With the start of a new, in-person school year, the HSHSL is proud to announce the installation of Botanical Medicine: Highlights from the HSHSL Pharmacy Historical Collection in the Weise Gallery. The exhibit features a selection of large reprints from William Woodville’s Medical Botany, a four-volume set published between 1790 and 1794 by the Royal Colleges of Physicians of London and Edinburgh. Botanical Medicine will remain in the Weise Gallery through November.
The art of botanical illustration is a practice that goes back millennia − to the first century B.C.E., when the Greek physician and botanist Crateuas described and illustrated a series of medicinal plants. From that time until the advent of modern photography, detailed plant illustrations, known as botanicals, were invaluable tools for identifying and classifying plants with medicinal or therapeutic properties. Botanical illustration played an important role in the development of scientific knowledge over the centuries, as physicians and pharmacists copied, shared, and studied these illustrations.
Woodville’s set includes 300 plant illustrations by James Sowerby (1757-1822), an English naturalist, illustrator, and mineralogist. The work’s author, Woodville (1752-1805), was an English physician and botanist. Medical Botany is part of the HSHSL’s Historical Collections, located on the fifth floor. For more information on the Woodville volumes, Pharmacy Collection, or Historical Collections, contact Tara Wink, twink@hshsl.umaryland.edu.
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Library services and access to classrooms begin at 8:00 am. Between 6:00 am – 8:00 am, Monday – Friday, enter the HSHSL through the Campus Center.
Regular Semester Hours
Monday – Thursday
6:00 am – 11:00 pm
Friday
6:00 am – 8:00 pm
Saturday
8:00 am – 8:00 pm
Sunday
8:00 am – 10:00 pm
Exceptions to Regular Hours
Labor Day Weekend
Saturday, Sept. 4th
Closed
Sunday, Sept. 5th
Closed
Monday, Sept. 6th
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Questions? Contact the Information Services Desk at hshsl@umaryland.edu or 410-706-7995.
Policies
The library is open to UMB students, faculty, & staff with UMB One Cards, faculty, staff, and students with a current University System of Maryland campus ID, and hospital staff with UMMC IDs. All visitors must have a photo ID and follow UMB COVID guidelines. Visitors may not enter after 8:00pm
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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.
The 2020 Summer Olympic games are well underway in Tokyo, Japan. To commemorate the games, Historical Collections in the HSHSL is highlighting two early Japanese graduates.
For the majority of its early history, the University mostly served students in Maryland and the surrounding states. The first international students, Archibald Spring from England and Duncan Turnball from Scotland, graduated from the School of Medicine (UMSOM) in 1822. The first non-European, international graduate was Levi S. Parmly of Cuba in 1841. Parmly graduated from the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery (BCDS), the first dental school in the world, which merged with the University of Maryland in 1924.
Over fifty years later, Shinjiro Asahara became the first Japanese graduate. He graduated from the Baltimore Medical College (BMC), which merged with the UMSOM in 1913. Asahara came from Tokyo, Japan where he attended the Medical Department of the First Higher Middle School for four years prior to entering the BMC in October 1894. Following graduation, Dr. Asahara attended the Friedric-Wilhelms University of Berlin, earning his degree in 1898. His dissertation titled Ueber Matastasen der Gonerrhee was cited into the 1910s. He became an assistant professor in the College of Medicine at the Tokyo Imperial University of Japan.
Tameji Takashima was the first Japanese graduate of the University of Maryland. Takashima earned his degree from the School of Dentistry (UMSOD) in 1899. Takashima was an excellent student, earning perfect and nearly perfect scores in most of his senior-year examinations. In Takashima’s junior year he was awarded the Gold Medal Prize for the “best continuous gum-work” and in his senior year he earned two awards: the Dr. Clarence J. Grieves’ Gold Medal for best senior class bridge work and the S.S. White Prize for best upper set of gum teeth on metal. Several of his specimens were used in the UMSOD museum following his graduation.
According to Historical Collection’s Alumni Database, from 1902 to 1919, eight more Japanese men graduated from the BMC, BCDS, and UMSOD. By the late 1970s, graduates’ homes were no longer tracked in the graduate database.
List of Japanese Graduates from UMB Schools 1895-1919
When COVID-19 moved most of UMB to mandatory telework, the HSHSL began to collect the history of our campus’ response to the pandemic. These items are now available in the UMB Digital Archive for future researchers to understand the effect of the pandemic on our campus and Baltimore city.
As we enter a new phase of the Pandemic and return back to campus from mandatory telework. The HSHSL encourages the campus community to once again reflect on COVID-19. Some points to reflect on are:
What did it feel like to return to the office?
What was your experience with getting the vaccine?
What did it mean to you to get the vaccine?
What did the last year teach you about yourself and UMB?
All members of the campus are welcome to participate in this project. Stories, photographs, and reflections on the pandemic can be submitted through the project’s website: UnMasking a Pandemic: Stories from UMB during COVID-19.
To date the project has collected personal reflections, artwork, and literary works from across the UMB Community. The HSHSL is interested in receiving items of personal reflection, creative work(s), or anything that documents your thoughts, emotions, and experiences during this incredible time.
To participate please see the Project’s Website and fill out the Survey to submit materials. If you have any questions or would like to submit physical items to our collections please contact, Tara Wink, Historical Collections Librarian and Archivist.
The HSHSL is proudly sporting our new Black Lives Matter cicada sculpture from the Cicada Parade-a art project. The artwork was created by Támi Jacobs. There are more cicadas around campus, can you find them?
