Surgical engineering

This week’s blog by Project Archivist Louise looks at some medical make-do-and-mend!

The case notes of Norman Dott not only contain the stories of ground-breaking surgeries, but also house vivid accounts of the relationship between doctor and patient. Sometimes, correspondence between patients (whether private or hospital cases) and Dott and his team outnumbers accounts of medical treatment!

I’m currently cataloguing the cases that Dott treated just following the Second World War, when he was still splitting his time between Bangour Emergency Medical Service Hospital in Broxburn and the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Although many aspects of the hardships of conflict were over, shortages of everyday necessities were still very much a reality, and not just in the case of filling the kitchen cupboards.

One gentleman who was treated by Dott for a brain tumour decided to extend his gratitude to the Edinburgh neurosurgical team in an extremely practical way. Using his business connections, he managed to procure lengths of stainless steel from which to manufacture (in Dott’s words) “the nice little machine we use to hold the brain out of the way when we are dealing with tumours difficult of access.”

Dott's specifications for the stainless steel rods (LHB1 CC/24/PR2.4831)

 

The rods (precisely specified by Dott) were then assembled into the surgical apparatus by the “excellent anaesthetist and engineer, Dr Maxwell-Brown.” Maxwell-Brown, like Dott, was well known for his mechanical flair having (like Dott almost did) served an engineering apprenticeship – he fitted up a workshop at Bangour during the Second World War to supply prototypes and to fashion surgical equipment that could not otherwise be procured during shortages (a hobby that continued throughout his life). Maxwell-Brown was particularly known on the Edinburgh wards for his self-retaining brain retractor, and maybe it is for this apparatus that the steel rods were sent by the generous patient. As Dott stated on Maxwell-Brown’s retirement in 1954, “most of our really difficult and outstanding operating is done with the help of instruments he designed and made, and could not be done without them.”

A Student's View

From the 4 - 15 November we had the pleasure of hosting a placement student, Clair Millar, from the University of Glasgow's Information Management and Preservation Masters course. Here she tells us about her time at LHSA.

After I had such a inspiring time at the ‘Archives Taster Day’ with LHSA I couldn’t wait to come back for my two week cataloguing placement after starting the Information Management and Preservation course at Glasgow University.  This part of my course enabled me to finally put some theory into practice in a real archive environment!  As well my own task, Archivist Laura has provided me with an insight to different aspects of the job, including helping with a student seminar about the LHSA collections.  

 

For my placement, I was continuing where last year’s student Sharon had left off, working on cataloguing the papers of Dr Anne McLeod Shepherd.  Luckily for me Sharon is back with LHSA as the Archive Intern and has therefore provided me with some great guidance when working with the collection.  Sharon had already box listed the majority of the collection, so after a couple of days of familiarising myself with the material I was able to get down to work and catalogued two series: ‘The recognition of the ‘Elsie Inglis Memorial Maternity Hospital as a Historic Building’ and ‘The Elsie Inglis Award 2000’.  It has been so helpful for me go through the different processes of cataloguing; from box listing, to organising the materials, listing, numbering and describing, following international archive standards and LHSA guidelines, as well as labelling and re-housing the materials. 
 

Dr Shepherd Papers before cataloguing

The papers of Dr Anne McLeod Shepherd (1922 - 2004) have been really fascinating to delve into.  She herself had a very interesting life beginning her career during the Second World War, working for the Building Research division of Government, testing the effects of bombs.  After the War she completed her degree in Medicine, qualifying as a Doctor in 1950.  Dr Shepherd was actively interested in the female medical profession.  As well as being a serving member of the Medical Women’s Federation, she had a passionate interest in the involvement of medical women during the First World War, particularly in the work of Dr Elsie Maud Inglis (1864 - 1917) whom her papers mainly relate to.

 

After cataloguing and re-housing

D
r Shepherd’s collection is an excellent record of the projects she was involved in to memorialise and recognise the outstanding contribution that Dr Inglis made to women’s health in Edinburgh and also through her work in Serbia, establishing field hospitals during the First World War.  Dr Shepherd campaigned for many years to get the Elsie Inglis Memorial Maternity Hospital recognised as a historic building; she established the Elsie Inglis Heritage Trail, and was instrumental in the creation of a plaque in her memory, erected on the Royal Mile.  This collection has really highlighted for me how important Dr Shepherd’s work was, in helping to play a part in representing historical female heroines across Edinburgh’s landscape that are often overshadowed.    

Clair adding the final touches to her work

This week's blog comes from Conservation Intern Sarah...

