The Boston Society for Medical Improvement was an elite society of Boston physicians, established in 1828 for "the cultivation of confidence and good feeling between members of the profession; the eliciting and imparting of information upon the different branches of medical science; and the establishment of a Museum and Library of Pathological Anatomy". [1] It held regular meetings until at least 1917.
The Society was established February 19, 1828 [2] by John P. Spooner. [3] By-laws were established at a founding meeting of eleven members, [3] and the first regular meeting was held on March 10. [4] Within a year the Society had grown to 25 members. [3]
Meetings were held on the second and fourth Mondays of each month, [1] [5] originally in Spooner's home. [3] Usually a member's reading of a paper was followed by discussion of recent cases of either special interest or on which the attending physician wished the opinion of his colleagues. [6] There were frequent presentations of remarkable tissues and organs obtained during post-mortems, or unusual specimens found in nature, those of particular interest being added to the "Cabinet" of the Society. [2] [5] [7]
The Society's original officers were a committee of four and a secretary, who made up the "Prudential Committee", as well as a librarian and a cabinet keeper. These offices were filled once a year by vote at the first meeting in January. Members were admitted twice a year, in April and October, with only practicing physicians from Boston being eligible. [8]
During its first year the Society's Anatomical Cabinet was established, and several members collaborated to combine the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery and the Boston Medical Intelligencer into the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal [9] [10] (now the New England Journal of Medicine [11] ). The Society's expenses in the first year were $7.50. [9]
In 1830, after resolving to publish their transactions and to have a standing committee, [9] the Society moved to a room on Washington Street, rented for an annual fee of $25. [9] In 1833 The Medical Magazine published a piece praising the Society and encouraging the formation of similar organizations. [12]
The Society limited its membership to Boston's medical elite. In 1835 a number ineligible physicians (mostly younger, less established members of the profession) formed a competing organization, the Boston Society for Medical Observation. [13] [14] By 1838, when the Society was incorporated, [5] membership had grown to 35, with approximately 25 attending any given meeting. [15] Around 1840 the Society relocated once again, to Tremont Row. [5] Until 1840 the Society often held anniversary celebrations [10] [15] (frequently including the presentation of an original poem by member Oliver Wendell Holmes [5] [15] [16] ) but after that date they became increasingly rare. [17]
Sometime during the summer of 1842 J. B. S. Jackson "asked the opinion of the Society as to the contagion of puerperal fever and the probability of physicians communicating it from one patient to another" following the death of a physician who had treated an infected woman, and the subsequent infection of the patients he had treated in the interim. This piqued the interest of Holmes, who, after a period of research, presented his essay, "The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever", to the Society on February 13, 1843; it was later published at the Society's request in the April issue of the New England Quarterly Journal of Medicine and Surgery. [18] [19] [20] [21]
On November 10, 1849, Henry Jacob Bigelow presented Phineas Gage to the Society, between the cases of a stalagmite "remarkable for its singular resemblance to a petrified penis" and a child cured of a swollen ankle by a Dr. Strong. [22] [23] [24]
By 1853, the number of members had grown to 60. [25] The Society's medical collections were donated to the Warren Anatomical Museum around 1870, [26] while its library was absorbed into the Boston Medical Library in 1875. [10] [27] Membership had grown again by 1876, reaching 79 regular members. [25] In 1878 the Society moved to a building on Boylston Street, the former home of Samuel Gridley Howe, after it was purchased by the Boston Medical Library Association. [28]
By 1880, however, the Society, total membership 99, had begun to go into a period of slight decline. [29] The office of President was instituted as part of an attempt to stem this decline; the first president was James H. White. [4] [29] On November 19, 1890, the Society held a special meeting in honor of Henry J. Bigelow, who had recently died. [30] [31] [32]
The Boston Society for Medical Observation was merged into the Society for Medical Improvement in 1894. [13] [14] [33] In 1901, James Gregory Mumford published The Story of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement in the March issue of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. [34]
