What makes a masterpiece?

This is the question that the current exhibition in the Edinburgh University Main Library Exhibition Gallery, ‘Masterpieces III’, hopes to answer!

‘Masterpieces III’ is the final instalment of an exhibition programme that started in 2009, in the then brand new facilities in the Library. From what was a straight forward exhibition of beautiful objects in the first ‘Masterpieces’, we have moved to a much more thought-provoking series of items that might not have been traditionally thought of as treasures.

A variety of material from across University Collections is on display and, as this exhibition is themed around science and medicine, LHSA items feature prominently. This is a great opportunity to see some of our collection including a selection from our UNESCO-awarded HIV/AIDS Collections, a notebook that charts the invention of the bionic arm and a silent film about the Royal Infirmary from the 1930s.

We hope these pictures tempt you into coming to have a look yourself. The exhibition is free and open to all from Monday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm. ‘Masterpieces III’ will be on display in the Edinburgh University Main Library Exhibition Gallery (30 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LJ) until 6 July.

New perspectives on Norman Dott...

LHSA's Norman Dott project started to work with volunteers early in the Spring. This week's blog comes from Kirsty Bailey, one of our first volunteers, who gives her own view of the project:

I have been a volunteer on the Norman Dott project since the beginning of March: in this time my knowledge of medical terminology and neurology has vastly increased. It is amazing how over such a short time you can become so familiar with patients symptoms and diagnoses. I have been cataloguing Norman Dott’s case files using Encoded Archival Description (EAD) in an XML editor. At first I thought this looked extremely complicated and intimidating – however, as time has gone on I have become increasingly confident with the catalogue and now feel very much at ease with it.

In my first few days at LHSA I was introduced to confidentiality legislation and NHS guidelines relevant to the documentation that I am working with. The legislation and guidelines assign closure periods to records that contain sensitive personal data relating to living and deceased individuals. This was a whole new concept to me as I had never dealt with patient records before in anything I had previously done.

As I continue to go through the case notes, the more correspondence and notes I read, the more impressed and captivated I am at the level of familiarity and time that Norman Dott had for his patients. In many of the folders there are letters between himself and his patients, all with a distinct degree of kindness and warmth. He seems to me to have been someone who genuinely cared for his patients and who had a sincere concern for their wellbeing.

Some case notes are more detailed and intriguing than others: some patients have very obvious complaints whereas with others there is an element of mystery. Even after all this time I still feel a degree of sadness over a patient if it is noted that they have died. I did not know them or their families yet I always feel upset for those who were lost. Having not come from a particularly medical background I was surprised by the lack of emotion which is shown within the case notes. Although they are obviously clinical being medical files, they can seem detached and void of feeling. The only level of sentiment which is experienced within these files is the correspondence which is sometimes included, which is perhaps why it stands out as more remarkable.

One case in particular has captivated me over the last few months, dealing with a young boy who suffered from a brain tumour at a very young age. Dott operated on him, saving his life, after which he grew up and led a full and happy existence. Within this file there was an array of correspondence from his eternally grateful parents, cards and a drawing from the young boy himself. This drawing of an aeroplane (see below) really touched me. I thought this gesture from the boy was just so pure and untainted. The fact that this family remained in touch with Norman Dott for the next twenty years with continual updates on the boy’s life shows, to me, the affect Dott had on people and their lives.

Sketch of spitfire for case file, 1941 (LHB1 CC/20)
These case files can sometimes contain photographs, usually of tumours which have been removed but occasionally of people themselves. Sometimes they include drawings by Norman Dott, usually illustrating the position of the tumour within the person. These drawings are fascinating to discover as they give an insight into both Dott himself and how he processed his diagnoses. (See picture below).

Dott note and surgical sketch, 1942 (LHB1 CC/20)

In one of the case notes I also have found a newspaper article written by a patient of Dott describing his experiences and remarkable recovery. This article was printed nineteen years after Dott had operated and the patient was as fit and healthy as anyone else, remarkable as before Norman Dott operated he was almost entirely paralysed.

