

To mark World AIDS Day (1 December) this year, BHIVA (the British HIV Association) held a World AIDS Day Event in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust on the theme HIV/AIDS at 30: Back to the Future. 2011 is the thirtieth anniversary of the first description of AIDS -- a milestone in the continuing epidemic that has claimed the lives of millions of people worldwide. While reflecting on the experiences and work of the past 30 years, eminent speakers reviewed today's challenges, and looked ahead to consider how the knowledge of the past will inform future strategies.

One aspect of the epidemic that was considered was the way in which health authorities, activists and charities around the world have tried to prevent its spread by publicity, including posters. The Wellcome Library now has over 3,200 AIDS posters from many countries. The exhibition Spreading the Word: AIDS Posters from Around the World is a selection of 24 posters chosen and interpreted by Dr Sarah Graham of Leicester University, and shown earlier this year at the New Walk Museum in Leicester.


The posters emphasize the range of graphic techniques adopted and the variety of ethnic and social groups at which they were directed. Spreading the Word was also on display today at the BHIVA/Wellcome Trust meeting (left) and was much appreciated by those attending.

Below: Wellcome Library no. 778362i

The latest AIDS poster to enter the Wellcome Library catalogue (right) must be one of the most allusive and discreet in the entire collection. It was published on World AIDS Day in 1994 by UNESCO in Paris, for Hispanic populations in which drug use was a source of transmission of the virus. Unlike the crashingly explicit posters (mostly from Germanic and Anglo-Saxon countries), it refers to open discussion within the family and use of counselling to help drug users, with no obvious indication to the casual passer-by that its end-purpose is to save them from contracting HIV through needle re-use.

Among the work publicised at the conference was a recent volume in the series Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, which was published in November 2011. It concerns the controversial National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL) which was launched in 1990. "A proposal that the UK Department of Health would fund it, after scientific scrutiny by the Economic and Social Research Council, was vetoed at government level – some say by Mrs Thatcher herself – on the grounds that this would be an unacceptable intrusion into private lives. This decision hit the headlines (first in The Sunday Times), as did the decision, some four weeks after the story broke, by the Wellcome Trust to step in and fund it instead. There is a similar story to be told of obstruction from the Bush White House,which forbade funding from the National Institutes for Health (NIH) for the American survey" (pp. xxi-xxii).

The phrase "some say by Mrs Thatcher herself" is backed up on p. 67 by a separate statement in the book (Appendix 3, pp. 66-68) by Dr Peter Williams, Director of the Wellcome Trust at the time, who received that account of events in a phone call from the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Donald Acheson. A note by Professor Virginia Berridge (p. 61) suggests that the reality behind the scenes may have been more complicated, but that at any rate Downing Street was happy to go along with the veto. More of the raw materials for this episode are set out in the volume, in the usual Witness Seminar manner: the spoken memories of people who were involved in the events at the time, provided with scholarly commentary and often with competing points of view. It makes compulsive reading. It is available in hard-copy from booksellers and Amazon, and available free of charge on the web as a PDF. [2]

[1] Overy C, Reynolds L A, Tansey E M. (eds) (2011) History of the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles. Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, vol. 41. London: Queen Mary, University of London. ISBN 978 090223 874 9

[2] http://www.history.qmul.ac.uk/research/modbiomed/wellcome_witnesses/index.html