Conversations with the Past: "The Pioneering Spirit in American Medicine" by Dr. Virginia Allen

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Conversations with the Past: "The Pioneering Spirit in American Medicine" by Dr. Virginia Allen

one 3/4" U-matic videotape (42:36 minutes)

This 3/4” U-Matic tape contains a lecture titled "The Pioneering Spirit in American Medicine" by Dr. Virginia Allen of the Office of Scientific Publications in the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. The lecture took place April 16, 1980, and it was a part of the series “Conversations with the Past: History of Health Sciences.” The recording runs 42:36, with about 41 minutes of lecture content. According to the credits, it was a Medical Community Television System Production. The recording is a duplication, in color.
(0:01) Video starts with blank screen, color bars, and countdown.
(0:29) Program begins with TMC Librarian Beth White at a podium introducing medical historian Dr. Virginia Allen.
(1:14) Dr. Allen begins her talk, “Pioneering Spirit in American Medicine.”
(3:36) Dr. John Potts, early Physician General to the Virginia Colony.
(4:08) Preacher physicians.
(4:45) Cotton Mather of Boston, a preacher and—according to Dr. Allen—the first significant figure in American medicine.
(9:10) Mather’s chief medical accomplishment: promoting smallpox inoculation. In an early instance of applying statistical analysis in medicine, he tracked mortality for those inoculated compared to the general population.
(13:05) Mather wrote the first general treatise on medicine in the United States, The Angel of Bethesda, 1724. However, it was not published.
(16:22) Dr. Ephraim McDowell, raised in Kentucky and practiced there, and was educated in Edinburgh, Scotland.
(20:28) McDowell diagnosed and removed an ovarian tumor in Jane Crawford. It was the first time such an operation had been performed and the patient lived.
(28:17) Dr. William Beaumont of Connecticut, licensed in 1812, became an Army surgeon and in 1820 was stationed at Fort Mackinac.
(32:23) In 1822, seventeen-year-old Alexis St. Martin, an employee of the American Fur Company, was accidentally shot. Beaumont cared for him, eventually moving him into his home. There remained a hole in St. Martin’s stomach; Beaumont did experiments and discovered the basics of digestion. He published his Observations in 1832.
(40:30) Dr. Allen notes she is out of time but had wanted to speak about Elizabeth Blackwell and Daniel Drake. She concludes by reflecting on the pioneering spirit at work in the Texas Medical Center.

Digital copies made available by the Texas Medical Center Library

Moving Image

Creative Commons License 4.0, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs. Images are to be used for educational purposes only, and are not to be reproduced without permission from The TMC Library, McGovern Historical Center, 1133 John Freeman Blvd, Houston, TX, 77030, mcgovern@library.tmc.edu, 713-799-7899

• English

IC 007 University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston records

• Processing information: Digitization supported by South Central Academic Medical Libraries Consortium (SCAMeL) Speedy Startup funds, 2022.

• Medical innovations
• Creative ability in medicine
• Smallpox--Vaccination
• Ovaries--Tumors
• Digestion
• Medicine--History

• Virginia
• Boston (Mass.)
• Kentucky

• Mather, Cotton, 1663-1728 (Subject)
• McDowell, Ephraim, 1771-1830 (Subject)
• Beaumont, William, 1785-1853 (Subject)
• Potts, John (Subject)
• Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library (Subject)
• White, Elizabeth (Subject)
• Medical Community Television System (Subject)

• audiovisual materials
• videotapes
• lectures