An Annotated Catalogue Of The Edward C. Atwater Collection Of American Popular Medicine And Health 1
Mozell Gentges
The catalogue covers a broad array of books and pamphlets published or available in America before 1918 and written for a popular audience. Authors represented in the 4,000 or so entries range from highly esteemed regular physicians to obscure hucksters with no formal medical training. Predominantly, however, the collection features the non-mainstream literature of health education and reform, works that informed the public about the functioning of their bodies and about health in relation to society. "It is hard to overestimate the influence of popular medical literature as an instrument of reform," wrote Atwater in his introductory survey of the varieties of popular medicine represented in the collection (p. xiv). Subjects include domestic medicine; irregular medicine for a popular audience; spas and water cures; phrenology; physiology and hygiene written for adults and for schoolchildren; popular anatomy museums; advice on diseases and care for the sick; marriage guides, sex education, and contraception; women's health; physical culture; diet; temperance; tobacco; proprietary medicines; and much more. These were topics often ignored by the leaders of the regular medical profession, and of little interest to most physicians who collected medical books before Atwater. A surprising number of works in the catalog are by women, laywomen as well as many early female graduates of medical schools.
What makes the catalogue especially useful for historians of medicine are the extensive scholarly annotations. Hoolihan, with the collaboration of Atwater, has combed scores of directories and a wide variety of primary and secondary sources in order to provide biographical information on [End Page 243] most of the authors represented. Some of the biographical entries are substantial and highly original, such as Atwater's for the Kahn and Jordan families associated with Dr. Kahn's Museum of Anatomy and Medical Science in New York. Many annotations include quotations from the books and summaries of the contents. Translations and confusing edition numbers are clarified. For some of the most reprinted titles, such as Buchan's Domestic Medicine or Margaret Sanger's pamphlet Family Limitation, there are tables listing all editions, whether in the Atwater collection or not. And finally, the volumes are enlivened by nearly a hundred illustrations. The arrangement is alphabetic by author. The single index lists the works under broad subject categories. A publisher index, promised in the first volume but decided against in the second volume, would have been helpful for identifying books from specific locations. A third planned volume will contain titles acquired since January 2001, as well as entries for almanacs.
An Annotated Catalogue of the Edward C. Atwater Collection of American Popular Medicine and Health 1
In the autumn of 1994, Edward C. Atwater, M.D. made the Miner Library the repository for his personal collection of books, periodicals, pamphlets, almanacs, trade cards, printed ephemera and manuscript material pertaining to American "popular medicine." Materials in the Atwater Collection represent the full range of medical self-help among Americans before the First World War. It includes materials on the self-diagnosis and treatment of disease; manuals of advice on personal hygiene (i.e., diet, exercise, rest, bathing, etc.); instruction on sexual physiology, hygiene and behavior; advice on contraceptive practice; explanations of eugenics for a lay audience; advice on the management of pregnancy, labor and infant care; warnings about the consumption of alcohol and tobacco; manuals of medical botany; an extensive collection of juvenile textbooks on physiology and hygiene; first aid manuals, etc. Much of this literature was written by physicians for the lay public, and much of it by authors vehemently opposed to the medical profession. The collection also reflects the popularization of health and healing by members of alternative medical sects such as Thomsonians and other botanics, eclectics, homeopaths, hydropaths, naturopaths, and mental healers. In addition, the Atwater Collection includes thousands of pamphlets, almanacs and printed ephemera advertising the proprietary medicines, therapies and devices marketed to the American public throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.
An original and life member of the Friends, he served for many years on the Program Committee and the Annual Book Fair Committee. Long a collector, he has a special interest is old medical books. In 1994, he gave the University a collection of books, pamphlets and broadsides dealing with American popular medicine and health reform. The collection, house at the Miner Library, includes 5,000 publications addressed to lay readers, written by professional and nonprofessional authors, to instruct or promote all manner of health issues, ranging from the best advice available to the most outrageous quackery. A two-volume-set annotated catalogue of this collection was prepared and published by Christopher Hoolihan (2001, 2004). A supplemental volume including about 2,600 additional titles appeared in 2008. Publication of the original catalogue was made possible by supporting grants from the Friends of the Libraries, the Gleason Foundation, and the Lamont Fund.
The final volume in a comprehensive catalog of rare books dealing with "popular medicine" in early America.
This third and final volume of the annotated catalog of the Edward C. Atwater, M.D. Collection of American Popular Medicine includes books, manuscripts, pamphlets, periodicals, and printed ephemera acquired since the publication of Volume 1 [Authors A-L] in 2001 and Volume 2 [Authors M-Z] in 2004. Volume 3 [Authors A-Z] contains entries for more than 2,000 items. Together, these three volumes provide an unparalleled perspective on the vast and diverse bodyof literature published between the colonial period and World War I that, among other things, instructed Americans on the domestic treatment of illness or injury, advised women on reproductive control, and enlightened school children on the structure and functioning of their own bodies.
The Atwater Collection is the product of nearly four decades of collecting by Edward C. Atwater, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Medicine and the History of Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.
The catalog was compiled and annotated by Christopher Hoolihan, Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarian at the Edward G. Miner Library.