Archives and Manuscripts cataloguing: October 2010

Our monthly cataloguing bulletin for October is short: not because of a lack of activity, but because the vast majority of the material newly released to the public falls into two major collections, both already described on the blog.

Wellcome Witness Seminars: as noted last month, the catalogue of material documenting the Wellcome Witness Seminars held over the past twenty years has been subject to a major expansion: recent seminars were added to the catalogue completely recasting the arrangment of the catalogue and doubling its size. This new material includes original audio tapes of the seminars (in some cases, master plus copy), photographs of witnesses and other participants, correspondence, and programmes and lists of participants. The new catalogue was made visible in early October, and described here. It can be browsed in the archives catalogue using the reference GC/253.

Alice Stewart: as noted in another recent blog posting, this month saw the completion of work on the papers of Alice Stewart (née Naish). These chiefly relate to her career in epidemiology, especially on effects of low-level radiation. She worked with John Ryle in the Department of Social Medicine at Oxford and was famously involved in a controversy with Sir Richard Doll over her childhood cancer study conclusions. The bulk of the papers relate to the later phases of her career from the 1970s onwards, although there is some material relating to her earlier activities: there is professional correspondence from the 1960s until the time of her death, copious records of her research activities, and numerous files relating to her involvement in lawsuits as an expert witness on vibration sydrome and on the effects of low-dose radiation. Her extensive travels to speak in both academic and other venues, particularly from the 1970s, are well-documented, as is her support for organisations and activist groups concerned about radiation and the environment, among these the Women's Protest at Greenham Common. Finally, there is some personal and family material, including material on her mother (an early woman doctor), and letters from the poet and critic William Empson with whom she had a relationship spanning several decades.

Finally, a new sources guide was added to the archives section of the website, detailing sources relating to Smoking and Tobacco, and a catalogue record created for this so that searchers in the database could be directed to this listing.

Image: old Wellcome Library printed catalogues, from Wellcome Images.

Witness Seminars – Archival Material Newly Available

The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL has for many years been associated with a noted series of seminars held under the title of “Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine”. At each seminar, significant figures in twentieth-century medicine discuss specific discoveries or events in recent medical history. The topics covered are some of the most interesting and sometimes contentious subjects in 20th century medicine and tackle issues that will be of wide interest to the general public as well as medical historians. Titles of seminars, to name but a few, include; Maternal Care; Leukaemia; Genetic testing; Cystic Fibrosis; Innovation in Pain Management; Environmental Toxicology; Superbugs and Superdrugs: A History of MRSA; and the latest volume, number 40, is titled The Medicalization of Cannabis. The transcripts for the large majority of seminars were published, and all 40 published volumes in the series are freely available to read and download from the website of The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL (copies of all the published volumes are also held by the Wellcome Library).

Previously only the material from the seminars associated with the first two published volumes have been made available but now the material associated with all 40 published volumes as well as the unpublished seminars have been catalogued and the full catalogue can be searched via the Wellcome Library online catalogue for Archives and Manuscripts. The names of the individuals associated with the seminar are all included within the catalogue and so researchers can choose to search using the name of a person of interest or by subject.

Some of the foremost scientists and healthcare professionals of their generation in their specific fields have been involved in the witness seminars and these newly released papers should form a valuable contribution to the documentary legacy of those individuals as well as the history of a particular subject.

Irvine Loudon, medical historian, has described the seminars as “oral history at its best”. Adding that, “regardless of your own areas of interest, all the volumes make compulsive reading because the participants tended to ‘let their hair down’ and talk more freely than they would have at a scientific meeting. They discuss openly the hidden realities of the evolution of medical practice and medical research. But the witness seminars are more than just fun to read. They are, primarily, important historical records.”

Whilst the seminars did not purport to be the final word on a particular topic or involve every notable contributor to the subject, they were designed to be a significant contribution to the subject history and involve a strong cross-section of the key individuals. This means that the published documents are wonderful historical commentaries written in a style that makes them very accessible to a general reader as well as a subject specialist. The extensive use of detailed footnotes and appendices in these volumes also meant that supporting material and additional material not aired at the seminars themselves could also be included in these publications.

Highlights amongst the archival material include:

· The papers and material associated with the seminars that were unpublished, and those seminars where resulting material was published but not in the witness seminar series.

· Early transcript drafts together with the correspondence with each individual contributor to the seminar debates. This correspondence involves the discussions surrounding corrections of the transcripts and often contains details of disagreements with other contributors before a final version of the transcript was agreed upon. On many occasions the letters contain reminiscences about an individuals’ involvement with the subject matter and suggestions regarding other important individuals. Not all of this material appeared in the published volumes.

