William Helfand is a scholar of pharmaceutical history and art, and collector of ephemera and art related to medicine. The William H. Helfand Collection of Medical Prints and Posters consists of 34 prints and posters realted to the history of medicine and pharmacology, dating from 1695 to 1991, with the bulk of the prints dating from 19th century. Paris, France is the provenance for many of the posters, but several hail from England and the United States. The posters are represented in two formats: lithographs and engravings, some of which are hand colored. Ranging in size from 5"x8" to 19"x23", the prints include caricatures, political satire, comics and advertisements, dealing with a range of subjects from quacks, alchemy, charlatans and cheats, to pastoral and hospital scenes. George Cruikshank and Honoré Daumier are represented amongst the artists. Acquired as part of the History of Medicine Collections at Duke University.
The William H. Helfand Collection of Medical Prints and Posters consists of 34 prints and posters realted to the history of medicine and pharmacology, dating from 1695 to 1991, with the bulk of the prints dating from 19th century. Paris, France is the provenance for many of the posters, but several hail from England and the United States. The posters are represented in two formats: lithographs and engravings, some of which are hand colored. Ranging in size from 5"x8" to 19"x23", the prints include caricatures, political satire, comics and advertisements, dealing with a range of subjects from quacks, alchemy, charlatans and cheats to pastoral and hospital scenes. George Cruikshank and Honoré Daumier are represented amongst the artists. Acquired as part of the History of Medicine Collections at Duke University.
Material includes a letter (ALS), reprints, holograph notes. All material relates to the letter, from Commodore Thomas Macdonough to B.W. Crowninshield, Secretary of the Navy, recommending William Beaumont for service in the Navy.
Autograph letters and documents, signed. Includes letters to his father and brother from England, on British politics towards the United States and on the Continent; to Dr. Pollock informing him that he is unable to find a copy of his (Mott's) eulogy on Dr. John Revere; letters of recommendation; and receipts.
ALS. Personal and professional correspondence includes letters from R.N.D. Desgenettes, Jeffries Wyman, John Jeffries, John Collins Warren, James Thacher, Thomas M. Potter, George Hayward, John Witt Randall, Enoch Hale, John White Webster, Jerome van Crowninshield Smith, John D. Fisher, James Jackson and J.B. Whitridge. Papers also include a letter from Parsons to his brother-in-law, Oliver Wendell Holmes.
ALS. Sewell writes to Rev. David Benedict, on fundraising efforts for the College, and to Tristam Burges, regarding the health of Burges' daughter and referring to various medical publications.
Documents, signed, relating to Thomas Hughes, his maternal grandmother, Joyce Morgan, his mother, Anne Hughes Samuel, her second husband, William Samuel, and the disposal of family property and goods. There is also a page of printed material, Miscellaneous articles sold by Thomas Hughes, dispensing chemist.
ALS. Asks Brown, a bookseller, to send volumes of the Boston Journal of Natural History to Mr. A. Halsey of Hartford, and to see that the journal is on sale and advertised in the principal cities and towns.
ALS. Halford gives medical advice, writes a letter of recommendation, issues a bulletin on the condition of King George IV, discusses vaccination of the poor, and agrees to subscribe to some books. Holograph manuscript, in an unknown hand, provides biography.
ALS to and from Cooper. Includes two notes from Catherine Cooper, Cooper's daughter, to Mr. and Mrs. Balderson and an anonymous recipient, and a note from W. Smith to Ann Cooper, Cooper's wife. Among Cooper's correspondents are well-known English physicians, scientists, and his patients. They include: A. Marcet, H. Halford, C.M. Clarke, J. Ingles, R. Leston, Sir C. Locock, Sir J. McGregor, A. Monro, Dr. Browne of Glasgow, Sir W. Lawrence, Sir C. Aldis, B. Travers, Dr. J.C.W. Lever, W.F. Montgomery, Dr. J. Kidd, Dr. Balderson, Dr. W. Prowl, H.S. Seton, J. Soogood, and B. Whittaker. Letters relate to personal and professional matters. The letters are in English. However, an ALS from Charles de Greti and an ANS from Pierre Moquet are in French. In his letters to Marcet, Cooper expresses strong opinions regarding the political situation in England and on the Continent during the Napoleonic wars. In his letters to Cooper, Kidd discusses the subject of medical reform. Seton's gossipy, personal letters relate to the royal family.
ALS. Letters to surgeon Valentine Mott, horticulturalist William Robert Prince, to auditor and naturalist William Lee relate to natural history. Papers also include verses from Le Brun dedicated to Mitchill by Francesca Pascalis and a letter to her from her father Felix Pascalis Ouviere. Mitchill also receives a letter of introduction from Roberts Vaux. In 1928 Mary Mayes writes Dr. Braislin regarding the sale of Mitchill papers in her possession.
