Highlights of the University Archives & Special Collections

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Jefferson Miscellany

When cataloging or inventorying collections, an archivist will often save the oddball or unique items for last, listing them under "miscellany." At year’s end we present a Jefferson Miscellany of archival interests and oddities.

• Hike up the interior stairwell of the Washington Monument in D.C. and at around step number 650 you will see a marble tablet inserted in the interior wall with the Jefferson Medical College logo and an inscription identifying the Class of 1853-54. This tablet, which marks the 240 foot level of the vertical ascent, was installed during the construction (1848-1884) of the world’s most famous obelisk.

  

A few unusual book titles in our extensive Special Collections:

• A TREATISE OF THE USE OF FLOGGING IN VENEREAL AFFAIRS. ALSO OF THE OFFICE OF THE LOINS AND REINS. John Henry Meibomius, MD, London, 1761.
  
  
• VENUS IN FURS, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Boston, The Uranian Society, 1925. (First? American translation of the work of the eponymous novelist; the original "masochist.")
  
  
• FUZ-BUZ THE FLY AND MOTHER GRABEM THE SPIDER, [S. Weir Mitchell, MD], Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1867.

  

  
• HYPNOTISM, MESMERISM AND THE NEW WITCHCRAFT, Ernest Hart, MD, London, Smith, Elder, & Co.,1896.
  
  
• A COURSE OF SIX LECTURES ON THE CHEMICAL HISTORY OF A CANDLE, Michael Faraday, London, Griffin, Bohn, and Company, 1861.
  
  
• ON LEPROSY AND FISH-EATING, Jonathan Hutchinson, London, Archibald Constable & Co., 1906.

• The only recorded "royals" to graduate from Jefferson were "Prince Nasib Mishir Janblatte, Amir Nasib Mizhir Janblatte Almoktara" whose hometown was recorded as "Mount Lebanon, Syria" according to the JMC yearbook for 1906 and his son, Albert Faud Jumblatt, who graduated in the Class of 1924.
  
  

• Of the over 28,000 doctors who have graduated from JMC as of 2002, many have been siblings and some of those have been twins. Possibly the earliest "Jefferson Twins" were Thomas and James Blackwood. Born in Freeport, Ohio in 1848, Thomas took his MD from JMC in 1874 while James attended but did not complete his course of medical instruction here and moved to Clay Center, Kansas. When James died of typhoid in 1875, his brother moved to Clay Center and took over his practice, "few patients realized that a new doctor had taken James’" place.

  

  
  
  
• George Frederick Cooke (1756-1812), born in England, was considered one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of his time. A chronic alcoholic, he died in New York City and was buried in a pauper’s grave in St. Paul’s Cemetery. His deathbed physician and admirer, Dr. John W. Francis, added the (by then, dead) actor’s skull to his personal collection of human skulls. Several years later, when Cooke’s theater colleagues reinterred his body and upgraded his memorial, they were somewhat surprised to learn that his corpse lacked a head. Upon the death of Dr. Francis, the skull was passed around for the next 150 years until it was bequeathed to Jefferson in the 1940s. It was often used as a "prop" in Hamlet productions (as Yorick’s skull) and sometimes received billing. The singular remains of the great thespian (perhaps the world’s longest active career on the stage!) may be viewed in Scott Library where it now respectfully resides, in retirement, in the University Archives.
  
  

  

Related Links:

• Washington Monument: Memorial Stones
• Thomas Sully. George Frederick Cooke as Richard III, 1811.