I am now over half way through my Conservation internship and the recent couple of weeks have been extremely full and very rewarding. 

Over the past two weeks I have had the amazing opportunity to work with two exhibitions that LHSA are involved with.  On Friday 15 November the ‘200 years, 200 Objects’ exhibition opens at the Talbot Rice Gallery and on 5 December ‘Collect.ed’ exhibition opens at the Main Library Exhibition Gallery, Edinburgh University.  As part of these two exhibitions, LHSA has lent an extensive amount of items to go on display. It has been my job to make sure that all of them have been condition checked, packed, transported and then installed. This was all done alongside LHSA Manager Ruth, and in conjunction with the curators, artists and exhibition installation teams from each exhibition.

I have also been busy running a conservation training day. This training day was designed for people who are thinking about conservation as a career, and want to get a better idea of the kinds of treatments that a conservator may do on a day to day basis. And for people who already work in the heritage sector, such as an Archivist who may require a better understanding of basic conservation problems and solutions. The day went really well and all 4 students seemed to have an enjoyable day and hopefully learnt a few interesting facts about conservation.

The rest of my time has been spent making folders for the re-housing of flattened parchment title deeds with pendant seals. I have designed a version of a 4-flap folder using acid free card that will encase the parchment. 

4-flap folder, with parchment on acid-free base

The parchment itself will then be attached to an acid-free card base using archival linen tape; this is used to reduce any movement of the parchment within the 4-flap folder. Some of the pendant seals are rather fragile and desiccated; so these seals will have an extra support of a Tyvek pouch/bag that will encase the wax/resin seal.

Parchment and seal in new 4-flap folder

Asking the right questions

This week, Project Archivist Louise has been finding out how we can reach a new generation of researchers...

Outreach is one of our key goals at LHSA – from a strong presence on social media to seminars for students, archive tours, advising family history and academic researchers and taking the archive ‘out’ in talks to community groups in Edinburgh and beyond. However, we’d like to extend our current work to reach a younger audience, particularly for primary and secondary schools. To this end, our Archive Intern, Sharon, and I went to the Mitchell Library in Glasgow yesterday to take part in a workshop on using enquiry-based learning with archives to reach groups of all ages.

I have to admit that before I attended the workshop (run by the Scottish Council on Archives), I was unsure about what enquiry-based learning was. When I think of an enquiry now, it’s usually in terms of the growing numbers of queries we get from academic and genealogical researchers each month based on the records that we hold. However, enquiry-based learning centres on asking open questions to allow students to get as much as possible out of their learning materials (which for us means archival records).

As someone with little experience of working with children and young adults, I found the day both accessible and extremely rewarding. At the beginning of the day, we put ourselves in the place of students and were faced with a short oral history transcript. Through asking the right questions (that didn’t encourage one word answers or the regurgitation of a list of facts) our workshop leader Douglas drew an enormous amount out of us based on both the feelings inspired by the text and how the single incident described could tell us so much more about the wider realities of the First World War for families at home. The rest of the day was spent choosing our own archive materials to base learning workshops around, and (more importantly) putting together our own questions. This was not as easy as it sounds: for example, instead of asking for the facts of what a newspaper article from the archive is reporting, it’s better to ask ‘How would you feel if you opened the paper one morning and read that?’ , which can lead to a lot more questioning and discussion.

Since the workshop was based on First World War sources, Sharon and I took along digital images of an autograph book held by LHSA, which was created by Craigleith Military Hospital nurse Ethel Miller. They were picked out for us by Kirstin, our Research Intern, who is working on creating educational resources from the varied archives that we hold from the First World War. The soldiers under Ethel Miller’s care wrote epigrams and (often adoring!) poems, as well as drawing cartoons based on their own attitudes and experiences of warfare. Although undoubtedly fascinating on first sight, after attending the workshop we’ll be able to use Ethel’s memories in so many more ways and bring nursing history alive for new audiences.

A page from Ethel Miller's autograph book

 

Conservation and Cataloguing

I’ve now completed three weeks of my internship and have finished the first phase of the cataloguing of LHSA’s photographic collection. A list of our items has now been completed and Archivist Laura has advised me which series they fit into. Our collection includes photographs and drawings of notable Scottish physicians, and Laura was also delighted to see a ‘photogravure’ (a printmaking process that replicates the detail and continuous tones of a photograph) of the eminent psychiatrist TS Clouston. Clouston was appointed as Superintendent of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum in 1873 and also served as a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. His publications on mental illness established him as a leader in the field of psychiatry.

