Brushes With Life: Art, Artists and Mental Illness

The UNC Department of Psychiatry and the UNC Schizophrenia Treatment & Evaluation Program will host the 2009 fall opening of “Brushes With Life: Art, Artists and Mental Illness,” from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 15, on the third floor of the N.C. Neurosciences Hospital at 101 Manning Drive on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. For additional information, contact Tana Hartmann at (919) 843-7971 or thartman@med.unc.edu.

Brushes With Life: Art, Artists and Mental Illness is an award-winning patient art gallery located on the third floor of the NC Neurosciences Hospital in the halls approaching the psychotic disorders inpatient unit. The psychotic disorders inpatient unit is a part of the UNC Schizophrenia Treatment and Evaluation Program (STEP), which provides inpatient and outpatient care for patients dealing with psychotic symptoms or illnesses such as schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. The gallery features the artwork of former STEP inpatients, current STEP clinic and the new Community Mental Health clinic outpatients, as well as clients from Club Nova, a local (Carrboro) clubhouse for the mentally ill.

The Schizophrenia Treatment and Evaluation Program is a specialty clinical program in the Department of Psychiatry in the UNC School of Medicine. It consists of a specialized inpatient unit in the Neurosciences Hospital, an outpatient clinic, and the Brushes with Life art gallery.

Media contact: Tom Hughes, (919) 966-6047, tahughes@unch.unc.edu. This post is from the UNC School of Medicine web site.

Healthcare Reform Panel at UNC School of Medicine

Interested in understanding the current healthcare reform debate? If so, you do not want to miss Healthcare Reform 101 on Monday, September 14, 2009 from 5pm - 6pm in 321 MacNider.

Dr. Jonathan Oberlander will provide an introductory framework for understanding the current debate on healthcare reform. He will be joined by Dr. Tim Carey, Dr. Warren Newton, and other UNC School of Medicine experts and the panel will answer your questions on healthcare reform.

We hope that you will be able to join us for this special event.

Ali Chhotani and Anshu Verma
Whitehead Medical Society Co-Presidents

Please contact Katie O'Brien, Internal Communications, UNC School of Medicine (919-843-3989; katie_obrien@med.unc.edu) with any questions. The event is open to the campus community.

UNC Adventures in Ideas Seminar "On Illness"

The UNC Program in the Humanities and Human Values has announced its Adventures in Ideas seminars for Fall 2009, which includes:

On Illness: Medicine, Media, Society, and the Experience of Health
The Vanderwoude Family Seminar
3pm - 9pm, Friday, October 23, 2009

The humanities deal with those issues that define the human condition, and health and illness are central in defining our lives. But how do we decide if we are sick or well? Is illness culturally and socially defined? What role does the media play in helping people make decisions about our health.

This seminar will start with a specific issue--back pain--as a human predicament, a profound social problem, a medical issue, and a vexing public policy challenge. Mexico and other countries will serve as illustrations to explore how people explain, experience, and give meaning to their bodies and their pains in diverse ways. We’ll learn how medical reporters evaluate the newsworthiness of developments in the fields of medicine and psychology and learn how people can use information gleaned from medical reporting to their advantage.

Topics and Speakers

:: Backbone: Personal, Social and Policy Consequences of Low Back Pain
Nortin Hadler, Professor of Medicine

:: The Meaning and Experience of Illness from a Cross Cultural Perspective
Kaja Finkler, Emerita Professor of Anthropology

:: What Makes Medical News
Tom Linden, M.D., Glaxo Wellcome Distinguished Professor of Medical Journalism and Director, Medical & Science Journalism Program

:: What is Illness and What is Health?
A panel discussion with our speakers

Time and Cost
3:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m., Friday, October 23, 2009. The tuition is $125 ($110 by September 4). Tuition for teachers is $62.50 ($55 by September 4). 10 contact hours for 1 unit of renewal credit. The optional dinner is $20.00. Online Registration.

This seminar is scheduled to be held at the Center for School Leadership Development. All participants registered for the seminar will be mailed background packets with directions, maps, agenda, background readings, etc.

Click for information on other Adventures in Ideas seminars for Fall 2009.

Theater Piece on Mental Illness at UNC Memorial Hall

Carolina Performing Arts will be hosting Low, a theater piece by Rha Goddess on the mental health system, on Friday, October 2, 2009 at 8pm at UNC's Memorial Hall.

What is insanity? This bitingly articulate and emotionally riveting multidisciplinary solo theater piece fuses poetry, music and prose to explore the mythology, stigma, fear and confusion surrounding mental illness. Furious, funny, dark and hopeful, Low is an unflinching portrayal of a vibrant young woman's all-too-common journey through the mental health system. A pioneer performance/recording artist, writer, poet and social activist, Rha Goddess is known for her unique blend of soulful melody, spoken word consciousness and hip-hop energy.

