Beyond the conventions

This week, Archivist Louise looks at some 'alternative' themes in LHSA collections...

Even after five years as archivist at LHSA, I'm always reminded of how varied our collections actually are - either by working with something I have not physically seen before, or re-visiting material for a researcher. In the past month or so, I've been helping an Edinburgh postgraduate student explore one of our collections for a report she's writing. This was, in fact, the first collection I ever catalogued at LHSA, that of osteopath, iridologist (stay with me!) and medical masseuse, Amelia Nyasa Laws. The student's project involves exploring Amelia's papers, and looking into the reasons behind how they're described and stored.

Until I looked at the papers again, I'd forgotten what a diverse career Amelia had. Daughter of Scottish medical missionary Robert Laws, Amelia (1886 - 1978) worked as a medical masseuse in France during the First World War, took her degree in medicine in Edinburgh, and trained in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in orthopaedics, later travelling to Europe to add to her orthopaedic and physiotherapy training. Amelia eventually became an osteopath as her main profession (a therapist who aims to detect, prevent and treat medical problems by moving and stretching muscles and joints). However, her interests were wide and varied, as shown by the archive that we hold for her.

For example, she was a follower of iridology in the 1920s and 1930s, a (now discredited) field that claimed to diagnose medical problems through the study in changes in the iris of the eye:

A 1926 pamphlet on iridolgy. Amelia's cosmopolitan education meant that she collected resources in multiple languages.

From her training in the 1920s to her retirement in the 1970s, Amelia had a demonstrable interest in other (what we'd now call) 'alternative therapies'. Amelia's pamphlet collection shows her actively exploring and collecting material on a number of issues. For example, in the 1960s, she looked into 'Rolfing'  (a system of manipulation invented by American Ida Rolf):

A pamphlet on 'Rolfing', which traditionally structured treatment around ten sessions.

... and 'naturopathy', which believes in stimulating the body's responses through diet, herbs, sun and fresh air:

Thanks to Amelia's research into alternative medicine, we also have pamphlets on homeopathy:

.. and this 1936 pamphlet on the benefits of comfrey:

It's clear from the letters that came with some of this literature that a lot of the time Amelia was asking for information from manufacturers and organisations in response to particular patient conditions, as shown on pamphlets she collected in the 1940s into possible cancer treatments:

It's been really interesting to look back at this varied material - I love finding things that you wouldn't necessarily expect to come across in an archive like ours! The debates on 'alternative medicine' these days are ongoing, heated and understandably emotive - and I'm sure we all have our views on them! But whatever side of the fence you happen to fall upon, it's fascinating to look back through the ways in which these therapies were promoted and disseminated, and to find out about an individual like Amelia who was looking genuinely far and wide to find solutions to her patients' needs.