· Supporting and related documents donated from the personal records of contributors. The tendency to donate supporting material to the witness seminar archives became more prevalent with later seminars and includes items such as internal organisational reports, newsletters of related interest groups and personal letters received.

· Details of the organisation of the seminars including discussions regarding the topic, the key participants, who should be the chair or an adviser and problems and issues regarding a particular volume.


Images: Front cover of Technology Transfer in Britain: The case of monoclonal antibodies; Self and Non-Self: A history of autoimmunity; Endogenous Opiates; The Committee on Safety of Drugs (Wellcome Witness Volume 1); The Medicalization of Cannabis (Wellcome Witness Volume 40)

Author: Jon Cable

Archives and Manuscripts cataloguing - July 2010

Our archive cataloguing during July was chiefly dominated by on-going projects rather than the release of new records to the database: although several of those projects will appear very shortly, some as early as August’s round-up. One very small collection was catalogued swiftly and released on the same day: various items of correspondence, mostly undated, by the author and medical man Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) (MS.8744).

The papers of the biochemist Norman Heatley (PP/NHE) will be released in the very near future: cataloguing is completed and what remains is the final editing of the catalogue and the necessary physical processing (boxing up, labelling and so forth). As mentioned in a recent blog post, this will tell another side of the penicillin story to that given in the recently-retroconverted papers of Sir Ernest Chain (PP/EBC).

Behind the scenes, work continued on the papers of the psychiatrist Henry Dicks. In addition, under the heading of new cataloguing, we can include a radical expansion of the catalogue of the papers of the geneticist Professor Hans Grüneberg (PP/GRU) which will make available much more detailed information about his individual correspondents.

A project is also under way to expand the amount of material catalogued and available that relates to Wellcome Witness seminars on various topics in medical science – the fruits of this will appear in the near future as GC/253.

The retroconversion project to convert all our old hard-copy archive catalogues to database form moves ever closer to completion. This month saw the release of the catalogue relating to Sir Graham Selby Wilson (1895-1987), bacteriologist (PP/GSW). Wilson’s particular research areas were the Salmonella group of bacteria, brucellosis and tuberculosis, milk hygiene and the control of diphtheria. His papers include biographical information, research materials, lectures and material on his academic career in Manchester and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and papers on the setting up and operation of the wartime Emergency Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS), of which Wilson became Director in 1941, continuing as Director of the peacetime service until retirement in 1963.

Also of particular note is the collection of papers from the Abortion Law Reform Association (SA/ALR), whose catalogue completed retroconversion and checking during the final hours of July and went live on Monday August 2nd – these will be mentioned in more detail in next month’s round-up.

In addition, behind the scenes retroconversion work also continued on various collections such as the Medical Research Council’s Blood Group Unit (SA/BGU) and the Birth Control Campaign (SA/BCC).

Image: Sir Graham Selby Wilson, the catalogue of whose papers was released to the database this month. Photograph from Wellcome Images.

Sir James Black (1924-2010)

Sir James Black, Nobel-Prize winning pharmacologist, died on Sunday at the age of 85.

Between 1978 and 1984, Black was Director of Thereapeutic Research at the Wellcome Research Laboratories (these laboratories being part of the research wing of the Wellcome Foundation, the pharmaceutical business co-founded by Sir Henry Wellcome).

His Nobel Prize - awarded in 1988 for Physiology or Medicine - was shared with Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings, for their work on drug development (Elion and Hitchings also had strong ties to the Wellcome Foundation, working for almost all of their professional careers for the American wing of the business).

Obituaries have hailed Sir James Black's achievements, particularly his work on beta-blocker drugs (Black is credited with discovering them in 1962). Such drugs now play in a vital role in the treatment of heart attacks and angina.

The Wellcome Library holds a number of items relating to Black. The Wellcome Foundation Archive contains a selected amount of material, with editions of Foundation News (the organisation's in-house publication) contextualising Black's work during his 6 years with the Foundation.

Black also contributed to two Wellcome Witness seminars: Peptic Ulcer: Rise and Fall (Vol. 14) and Clinical Pharmacology in the UK, c. 1950–2000: Influences and institutions (Vol. 33), (these being seminars at which "...significant figures in twentieth-century medicine are invited to discuss specific discoveries or events in recent medical history"). Copies of these works are held by the Wellcome Library and are also freely available online.