McGoogan News

The McGoogan Health Sciences Library has a new exhibit on smallpox, “Battling the Speckled Monster: Stories of Slaying Smallpox,” which features three books from the library’s rare book collection and the H. Winnett Orr rare book collection.

The exhibit is located at the entrance of Level 8.

Edward Jenner’s 1798 “An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae” publicized his discovery of the smallpox vaccine derived from cowpox. Jenner’s publication on smallpox was only 70 pages long. The illustrations were printed from copper engravings and hand painted with watercolors. Accurate physical depictions of disease have always been an important component in educating others.

In “The Works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Monatgu,” viewers are introduced to one 18th-century woman’s fight to introduce smallpox inoculation to England. This compilation work contains the letters that Lady Montagu wrote home to England while in Turkey. In these letters, she shares her interest in the Turkish practice of smallpox inoculation.

The third book, “A Treatise on the Small-pox and Measles,” is a 19th-century translation of Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya Razi, known as Rhazes in the west’s 9th century landmark work distinguishing the difference between smallpox and measles. Originally written in the 10th century, Rhazes’ work eventually was translated into Latin and Greek. The English translation was created by William Alexander Greenhill, an English physician.

To view more of the McGoogan Library and Orr collections, visit Level 5 of Wittson Hall.

Elsevier products (Scopus, Science Direct, etc. ) are back in service.

The interlibrary loan system will be down for scheduled server maintenance on May 19 from 8 a.m. until approximately 10 a.m. During this time, users will be unable to request materials or retrieve PDFs. We do apologize for any inconvenience.

By Teri Hartman

Visual abstracts are summaries in a graphical form that engage your readers by highlighting key findings or arguments of your research article. Visual abstracts make it easy to communicate and amplify your research on journal sites, social media, and DigitalCommons. 

Primers on visual abstracts:  

• Dr. Abbey Fingeret, Associate Professor, UNMC Department of Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology, has a tutorial in Thrive on creating visual abstracts.  
• Dr. Andrew M. Ibrahim, Chief Medical Officer of HOK and Resident Surgeon at the University of Michigan, has written an open-source primer on creating visual abstracts. 

Examples of published visual abstracts include those in Chest  and Journal of Graduate Medical Education. Journals and publishers offer templates and instruction on creating visual abstracts, such as Medical Education at Wiley 

You can see how other researchers are using Twitter to share their research using visual abstracts. Search for #visualabstract – note that you don’t have to have a Twitter account to see these results. 

Consider creating a visual abstract to attract more attention to your next research article. 

Janet Gilsdorf, MD, will present at the 13th annual Richard B. Davis, MD, PhD, History of Medicine Lecture on April 22 from noon to 1 p.m.

Dr. Gilsdorf will share stories based on her book, “Continual Raving: A History of Meningitis and the People Who Conquered It.” The book tells how scientists across the 19th and 20th centuries defeated the deadly brain infection meningitis — not through flawless research but through a series of serendipitous events, misplaced assumptions and flawed conclusions. The result shows not just how a disease is vanquished but how scientific accomplishment can sometimes occur where it is least expected. 

The event will be hybrid, with limited in-person attendance at the Wigton Heritage Center atrium and online via Zoom. Registration for Zoom is required. Dr. Gilsdorf will hold a book signing after the event. 

The library will hold a drawing for Dr. Gilsdorf’s book, and people can enter the drawing through April 20. Winners will be notified by email on April 21.

Dr. Gilsdorf, an alum of the UNMC College of Medicine, is the Robert P. Kelch Research Professor Emerita in the University of Michigan Department of Pediatrics. She is an infectious diseases physician at C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she participates in the diagnosis and management of pediatric patients with complex infectious diseases and in the clinical training of medical students, pediatric residents and pediatric infectious diseases fellows.

She has published more than 100 articles of original research, most centering on the epidemiology, molecular characteristics and pathogenesis of Haemophilus influenzae. She is a past president of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and received the PIDS Distinguished Physician award in 2012.

She also is the author of “Inside/Outside: A Physician’s Journey with Breast Cancer” (U of Michigan Press) and “Ten Days” (a novel from Kensington Books). She has published several personal essays in the Journal of the American Medical Association Emerging Infectious Diseases, Health Affairs and The Examined Life. In 1999, she was awarded the Journal of Internal Medicine Award for Prose.

The Richard B. Davis, MD, PhD, History of Medicine Lectureship brings national experts to the UNMC campus to discuss the history of medicine, in support of special collections at the McGoogan Library, including rare books and works on the history of medicine. The lectureship is supported through an endowed fund given by the late Richard B. Davis (1926-2010), MD, PhD, who was a UNMC faculty member from 1969 to 1994 and professor emeritus of internal medicine at UNMC. Dr. Davis and his wife, Jean, provided support for the lectureship out of his longstanding interest in the history of medicine.