I am thoroughly enjoying working on this project. Each day you discover something different or learn something new. There is such a degree of anticipation with the opening of each new case note as to what will be discovered and revealed from within it.

Climbing a (photographic) cataloguing mountain...

This week, we hear from Fiona, who's been continuing with the formidable task of cataloguing and rehousing LHSA photographic collections:

Hello!

I was the archives intern, but the LHSA have invited me to stay on as a volunteer to finish off this project, which I am determined to do!

I am currently well over half way through my cataloguing and rehousing of part of the LHSA photograph collection. The Dental Hospital, the Royal Edinburgh Hospital and the Bangour photographs are now completely re-housed and catalogued and ready to be viewed by the public. I am now working on the megalithic collection that is the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh photographs. I’m not even half way through these photographs, but the number of those catalogued is now 1309! Once these are done, there is sure to be a small celebration in the CRC office.

More LHSA photograph collections rehoused - from the Royal Edinburgh Hospital and Bangour Village Hospital

In the next couple of weeks, some photographs of my, and the conservation intern, Charlotte’s, projects here at the LHSA will be put up on the LHSA Flikr page. They will illustrate what our tasks were for the 10 weeks we were here and the achievements we made.

An operating theatre for WWI

Due to be published online this summer are further editions of the Craigleith Chronicle, a hospital magazine produced by staff and patients of Craigleith Military Hospital during World War I. As a taster of one of the editions, part of an article by CW Cathcart from September 1915 is presented this week (LHSA ref GD1/82/8).  In it he explains how the operating theatre was developed when the hospital was converted from the poorhouse. Due to the war, the facility needed to have all of the equipment supplied locally. The problem of supplying sterilised water was one which was overcome by a number of interesting solutions. Two forty gallon water tanks designed for domestic purposes were obtained, where water could be sterilised by boiling before being used for operations. One of these had a coiled cold water pipe run through it so that the water could be chilled to provide cold sterile water. A high-pressure steriliser was donated by the Edinburgh Royal Maternity Hospital staff who said they could make do with an old steriliser in the meantime and a cast iron cattle trough (presumably new) was converted into a boiling basin by fitting it with an exit tap and a cover!

 

The images from the magazine show the water and bowl sterilisers, and a general view of the operating theatre.

Adjoining rooms were converted to create an X-ray department, an anaesthetic room, a sterilising room, a room for applying dressings and a dental room. The article states that between the end of August 1914 and mid July 1915, the theatre and dental room were used for 1,792 surgical and 1,324 dental operations, however these procedures were for the most part carried out to ‘fit recruits and Territorial soldiers for active service abroad’. This suggests that the health of young men in the Lothians was not great at the time. Cathcart concludes by thanking the theatre sister for her efficient service during his time in Craigleith, reminding us that carrying out operations was a team effort.

Sharing our skills (and learning some new ones too)

Taking part in the Preservation Advisory Centre’s ‘Essential Preservation’ course yesterday was a great opportunity to share LHSA’s experience of collection care with others new to the sector. We led a couple of sessions focusing on handling special collections and looking at the conditions that rare material should be stored in. A hands-on handling exercise proved to be particularly useful for attendees, having a go at carefully rolling and unrolling a damaged architectural plan (well, a piece of plain paper cut to the size of a plan and torn in a few places to simulate the real thing!).

But it wasn’t just a chance for us to help other archivists in the public sector get to grips with preserving their collections for the long-term, there was lots to be learnt from the other speakers too. One of the British Library’s preventive conservators talked about the development of their disaster plan and the Head of the Preservation Advisory Centre described various ways to communicate preservation issues to colleagues to get them involved in caring for the collection, so there were lots of top tips and great ideas to be had!