Tickets for this performance and all others for the 2009-2010 season are available at the Carolina Performing Arts web site.

Student tickets are $10.00. Note that some performances for 2009-10 are already selling quickly and have limited availability (e.g., Sonny Rollins, Ravi Shankar, Béla Fleck, Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca, The Blind Boys of Alabama, the London Philharmonic Orchestra).

Bullitt Club & Trent Society Speakers for 2009-10

The Bullitt History of Medicine Club sponsors a collaborative series of monthly evening meetings with the Trent History of Medicine Society (alternating between UNC and Duke), as well as a series of noon meetings (at UNC). Both evening and noon schedules are provided below. All meetings are free and open to the public.

All UNC events will be held in the Fifth Floor Conference Room (#527), UNC Health Sciences Library. All Duke events will be held in the History of Medicine Reading Room (#102), Duke Medical Center Library.

For more information and directions, see the Bullitt Club web site. Bullitt lectures are also available as mp3s on the web site and via iTunes. Please note that the schedule is subject to change; check the web site for up-to-date information on Bullitt events.

Bullitt / Trent Evening Lectures

:: Dr. Philip Klemmer, Professor of Medicine, UNC School of Medicine
Jack London's Mysterious Malady
[UNC] September 15, 2009 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

:: Dr. Gordon Klintworth, Wadsworth Research Professor, Ophthalmology, Duke University
The Lady in America’s Most Famous Painting
[Duke] October 13, 2009 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

:: Dr. Michael McVaugh, Professor Emeritus of History, UNC
Arabic into Latin (Or, Why Medical Schools Got Started)
[UNC] November 10, 2009 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

:: Dr. Edward C. Halperin, Dean, School of Medicine, University of Louisville
Historical Problems Posed by the 100th Anniversary of Flexner’s Report on Medical Education
[Duke] December 8, 2009 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

:: Dr. Keith Wailoo, Professor of History, Rutgers University
Title to be announced.
[UNC] January 19, 2010 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

:: Dr. H. Michael Jones, Professor of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, UNC School of Medicine
Poverty, Pellagra, and the Tale of a Tar Heel
[Duke] February 9, 2010 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

:: Dr. Margaret Humphreys, Josiah Charles Trent Professor in the History of Medicine, Duke University
The South's Secret Weapons: Disease, Environment and the Civil War
[UNC] March 30, 2010 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

:: Dr. William Bradford, Professor of Pathology, Duke University
Pathology at Duke As I Remember It
[Duke] April 13, 2010 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

Bullitt Noontime Lectures

:: Dr. Barbara Clowse, Historian and Author
Dr. Frances Sage Bradley: Her Biographer's Dilemmas
[UNC] September 29, 2009 — Tuesday, 12-1pm

:: Dr. Janna Dieckmann, Associate Professor of Nursing, UNC School of Nursing
Home-Visiting by Nurses, Physicians, and Physical Therapists in North Carolina, 1950-1965
[UNC] October 19, 2009 — Monday , 12-1pm

:: Chris Dibble, MD/PhD student, UNC School of Medicine; Winner of 2009 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine
The Dead Ringer: Medicine, Poe, and the Fear of Premature Burial
[UNC] December 10, 2009 — Thursday, 12-1pm

:: Dr. Alexander Toledo, Assistant Professor of Surgery, UNC School of Medicine
Title to be announced.
[UNC] February 18, 2010 — Thursday, 12-1pm

:: Dr. Carol Otey, Associate Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology, UNC School of Medicine
Oral Contraception: From Ancient Plant Extracts to the Birth of the Pill
[UNC] April 22, 2010 — Thursday, 12-1pm

Congressman Price to Speak on Health Care Reform

US Representative David Price (D-NC) will be speaking on health care reform legislation at 7pm on September 2, 2009. The event will held in the Pleasants Family Assembly Room in Wilson Library.

Bullitt Club Lecture on Jack London

The first joint meeting of 2009-10 for UNC's Bullitt History of Medicine Club and Duke's Trent History of Medicine Society will be Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us at 5:30pm for light refreshments followed by the lecture at 6pm. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Philip Klemmer, Professor of Medicine at UNC, will be presenting a lecture entitled, "Jack London's Mysterious Malady." The lecture will present an analysis of the possible cause of Jack London's death from uremia at age 40 based on his own writing and life events on the cruise of the Snark in the South Pacific.

Dr. Klemmer received his education at Gettysburg College (BA) and Temple University Medical School (MD). After residencies at UNC and an early stint on the faculty, Dr. Klemmer served 18 years in private practice before rejoining the UNC faculty, where he has been Professor of Medicine since 1988.

