The Health Sciences and Human Services Library Historical Collections’ strives to provide broad access to our diverse collections both in person and digitally. Materials in our collections appear as they originally were published or created and may contain offensive or inappropriate language or images and may be offensive to users. The University of Maryland, Baltimore does not endorse the views expressed in these materials. Materials should be viewed in the context in which they were created.

Happy Halloween! Historical collections are often the first stop on university and college campuses for ghost stories and skeletons. While the HSHSL’s Historical Collections does not have actual skeletons in our closets or collections and there are no known ghosts haunting our halls there are still spooky finds in our repository. This blog features haunting images from the Bones, Molars, and Briefs Yearbooks.

In 1897 the students at the University of Maryland came together to produce the first yearbook representing the dental, medical, and law schools. They chose an appropriate title representing all schools: bones for medicine, molars for dentistry, and briefs for law.  The pharmacy, nursing, graduate, and social work schools had not yet been established. The Bones, Molars, and Briefs name stuck until 1905, when the combined yearbook was renamed, Terra Mariae.

These early yearbooks were light on photographs, as they were still costly and difficult to take, instead the volumes contained many hand-drawn cartoons and sketches as well as poems, songs, and essays by students. While the yearbooks contain some controversial content by today’s standards, they are still valuable historical resources and provide insight into the student’s lives as well as historical happenings at the school.

Most importantly, for this Halloween holiday, the Bones, Molars, and Briefs contain some fantastically ghoulish, magical, and ghastly images. Peruse the collection at your leisure, if you dare!