An exciting find

This week, our Wellcome Trust Project Archivist Louise gives an update on some surprising finds in the Dott case note collection:


Time is certainly moving on quickly in LHSA’s Norman Dott case note cataloguing project. With the first case note series catalogued (relating to Dott’s early hospital and private practice), I’ve now moved on to the largest series of over 22,000 records documenting Dott’s work at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh from the 1940s. But at the end of the first, early series something unexpected awaited me. Labelled ‘Spina Bifida Cases’, a final box contained collected summaries of spina bifida cases in children under two. Not only does this box contain a number of glass plate negatives, lantern slides and related photographs (exciting finds in themselves!), but the earliest of these patient records is dated 1922, making it the oldest in the collection to date.

Spina bifida is a fault in the development of the spine and spinal cord during a baby’s growth in the womb. In its most common form, the spinal column does not fully close, causing membranes and the spinal cord to push out to form a sac on the back of the baby (a meningomyelocele). Babies born with spina bifida are also at risk from hydrocephalus (excess cerebrospinal fluid in the brain), which was probably why Dott was keen to examine their heads as well as their spines.

LHB20 CC/20/PR1.1974 Encephalogram showing spine and meningomyelocele in young patient

The spina bifida case notes are records of encephalography, a now-outdated x-ray procedure through which cerebrospinal fluid was removed from the ventricles in the brain or the spinal cord and replaced with oxygen, allowing a clear image to be taken. Along with these images are notes describing the procedures and the implications of the x-ray findings. Notably, these young patients were under Sir John Fraser (1885-1947, and pictured in last week's blog), with whom Dott published on paediatrics in the early 1920s. Fraser served as surgeon to the Edinburgh Royal Hospital for Sick Children (R.H.S.C) from 1920 to 1925, eventually attaining the prestigious Chair of Clinical Surgery at the University of Edinburgh.

LHB20 CC/20/PR1.1974 Encephalogram of cranium of same patient showing ventricles in the brain

Dott showed a considerable interest in spina bifida cases and paediatric surgery throughout his career, becoming Honorary Surgeon to the R.H.S.C in 1925. These photographic materials and notes relate to cases seen as out-patients at the R.H.S.C before Dott took up his official post there and, although Dott occupied a number of surgery and lectureships at various Edinburgh institutions before 1925, the R.H.S.C was not one of these. Although I’m very busy cataloguing at the moment, these ‘gaps’ in Dott’s career which are not documented by our case note collections will be exciting to research in the future, particularly using the collection of Norman Dott’s private papers held by LHSA’s colleagues in the Centre for Research Collections.

Accessions Update

We’ve had a busy period of activity on the accessions front, with a mixture of large and small accessions arriving from the NHS and from private hands. Here’s a selection of those related to psychiatry and mental health.

 

Design for Young People's Unit, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, 1967

A fantastic set of designs for the Royal Edinburgh Hospital was received as part of the bicentenary archive appeal. Created by interior designer Margaret Campbell in 1967, they include proposals for MacKinnon House, the Young People’s Unit, and the Doctors’ Residence. They are a celebration of 1960s fashions, and include test fabrics, colour blocks, slides and drawings. Our thanks go to Margaret for kindly donating her work to LHSA – we expect it will prove to be a great resource for anyone studying hospital design during this period. 

Design for North Wing, MacKinnon House, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, 1967

Detail of design, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, 1967

Last week, the Oor Mad History papers were transferred to the Archive to join the oral history recordings collected earlier on in the project. Together, they form a comprehensive record of the mental health service user movement in Edinburgh and the Lothians from the 1980s onwards, and we look forward to this being a heavily used collection. 

And finally, today, the Archivist will be sampling late-twentieth century psychiatric case notes from West Lothian. These records are considered likely to have long term archival value, but given the huge quantity of them, a random sample will be selected for transfer to the Archive whilst the remainder will be securely destroyed by the NHS Lothian Records Management team, since they are beyond their legal retention period and have no further administrative or clinical value. More information on this can be found in Annex B of the NHS Records Management Code of Practice can be found at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2012/01/10143104/0.