EXHIBITS

Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library
333 Cedar Street, New Haven, Connecticut

Directions & Parking

Medicine Caricatured: British Satirical Prints of the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries

Metallic Tractors, by James Gillray (Click on image to enlarge)

This exhibit of British satirical prints from the Clements C. Fry Prints and Drawings Collection was prepared by Susan Wheeler in conjunction with the Yale Symposium, The Art in Medicine: Image-Making and Communication. Each case explores a different facet of medical prints as media of communication. The exhibit dates are April 14 - April 28 and May 4 through June 9, 2004. Doctors, patients, and medical practice were popular subjects for London caricaturists whose brightly colored prints circulated widely in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Artists' interpretations of professional rivalries, vaccination for smallpox, and "resurrection" of the recently interred for the anatomists' table are on view. The metallic tractors, a quack device invented by Connecticut physician Elisha Perkins and marketed in London by his son Benjamin (Yale 1794), are an example of the use of satire to sell a product.

Art in the Hallway --- British Satirical Prints of Patients, Diseases, and Doctors

The Cholic by George Cruikshank after Frederick Marryatt, 1819 (Click on image to enlarge)

The Art in the Hallway exhibit of British satirical prints continues the rotunda exhibit, Medicine Caricatured. The thirteen prints highlight patients, doctors, and diseases. Susan Wheeler, Curator of the Fry Print Collection, prepared the exhibit from the holdings of the Clements C. Fry Collection of Prints and Drawings. The exhibit will be on display from April 14 through May 6, 2004.

The Art of Medicine: Selections from Lesser Known Collections of the Historical Library

New Haven, Connecticut: City Hospital (Click on image to enlarge)

In addition to the miniatures of medieval manuscripts, the fine engravings of rare books such as those of Vesalus, and the prints in the Fry Print Collection, the Historical Library holds many lesser known collections containing art and illustration related to medicine. Each case features a different variety of "art" from the higher art of engraved portraits and commemorative medals to the more mundane popular art of patent medicine almanacs and trade cards, souvenir postcards, and early 20th century tobacco advertisments. Also on display are the originals of five British satirical prints from the Fry Print Collection that have been replicated in postcards and posters for sale by the Medical Library. The exhibit was prepared by Toby Appel and Todd Lane in conjunction with the Yale symposium, The Art of Medicine, and will be up from April 14 through May 28, 2004.

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
121 Wall Street, New Haven, Connecticut

Directions

The Art of Medicine: Medical Manuscripts from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library

April 16 - May 22, 2004

Page of the Paneth Codex, Cushing/ Whitney Medical Library, MS 28

The exhibition brings together manuscripts from two libraries at Yale, the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library. One belongs, at least superficially, to the world of the arts, the other to that of the sciences. But putting their manuscripts together shows a surprising degree of overlap in the collections of both libraries. The Cushing/Whitney manuscripts were collected principally by a trio of twentieth-century humanist physicians, Harvey Cushing, John F. Fulton, and Arnold C. Klebs. They bought their medical books as witnesses to the progress of science, but also as ways to understanding how medicine had been practiced in the past. Inspired by a belief in medicine as a humane art as well as a science, they thought historical understanding would make better clinicians.

Many of the manuscripts from the Beinecke were collected by Paul and Mary Mellon, whose principal interest was in alchemy and the occult sciences. Although influenced by Jungian interpetations of the alchemical project, they were as keen on practical alchemy as on the more hermetic and mystical elements. In fact alchemy between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries centered on the use of the quintessence in medicine and the prolongation of life more than on discovering how to turn a base metal into gold, or on pursuing a spiritual quest with the help of alchemical symbolism. The Beinecke has also purchased manuscripts on hunting and falconry to complement Mr and Mrs David Wagstaff's sporting books and manuscripts. These are very much about veterinary health care in an age conscious of the threat of epidemics and disease to both human and animal alike.

Peter M. Jones