In 1905 the members of the Society tendered a proposal to the Boston Medical Library to disband: the proposal was rejected, however, both by the library and by vote at the next meeting. By this time the Society had reduced its meetings to an annual occurrence, and it was generally viewed as "undesirable" to have them more often, due to the fact that the Medical Library and the Suffolk District Medical Society had begun to hold joint sessions. [35] The last record of the Society comes from 1917. [36]
The Society had an expansive Anatomical Cabinet, begun in 1828, the year of its founding. [9] It included a number of specimens from the War of 1812, [26] which had been acquired by the Society from Dr. S. D. Townsend and Charles H. Stedman of the Chelsea Naval Hospital. [2] [37] It also included a number of Chinese paintings of medical cases donated by Robert William Hooper. [2] By 1840, the cabinet was estimated to contain around 600 specimens. [5] Beginning in 1831 [38] the Cabinet was curated by J. B. S. Jackson [39] (also curator of the Warren Anatomical Museum from 1847 on). The two were merged around 1870, and Jackson continued his work until his death in 1879. [40]
The curator was tasked with keeping a catalog and a case history of each specimen in the cabinet. [41] Jackson published two descriptions of the collection in 1847: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Anatomical Museum of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, and later that year A Descriptive Catalogue of the Monstrosities in the Cabinet of the Boston Society of Medical Improvement, which focused solely on the anatomical oddities from the cabinet. [40] Both books were abridged versions of the complete catalog. [7] In the first volume, the specimens of the cabinet were divided into fifteen sections: healthy bones, diseased bones, soft parts about the bones, heart and blood vessels, organs of sense, vocal and respiratory organs, alimentary canal, organs accessory to the alimentary canal, urinary organs, female organs of generation, male organs of generation, utero-gestation, monstrosities, and parasites. [42]
When it was first formed, the Society held its meetings at the houses of its members. It then set up a regular establishment over a chemist's shop on Washington Street. Some years later, it relocated again to Tremont Row, over another chemist's shop, before moving to Temple Place. When its library was moved to the Boston Medical Library on Boylston Street, the Society relocated there. By 1901 it had moved to Fenway. [43]
The history of anatomy extends from the earliest examinations of sacrificial victims to the sophisticated analyses of the body performed by modern anatomists and scientists. Written descriptions of human organs and parts can be traced back thousands of years to ancient Egyptian papyri, where attention to the body was necessitated by their highly elaborate burial practices.
Phineas P. Gage (1823–1860) was an American railroad construction foreman remembered for his improbable[B1] survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain's left frontal lobe, and for that injury's reported effects on his personality and behavior over the remaining 12 years of his life—effects sufficiently profound that friends saw him as "no longer Gage".
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is a weekly medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It is among the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals as well as the oldest continuously published one.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston. Grouped among the fireside poets, he was acclaimed by his peers as one of the best writers of the day. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast-Table" series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858). He was also an important medical reformer. In addition to his work as an author and poet, Holmes also served as a physician, professor, lecturer, inventor, and, although he never practiced it, he received formal training in law.
William Thomas Green Morton was an American dentist and physician who first publicly demonstrated the use of inhaled ether as a surgical anesthetic in 1846. The promotion of his questionable claim to have been the discoverer of anesthesia became an obsession for the rest of his life.
The Warren Anatomical Museum, housed within Harvard Medical School's Countway Library of Medicine, was founded in 1847 by Harvard professor John Collins Warren, whose personal collection of 160 unusual and instructive anatomical and pathological specimens now forms the nucleus of the museum's 15,000-item collection. The Warren also has objects significant to medical history, such as the inhaler used during the first public demonstration of ether-assisted surgery in 1846, and the skull of Phineas Gage, who survived a large iron bar being driven through his brain. The museum's first curator was J.B.S. Jackson.