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Fully vaccinated people do not need to wear face coverings or practice physical distancing in the HSHSL. Those who are not fully vaccinated must continue to wear a mask and practice physical distancing whenever they remove their face mask to eat and drink. See UMB Policy Required Use of Face Coverings
Building Access
Access to the library is restricted to students, faculty, and staff with UMB One Cards, and hospital staff with UMMC IDs. Badges must be displayed at all times while in the library. Floors 1 – 5 are open for use.
For more information please contact the Information Services desk at hshsl@umaryland.edu, or call 410-706-7995.
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.
“Locust Year. – The seventeen year Locusts will appear this year in all those parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Delaware, embraced in the following boundaries: commencing at the Delaware river, near Germantown, Pa.; thence southwesterly to the Blue Ridge of the Allegany mountains along the east side of the Ridge to Loudoun and Fauquier counties, Va; thence easterly through a portion of Fairfax, across the Potomac, above Georgetown, through Montgomery and upper portion of Anne Arundel counties, Md., the Patapsco; along the north side of the Patapsco to the Chesapeake Bay; thence to Havre-de-Grace, through to Cecil County, and Delaware, to the Delaware river; up the west side of that river to the beginning…
They will begin to leave the ground about the 20th of May, a few days earlier or later, according to the weather.”
~Dr. Gideon B. Smith, The Sun, February 1, 1851
Many of us, read articles similar to the one quoted above in early 2021 preparing us to see and hear Brood X Cicadas. Scientists, relying on research begun 187 years ago, predicted with surprising accuracy where and when the 17-year cicadas would appear in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia.
Most of us living near wooded areas have become accustomed to the hum and fluttering of the 17-year cicadas over the past few weeks. The 2021 cicadas have inspired everything from cuisine to artwork to tattoos. Whether you love the loud buzz or cannot wait for them to just go away, the cicadas have created a lot of buzz this summer. Much of what is known about the thirteen- and seventeen-year locusts is credited to the work of University of Maryland, School of Medicine graduate Dr. Gideon B. Smith, class of 1840.
Gideon B. Smith was born in 1793. He married Elizabeth Bennett in 1826; this marriage produced a daughter Elizabeth Smith in 1829. The elder Elizabeth died in 1832; Gideon remarried Susan Stewart in 1833. Smith’s daughter, Elizabeth married Captain James Gavet.
Smith had an active career in newspapers, entomology, and as an inventor and entrepreneur prior to attending and graduating from medical school. He was editor of the American Farmer, a newspaper headquartered in Baltimore that shared agricultural news, market prices for livestock and crops, and reports from agricultural societies. He had a special interest in silkworms, which included importing and selling the caterpillars and their cocoons in the United States; he even invented a silk reel in 1829, which improved upon the Piedmontese Reel. In 1830, Smith released A Treatise on the Culture of Silk, Detailing the Method of Raising the Mulberry, Managing the Silkworms and Reeling the Silk. In 1838, he became the editor of the Journal of the American Silk Society.
Gideon B. Smith had a friendship with John James Audubon, the American ornithologist. Smith was a subscriber of Audubon’s Birds of America and for his financial support received the honor of having a bird named after him: the Smith’s Lark-Bunting or Plectrophanes Smithii. Today the bird is known as Calcarius pictus or Smith’s Longspur.
Smith also had a friendship and professional relationship with Dr. Nathaniel Potter, founder of the College of Medicine predecessor of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. Potter first noticed the cicadas (Brood X) in 1783 and began studying the bugs in 1817.
According to Smith’s article, “The American Locust, ‘Cicada Septemdecim’,” he began studying periodical locusts in 1834 with Potter. In 1839 Smith assisted Dr. Potter with his book Notes on the Locusta. Perhaps it was Dr. Potter who encouraged Smith to attend the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. Smith graduated in 1840 at the age of 47, with a thesis titled, Cholera Infantum. Dr. Smith was admitted to the Maryland State Medical Society (MedChi) in 1843. Unfortunately, he was dismissed from the organization in 1848 by the Maryland Board of Examiners for unprofessional conduct. It is unclear what caused this dismissal from the medical profession.
After the death of Dr. Potter in 1843, Dr. Smith continued his research of periodical cicadas. Using his connections in the newspaper world, he collected data on cicadas by writing letters to newspapers asking people to send him with observations of cicada emergence in their region. Through this data collection method, he was able to predict when and where the 17-year cicadas would appear in sixteen U.S. regions. Through a similar data collection method, Dr. Smith tracked other broods of 13-year and 17-year cicadas from 1845 to 1858. Unfortunately, Dr. Smith never formally published his research on periodical cicadas in manuscript format, relying instead on newspaper articles; therefore, until recently Dr. Smith’s impact on entomology was lesser known.
Dr. Gideon B. Smith died on March 24, 1867. He is buried in Baltimore’s Mount Olivet Cemetery.
Cordell, Eugene F. (1903). Smith, Gideon B. The medical annals of Maryland, 1799-1899; prepared for the centennial of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty. Williams & Wilkins. p570 http://hdl.handle.net/10713/12582.
Gifford, George E. Jr. and Laura T. Gifford. (1961) John James Audubon and Gideon B. Smith, M.D. Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 35I5): 475-477. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44446821.
Over fifty years later, Shinjiro Asahara became the first Japanese graduate. He graduated from the Baltimore Medical College (BMC), which merged with the UMSOM in 1913. Asahara came from Tokyo, Japan where he attended the Medical Department of the First Higher Middle School for four years prior to entering the BMC in October 1894. Following graduation, Dr. Asahara attended the Friedric-Wilhelms University of Berlin, earning his degree in 1898. His dissertation titled Ueber Matastasen der Gonerrhee was cited into the 1910s. He became an assistant professor in the College of Medicine at the Tokyo Imperial University of Japan.
When COVID-19 moved most of UMB to mandatory telework, the HSHSL began to collect the history of our campus’ response to the pandemic. These items are now available in the UMB 
