Medical Archives and Manuscripts News, 2004

Publication of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography in September 2004 provided among other things an opportunity to take stock of the rise to prominence of medicine and medical history during the twentieth century. Not only are medical figures both well-known and obscure generously scattered throughout the volumes, but the subject itself was promoted to equality with areas such as science and art and architecture, to judge by the editorial structure of the publication. Such equality would have been unthinkable a hundred years before. The rise of medical history has seen, and to a large extent been founded on, a concomitant growth of interest in and access to medical related archives. Some of these were always there, if largely untouched and unregarded; others have grown and developed in the century or so since the first Dictionary of National Biography was published. Inclusion of information on archival sources in the latest biographies, together with the ability to search the electronic text, produces some interesting results: the Wellcome Library, for instance, is cited as an archival source at the end of 589 entries, a modest score relative to the British Library’s 9958, but comparable to the Imperial War Museum (580), and not far behind the National Maritime Museum (630). The older medical libraries score pretty highly (Royal College of Physicians, 217, Surgeons 111), reflecting the richness of these long-established collections for biographical research. Overall, such relatively high scores demonstrate the extent to which medical figures proliferate in the recent publication. Most recent accessions to archive repositories would of course make no impact on these figures, both because the material is not primarily of biographical relevance and because even where it is the individuals concerned are not persons of note. The latest digest of accessions to repositories in the field of health and medicine compiled by the Historical Manuscripts Commission (http://www.nationalarchives.gov. uk/accessions/2003/03digests/medic.htm), which covers the year 2003, reveals remarkably few accessions of personal papers. Among local record offices, only four are noted, though they range from medical notes of Archdeacon John Palmer of Northampton, with the tantalizing covering dates c.1641–49 (Northamptonshire Record Office), to the diaries of an unidentified Warrington nurse, 1944–46 (Cheshire and Chester Archives). National, special and university repositories report a larger number of accessions of personal papers, with the Wellcome Library as ever especially prominent: of particular interest here are letters from C G Jung to his British colleague, H Godwin Baynes, 1936–43, and notebooks and correspondence of the biochemist Gerald Wyatt relating to DNA, 1949–55. Elsewhere the correspondence and papers of Lachlan Grant relating to socio-economic conditions and politics in the Highlands, 1902–45 (National Library of Scotland) point to the important role many doctors have had as social reformers, whilst the professional and literary papers of the psychiatrist Ken Morrice, c.1940–89 (Aberdeen University Library), and the research papers of the dramatherapist, director and actress Sue Emmy Jennings, 1975–99 (Exeter University Library) promise to shed further light on that growing area of interest, the interface between medicine and the arts. The papers of Raymond Lightwood, technician and researcher in the Department of Surgery, Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, relating to among other things the design and development of pacemaking equipment, 1959–78 (Birmingham University Library), remind us that archivists have on the whole been more successful in acquiring records of clinicians than technicians. At the same time, the papers of Anthony John Culyer, professor of economics at York, relating to the NHS Research and Development Task