Wilcox Glover (1 results)

Glover B. Wilcox was a urologist who studied in Baltimore and Los Angeles and practiced in California in the early 1900s. Offered here is a collection of visually engaging ephemera and photographs related to Wilcox's education and early career. Wilcox attended the Baltimore Medical College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Los Angeles, both of which are now defunct. The College of Physicians and Surgeons became University of Southern California's medical department in 1909, and the Baltimore Medical College was at some point bought by the University of Maryland. The latter in particular received a highly unfavorable review in Abraham Flexner's influential 1910 report on the state of medical education in the United States. Flexner wrote that the "Entrance requirement [is] much less than a four-year high school education" and that "Advanced standing is freely granted to failed students dropped from other schools."[1] Included in Wilcox's collection is an album of photographs from the Baltimore Medical College, mainly showing its operating theater with doctors, nurses, and studentssometimes posing, and sometimes actively engaged with a patient. Though the use of surgical gloves was at that time not unheard of, it was also not widespread; the doctors here can be seen in some photographs with bare and apparently bloody hands. Wilcox also kept his own study notes, and various lecture note packets and booklets with lectures from journals of medicine, covering topics such as "infectious arthritis of urogenital focal origin", "tuberculosis of the bladder", and "gonorrhea of the lower genito-urinary tract in women". Also reflecting the state of medicine at the time are booklets sent to Dr. Wilcox from medical supply companies such as the Clark-Gandion Truss Company, which sent an illustrated booklet of their range of medical trusses. There is also an unused sample of the Marcy Company's "Veracolate with Iron, Quinine and Strychnine", intended for the treatment of insufficient bile production. By at least 1915, the American Medical Association had explicitly refused to recognize Veracolate as a treatment, writing that it contains an "irrational and complex combination" of ingredients that are "discreditable to the medical and pharmaceutical profession[s] alike", and its "use is against the public good."[2] Finally, the collection contains forms for reporting cases of tuberculosis, influenza, and STDs; and opium order forms from the Department of Internal Revenue. Following the 1912 Opium Convention, the US began to treat opium and its derivatives as controlled substances. A few of these forms are filled out, prescribing treatments such as codeine suppositories. Overall an engaging collection of ephemera, of interest to scholars of the history of medicine and medical education in the early twentieth century. [1] Abraham Flexner, Medical Education in the United States and Canada: A Report to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1910), 236237. [2] "The Propaganda for Reform: Articles Refused Recognition", Journal of the American Medical Association 64, no. 17 (1915): 144041. Overall excellent to near fine. Approximately eighty pieces: eleven packets of typed lecture notes; one 4 x 6 ½ inch notebook; twelve booklets of articles; one photo album containing forty-eight photos of 3 ½ x 3 ½ inches; three advertising booklets; seventeen pieces of medical school-related ephemera; five professional certification-related letters and one personal letter; twenty-four forms for reporting cases of infectious disease; and five pieces of miscellany.