ALS. Hare thanks a Dr. Muaran for the medical attention given to Robert Waln; discusses land investment with Edward S. Burd; writes to Zachariah Allen regarding the "cuts" used in his publications; and recommends Emile Therouanne of Paris to R. Gilmor. There is also an obituary notice.
Business and professional correspondence of Pliny Earle, Sr., (1762-1832), inventor and cotton textiles manufacturer, and of Pliny, (1809-1892), physician and alienist, including a few personal letters to Miss Earle. Correspondence addressed to Earle, Sr., touches on politics, patent rights and carding machines. Correspondence addressed to Earle relates to mental illness and the institutional care of the mentally ill. He received letters from physicians, institutional administrators, and philanthropists, including a number of letters of introduction. Items, mostly ALS and 10 addressed envelopes, are arranged in roughly chronological order.
Papers include a receipt for the sale of land signed by Physick's father, Edmund Physick, and receipts signed by Physick himself. Physick writes a letter of recommendation for William Milnor; responds to West Point cadet Ellis' inquiries regarding a thigh injury; and writes to Jaspar Yeates about the unsatisfactory progress of Physick's student and Yeates' relative, J. Hand. Yeates' biography is detailed in a letter from Whitfield J. Bell to Henry Schuman.
4 letters (ALS). Correspondence from Caspar Wistar, Robert Hare and Nathaniel Chapman. Wistar writes regarding quarantine regulations, that, on the one hand, they should prevent the introduction of contagious diseases and, on the other, should not be "burdensome to commerce". Includes transcription of Wistar letter.
Holograph documents, signed. Accounts of expenses incurred by the town of Salisbury and by various inhabitants against Dr. Luther Ticknor. Papers also include Adam Reid's Discourse delivered at the funeral of Luther Ticknor.
ALS. Papers consist mostly of letters written to Torrey by professional colleagues, botanists and geologists involved in exploration and surveyor expeditions. Notable correspondents include Louis Agassiz, A.D. Bache, Spencer Fullerton Baird, George Bentham, Jacob Bigelow, James Dwight Dana, William Darlington, Amos Eaton, Ebenezer Emmons, Asa Gray, A. Guyot, Robert Hare, Joseph Henry, Edward Hitchcock, John Lindley, Josiah Clark Nott, C.S. Rafinesque, and John White Webster. A complete list of correspondents is available.
Papers consist of three types of material: correspondence, loose manuscript leaves, and ms. notebooks. Correspondence consists of letters written by Sayer, his wife, Sarah A. Sayer, and the Superintendent at the Asylum, John Gray, during Sayer's stay at the Asylum. Loose manuscripts consist of miscellaneous notes, a poem, Sayer's teacher certification, and the school lists of both Sayer and his wife, then Sarah Ann Bennet. Notebooks: "Sketches of life" (a journal, tp., 23 pp., 1842-1859); "A book intended for writings" (notebook of essays and poems, tp., 23 pp., 1837); and an algebra notebook (tp., 85 pp., 1833) with notes on town bonds at the end (3 pp., 1872).
Mitchell corresponds with Oliver Wendell Holmes and Jacob Whitman Bailey regarding his book, On the cryptogamous origin of malarious and epidemic fevers. Papers also include a line drawing, removed from Mitchell's son's copy of Gower's lectures on the diagnosis of diseases of the brain, pub. 1885; a letter of recommendation for Andrew Ellicott Kennedy; and printed sheet music, Oh! Fly to the prairie, with lyrics by Mitchell.
ALS, including a description of the Siamese twins Chang and Eng, prescriptions and a letter of recommendation, and newspaper clippings of obituary notices.
Holograph receipt, signed, for forage. ALS relating to Cochran's orders to Dr. John Warren. Cochran explains that he was unaware that his orders conflicted with those issued by the addressee. A reprint of an article by T. Wood Clarke from the New York State Journal of Medicine gives biographical information.
A collection of letters (ALS) from Brown, including a letter from Brown's grandfather, the Rev. John Brown; photostats, including one of the first page of the first edition of Brown's "Horae subsecivae"; and holograph notes in an anonymous hand.
Papers include an ANS attesting that medical student Louis de Charbonnel attended Cruveilhier's course during spring 1839, and an ALS prescribing a sea water bath treatment for a brain injury.
ALS. Mease writes to John Jones of New York, on business matters; to Thomas Young of Savannah, on horticulture; to John Thompson, regarding the life of Charles Thomson; and to John F. Watson, with a reference to William D. Williamson.
Printed burial announcement, Amsterdam, 1775, of the death and remarkable old age of Hermanus van Kleef; silhouette portrait of cut-out colored papers and a lock of human hair, with holograph caption; and autograph translation of both announcement and caption. Collage portrait supposedly of and by van Kleef a few years before his death at the age of 101. English translation by a Dr. Luckhardt, sometime around 1950.