The Mütter Museum is a medical history and science museum located in the Center City area of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It contains a collection of anatomical and pathological specimens, wax models, and antique medical equipment. The museum is part of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The original purpose of the collection, donated by Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter on December 11th 1858, was for the education of medical professionals, medical students, and invited guests of College Fellows. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia is itself not a teaching organization, but rather a "scientific body dedicated to the advancement of science and medicine".
John Collins Warren was an American surgeon. In 1846 he gave permission to William T.G. Morton to provide ether anesthesia while Warren performed a minor surgical procedure. News of this first public demonstration of surgical anesthesia quickly circulated around the world. He was a founder of the New England Journal of Medicine and was the third president of the American Medical Association. He was the first Dean of Harvard Medical School and a founding member of the Massachusetts General Hospital.
Sir William Turner was an English anatomist and was the Principal of the University of Edinburgh from 1903 to 1916.
Gurdon Buck was a pioneering military plastic surgeon during the Civil War. He is known for being the first doctor to incorporate pre- and post-operative photographs into his publications. Buck's fascia and Buck's extension are both named after him.
George Parkman, a Boston Brahmin and a member of one of Boston's richest families, was a prominent physician, businessman, and philanthropist, as well the victim in the sensationally gruesome Parkman–Webster murder case, which shook Boston in 1849–1850.
Henry Jacob Bigelow was an American surgeon and Professor of Surgery at Harvard University. A dominating figure in Boston medicine for many decades, he is remembered for the Bigelow maneuver for hip dislocation, a technique for treatment of kidney stones, and other innovations. He was instrumental in bringing the anesthetic possibilities of ether to the attention of medical men, and rescuing the case of Phineas Gage from relative obscurity. He was a vocal opponent of vivisection, and played a minor role in the apprehension of the culprit in the Parkman–Webster murder case.
Jacob Bigelow was an American physician, botanist and botanical illustrator. He was architect of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, husband to Mary Scollay, and the father of physician Henry Jacob Bigelow. The standard author abbreviation Bigelow is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
The Boston Medical Library of Boston, Massachusetts, was originally organized to alleviate the problem that had emerged due to the scattered distribution of medical texts throughout the city. It has evolved into the "largest academic medical library in the world".
James Jackson was an American physician. He was a proponent of Massachusetts General Hospital and became its first physician.
The Boston Phrenological Society was formed in 1832 upon the death of a prominent continental phrenologist, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim. Spurzheim was an anatomist and a former pupil of Franz Josef Gall. Spurzheim's brief tour and death popularized phrenology in the United States outside of its controversial place in medical lecture halls, and into the sphere of social reformers and ministers. The Society's formation launched the phrenology movement in the United States. The Boston Phrenological Society was founded by phrenology adherent Nahum Capen on the day of Spurzheim's funeral, November 17, 1832.
John Barnard Swett Jackson was an American surgeon and pathologist. He was the first curator of the Warren Anatomical Museum and was dean of Harvard Medical School from 1853 to 1855. In 1854, the Shattuck Professorship of Morbid Anatomy at Harvard Medical School was created for him. He held the post from then until his death in 1879, when the position was renamed the Shattuck Professorship of Pathological Anatomy. He was a member of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement.
William Fiske Whitney was an American anatomist, curator, and pathologist. Whitney was a pioneer in the field of the medical museum and originator of the method of quick diagnosis. An obituary describes him as "another of those early pioneers in pathology and the use of the microscope on this continent of whom his contemporaries, the late Sir William Osler and Prof. William H. Welch are notable examples." He specialized in anatomy, becoming one of the top experts in the country. Later, he was much sought after by the courts for his exceptional anatomical knowledge, especially in determining if poison had any bearing on a case.
The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever is an essay written by Oliver Wendell Holmes which first appeared in The New England Quarterly Journal of Medicine in 1843. It was later reprinted in the “Medical Essays” in 1855. It is included as Volume 38, Part 5 of the Harvard Classics series.
John Ware was an American physician and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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