For further information about the Bullitt Club, please visit the organization's web site.

Journal Cancellations at UNC Health Sciences Library

The Health Sciences Library has concluded the journal review that it began earlier this summer, and selected 153 titles to be cancelled in 2010. Other titles on the review list will continue in 2010, but may be subject to cuts later on. The cancelled subscriptions will reduce expenditures by about $322,000, which will help the library meet its reduced budget due to statewide cuts. The list of cancellations is available online.

The library solicited input from a wide range of users before making any cancellation decisions, and applied several criteria to identify and evaluate candidates for reduction: cost per use; overall usage; impact on UNC audience; and cost effectiveness. Further information on the review process is available on the HSL web site. Updates on the UNC budget, including the Bain Report, are also available online.

Journal Cancellations at UNC University Library

An earlier Carolina Curator post noted the journal cancellation review at the UNC Health Sciences Library, but the UNC University Library is also undergoing a similar process. Approximately 640 titles are being proposed for cancellation. The list of titles is available for review online, and patrons can request that titles be retained by contacting the library by noon on Friday, August 28, 2009.

Descendants of Meriwether Lewis Seek Exhumation

A Scientific American blog reports that a group of almost 200 collateral descendants is again requesting permission to exhume the body of Meriwether Lewis [1774-1809], who was the co-leader of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806. Meriwether died on October 11, 1809 of two gunshots at an inn, Grinder’s Stand, while on his way to visit President Jefferson in Washington, D.C. The family hopes that forensic investigation will be able to determine whether Lewis’ death was murder or suicide. Because Lewis is buried on federal land in the present-day Natchez Trace Parkway, approval is required from the National Park Service, which has refused multiple requests in the past. In support of its effort, the descendants have established the web site, Solve the Mystery.

For numerous documents on the Lewis and Clark expedition, including the original letter from Jefferson first suggesting the idea in 1783 and the resulting journals of the expedition, see the American Journeys digital library at the Wisconsin Historical Society.

American Journeys contains many eyewitness accounts of North American exploration and settlement from the days of Columbus to the 1850s, with hundreds of references to matters of health and illness. (Note: The Carolina Curator was the digital production editor and metadata coordinator for this project).

The Public Library of Science Launches PLoS Currents

Harold Varmus, Chairman and Co-Founder of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), has just announced PLoS Currents (Beta), an experimental website that is designed to accelerate the communication of research and ideas. The first project is PLoS Currents: Influenza, which utilizes Google Knol and Rapid Research Notes, a new database of the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Contributions on all aspects of influenza are being solicited, but will not be subject to in-depth peer review; instead a board of moderators will screen submissions, and all results and conclusions must be regarded as preliminary until such time as they merit publication in a formal journal.

Winner of 2009 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine

Chris Dibble, a third-year MD/PhD student in the UNC School of Medicine, is the winner of the second annual McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine essay competition sponsored by the Bullitt History of Medicine Club. Funded by UNC alumni S. Gregory Boyd (MD '03, JD '04) and Laura Boyd (JD '02), the McLendon-Thomas Award honors Dr. William McLendon and Dr. Colin Thomas, Jr. and recognizes scholarly excellence in the history of health sciences.

Chris' winning essay was entitled, "The Dead Ringer: Medicine, Poe, and the Fear of Premature Burial," and he will be delivering a presentation to the Bullitt Club on December 10, 2009. Chris was also the winner of the inaugural McLendon-Thomas Award for his paper on Edward Trudeau Livingston's work on tuberculosis; a recording of his Bullitt lecture on Livingston is available online, along with all other lectures for 2008-9.

The essay competition is now accepting submissions for the current academic year, and is open to all UNC-Chapel Hill students in the health sciences: medicine, pharmacy, public health, dentistry, nursing, and allied health sciences. The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2010. For further information, please see the competition guidelines.

:: Greg and Laura Boyd live in New York City, where he is an attorney with Davis & Gilbert LLP and she is a legal recruiter with SJL Attorney Search. Greg considers the history of medicine to be one of the most important aspects of his medical education and and Drs. McClendon and Thomas among the best role models possible. They both strongly believe that the history of medicine represents a critical perspective and focus on the art of medicine that are necessary for training the best possible physicians, health care executives, and policy makers.

:: Dr. William W. McLendon served from 1973-1995 at UNC as Director of the Hospital Clinical Laboratories and as Professor and Vice-Chair of Pathology. Since his retirement in 1995 he has been Professor Emeritus of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. An MD graduate of UNC in 1956, he and Bob Whitlock (MD '57) were the student co-founders in 1954 of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club. Dr. McLendon is the co-author, along with the late Drs. William Blythe and Floyd Denny, of the recently published Bettering the Health of the People: W. Reece Berryhill, the UNC School of Medicine, and the North Carolina Good Health Movement.