 

 

Photogravure of Thomas Clouston

I have also spent a lot of time this week working with Sarah, the Conservation Intern. We have been working on an accession from the solicitors Gillespie Macandrew containing title deeds and legal papers, many relating to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Before Sarah can start treating the papers I had to assign numbers to each one so that she can keep track of the order they should be in. This was a useful experience for me and also an opportunity to find out more about the work of a conservator. As we numbered items, Sarah explained how they might be cleaned and what repairs might need to be carried out. It was enjoyable, if quite dirty work, and we had to stop often to wash 200 years’ worth of dirt from our hands! Some of the items we have been handling are beautiful parchments with pendant seals and pictured below is an indenture dated 28 April 1686.

Indenture, 1686

On Thursday we visited the conservation studio at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. The conservator, Tizzy, made us very welcome and talked to us about their holdings and the work she does there.

I also had an opportunity on Wednesday to talk to our Research Intern, Kirsten about her work; we looked at some of the archival material she has been examining and decided together on ways in which they could be used as an educational resource. This was really interesting for me as this was the focus of my MSc dissertation, and something I’m hoping to find out more about next week when Project Archivist Louise and I attend the Scottish Council on Archives Enquiry Learning Workshop at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow.

Researching the First World War...

In this week's blog, we hear from our new Research Intern, Kirstin, who is working with LHSA collections related to the First World War in preparation for the 2014 centenary:

My name is Kirstin and I am the new Research Intern at LHSA. I graduated last year with a BA (Hons) in Photography and Film, with my dissertation focusing on the artistic influences of the rare study of 19^th century male hysteria. It was throughout my dissertation that I discovered how much I enjoy researching topics in further detail, and how I love sharing the fascinating stories I find with others. This led me to my previous role as Hospital Community Intern with Artlink, a research-based internship for the "200 Years 200 Objects" exhibition commemorating the Royal Edinburgh Hospital’s bicentenary. This role gave me the chance to interact with staff, patients and ex-patients by talking with them to find out the medical, social and personal history of the hospital. What I loved most about the project was discovering the personal stories of the individuals who have been at the hospital. I am therefore delighted to be the new Research Intern at LHSA, where I have been given the opportunity to research in depth stories from World War 1 resources, which also include the personal stories of some extremely admirable and fascinating people.

My five-week internship will involve researching and choosing appropriate stories from LHSA WW1 resources, to develop and create educational resources for school children, universities and the general public which will be used both in person and online,  a task I am really excited to be part of.

I have been very lucky in my first week to begin this task by looking through the volumes of the Craigleith Hospital Chronicle, a hospital magazine made up by many beautiful and touching stories, sketches and poems contributed by both hospital staff and wounded soldiers.  I have loved looking through the magazines immensely, and I feel I have met some fascinating people which I look forward to researching further over the next few weeks. The beautiful sketches and artwork scattered throughout have been one of my personal highlights whilst viewing this material. But my favourite so far has been the funny little captioned illustrations throughout the magazine. At a time when there was so much devastation I found it incredible people could still see the lighter side of things.

Vignette from Craigleith Chronicle, December 1915 (GD1/82/11)

 

New conservation intern, old parchment deeds!

Hi my name is Sarah and I am the new Conservation intern with LHSA. I recently graduated from Northumbria University earlier this year having completed an MA in Fine Art Conservation, specialising in ‘Works on Paper’. And after coming to this area for one of my summer placements I am very pleased and excited to be back once again to live and work in Edinburgh.

My Conservation Internship is for 10 weeks and my main task is to review the condition survey of an accession that contains parchment title deeds, other related papers and architectural plans relating to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. So my first week has been spent looking at each item within the accession with an aim to produce a treatment proposal for the accession as a whole. This internship also allows me to experience other aspects of working within an archive. I have been helping to prepare for the ‘200 years 200 Objects’ exhibition that will be taking place at the Talbot Rice Gallery next month by creating the outline and measurements for the book cradles that will be used as the display supports for a selection of bound volumes that are to be included within the exhibition.

There are many interesting aspects to the accession that I am looking at; some of the objects are very old and badly damaged. One of the objects that I looked at was dated 1610. This is the oldest object that I have ever had the privilege to handle or treat. Another interesting aspect was finding a legal document dated 1798 that had been embossed with a stamp showing the cost of postage: proof of postage before adhesive stamps were first introduced in 1840.

Proof of postage pre-adhesive stamps, 1840