:: Dr. Colin G. Thomas, Jr. joined the faculty of the UNC School of Medicine in 1952, and is currently Byah Thomason-Sanford Doxey Professor of Surgery. From 1966-1984 he served as Chair of the Department of Surgery, and from 1984-1989 as Chief of the Division of General Surgery. Dr. Thomas was one of the early faculty members of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club, and is the co-author, along with Mary Jane Kagarise, of the 1997 history, Legends and Legacies: A Look Inside: Four Decades of Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1952-1993.

For more information on the Bullitt Club and events for 2009-10, please visit the Bullitt Club website.

Have a Cool Home Library?

Have a cool or otherwise esthetically pleasing home library you would like others to know about? If so, Chapel Hill Magazine is soliciting leads on libraries to appear in a feature article later this year or early next. Inquiries can be emailed to Andrea Griffith, an editor at the magazine. Andrea requests that folks respond by October 1, 2009, and that attaching a representative digital image or two would also be helpful. And, as pictured in the image here, a home library with a fireplace would be of especial interest to the magazine.

Exhibitions at UNC Health Sciences Library

There are a variety of physical and online exhibitions to check out at UNC Health Sciences Library at the start of the 2009-10 academic year. In the first-floor lobby display cases are the following three exhibits:

:: Great Minds, Great Finds: Explore Library Collections -- A survey of historical texts, images, instruments, and artifacts drawn from Special Collections at the library, representing the five professional schools in UNC Health Affairs: Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Public Health

:: New Books in the History of the Health Sciences -- A selection of recent acquisitions, including such titles as The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy, Pioneers of Cardiac Surgery, Frontier Medicine, Sex, Sin and Science: A History of Syphilis in America, and Medicine under Canvas: A War Journal of the 77th Evacuation Hospital, among others. All are available in the library for check-out from the circulating collections or for perusal in the Special Collections Reading Room.

:: The Sam W. Hitt Medicinal Plant Garden at UNC Health Sciences Library -- Mr. Hitt served as library director from 1976 to 1986 and the medicinal plant garden in his honor is located at several locations around the library building. There is also on online exhibit of the garden, which includes a photo gallery and descriptions of its many growing plants.

In the new exhibition cases located near the User's Services desk are two additional exhibits, which are described in entries on this blog:

:: Operation Coffee Cup and Socialized Medicine

:: The Bicentennial of Louis Braille [1809-1852]

Other exhibits that are available online include the following:

:: UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health: Meeting the Public Health Challenges of the 21st Century -- This exhibit highlights both current initiatives and the history of School, and features audio, video, and photographic images.

:: History of the Health Sciences Library and UNC Health Affairs -- This exhibit traces the development of the library as well as the five Health Affairs schools.

Information about a number of other exhibitions at HSL and at UNC & UNC Libraries is available in the Exhibitions section of the Special Collections web site.

The images above are from the Hitt Medicinal Plant Garden online exhibit; the plants, from left to right, are: Garden Coreopsis (also called Moonbeam); Bee-Balm; Catnip; and Eastern Purple Coneflower. Lynn Eades, HSL Web Development Librarian, photographed all the plants.

Chang and Eng Bunker, the Original Siamese Twins

One-hundred-eighty years ago, on August 16, 1829, two eighteen-year-old males, Chang and Eng, arrived in Boston from Siam aboard the Sachem. The Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C.) reported in its August 22, 1829 issue that "It was one of the greatest living curiosities that we ever saw," as the two were conjoined, "connected by a cartilaginous substance about seven inches in circumference and four in length." Despite this congenital condition, the newspaper notes that "They appear to be in good health, and apparently contented with their confined situation."

The original "Siamese twins," as they became known, Chang and Eng toured widely, giving lectures and exhibitions, and were one of P.T. Barnum's most popular "curiosities." The twins added the surname Bunker when they become American citizens in 1839; their first names apparently meant left (Chang) and right (Eng). They enjoyed great notoriety and financial success, but eventually retired to Wilkes County, North Carolina in the late 1830s where they purchased a farm as well as slaves. They married the sisters Sarah and Adelaide Yates in 1843 and together had 21 children. They died on January 17, 1874, and are buried in the White Plains Baptist Church cemetery.

UNC University Library holds many materials related to Chang and Eng, including the Chang and Eng Bunker Papers in the Southern Historical Collection, and printed material and original photographs in the North Carolina Collection. The library also has an online digital collection, Eng & Chang Bunker: The Siamese Twins, that contains photographs, engravings, letters to and by the twins, account books, and published works.

The image above is from the North Carolina Collection Gallery. It is a watercolor on ivory, and was painted by an unknown French or Dutch artist in Paris circa 1835-6.