Annual Report 2004-2005

    The Historical Committee has had another busy and productive year and our members continue to give generously of their time for the benefit of the Medical Museum.  This year we had three of our long-time members move from active status on the Committee to corresponding status due to health concerns.   However, we were successful in receiving authorization from the Board to recruit interested persons to participate on the Historical Committee from within other Medical Societies in Southern California.  We recently added a retired physician from the Riverside County Medical Association and another retired member from our own Medical Society.  Our goal is to actively recruit new members this next year. We will also be holding one evening meeting each quarter to accommodate those members and potential members who still maintain an active medical practice and find it difficult to attend noon meetings. As you know, we began this year with a move to our new location in Riverside. 

    Our Committee members were responsible for packing all of the museum exhibits in preparation for the move, and then unpacking and setting up the displays after the move was completed.   I am proud to report that we were successful in having the museum displays over 90 percent complete by the end of July due to the efforts of many of our Historical Committee members.   We are very pleased to have all of the display cabinets housed in one room, and we are especially appreciative of R.C.M.A. rearranging their foyer and lobby to allow us to locate the doctors office diorama and library cabinets in those areas.  As we unpacked our library books, we were able to group all of our books published before 1850 together in one cabinet and to group all of the others together by their medical specialty subject matter.  In January of this year, Dr. Marilyn Herber stepped down as Chair of the Historical Committee and the gavel was passed to Dr. Elliot Weinstein.  Dr. Herber is continuing as a member of the Committee and this year served as Chair of our Open House Subcommittee. 

    Under the leadership of Dr. Weinstein and Dr. Herber as well as our other Historical Committee members, our accomplishments this year include:

Display Cabinets:  

* Storage credenzas built to go beneath many of the cabinets.

* Dr. Stanley Korfmacher donated a tall antique display cabinet with glass sliding doors to house our display of pharmaceuticals and quackery medical devices. 

1. *Dr. Korfmacher arranged to trade the older dark wood octagonal cabinet for an oak pedestal display cabinet to match one we already had.
   

2. *Museum Displays:
   

* The Historical Committee will use one cabinet for rotating displays of personal collections of medically related items.   Our goal is to have the display in this cabinet change two to three times annually.  We are beginning to publicize the information to Medical Society membership and are asking physicians and others to contact us if they have personal collections they would like to put on display for a limited time period.

* Our first rotating display, History of Infant and Invalid Feeders, was set up in August from the combined collections of Dr. Marilyn Herber, Dr. Bert J. (Hans) Davidson, and Dee Gibson, RN, CNM (wife of Historical Committee member Dr. Tom Gibson).   One of the more interesting items in that display is an infant feeder from the bronze period, 2000-1700 B.C. excavated from a tomb in Palestine.

* We recently completed a project to redo all of the museum signage to provide for uniformity and have professional looking displays.  Dr. Weinstein contacted several other museums around the country for input on what methods they used for their signage, and used the information he received to redo the signage for our museum.

* When Dr. Merlin Hendrickson passed away last spring, he still had over 40 boxes of items stored in his garage, some of which had been donated by and some of which had been purchased from LACMA when they closed their medical museum.  

Dr. Bert (Hans) Davidson has spent much of the past year going through these boxes and inventorying all of the items using a digital camera.  We now have over 5,000 digital photographs of these items and our other museum artifacts stored on the Historical Committee computer with a back-up disk stored offsite.

Donations

* Each month the Historical Committee continues to receive donations of medical memorabilia and books.  Some of our more interesting donations this year were a collection of pharmaceutical vials and leather carrying case, a collection of Journal of Preventive Medicine publications from 1910-1911, a large foot powered dental drill, an antique birthing chair, and donation of several medical books published prior to 1925. 

Medical Museum Open House

1. *In April, the Committee hosted our Eighth Annual Medical Museum Open House.  Our featured speaker was “Doc Mark” Rutledge a historical re-enactor.  In his demonstration “18th Century Colonial Medical Practices,”  Doc Mark portrayed a physician from the American colonial period 1750-1815.  Over 80% of the medical instruments he displayed and demonstrated were original to either the 18th or early 19th century.
   

2. *This was our first Medical Museum Open House at our new location.  Due to space restrictions in the Museum/Conference room, we rented a tent for the speaker’s presentation followed by docent tours and refreshments inside in the Museum.   While our attendance was not as high as in prior years, we were still very pleased with the success of this year’s event.  We will be exploring the possibility of securing funding from a pharmaceutical company to help defray the cost of the event in future years. * We would like to express our appreciation to the Alliance for providing refreshments and assisting at the registration table and to the Medical Society as a whole for all their assistance with the logistics of this year’s Open House.
   

Future Goals of the Historical Committee:

* Cataloging Museum Library Collection.  We have a college student majoring in library sciences who has volunteered to catalog all of our books using a software program that interfaces with and downloads information from the Library of Congress to provide a brief description of each book.  This same program will allow us to have this information available on our website for scholars to know what books are available and make an appointment to come in and utilize the materials onsite for research projects. 

* Restructuring of Museum Subcommittees:  Recognizing that over the years the scope of our committee and membership has changed, we recently decided to reorganize the subcommittees, combining some of the existing committees, adding new subcommittees to begin promoting the museum, and setting goals for each subcommittee.  Our primary focus is to find news ways to promote, publicize, and expand the museum

*  Docent Tour Guide:  We are beginning work on a docent tour guide for the Museum so that we can train all of our members, including lay members, to serve as Museum docents.  Initially the tour guide will emphasize the important items

a docent should discuss at each display.  Long term, our goal is to have the information available on tapes that could be used for “self-guided” tours when docents are not available or for “self-guided” tours by members of both RCMA and SBCMS when they are meeting in the room.

1. *Additionally, we are working on promoting the museum in various ways increasing student tours, fundraising, and expanding the services we can provide to the public.
   

2. *In closing, I would like to recognize and thank all of our active and corresponding members for giving freely of their time and efforts for the Historical Committee.  On behalf of Historical Committee members and myself, I would like to express our appreciation to the Executive Committee and Board of Directors for their continuing support of our Committee and activities, and for allowing me the opportunity to serve as Chairman of the Historical Committee.
   

   

Elliot Weinstein, M.D., Chairman

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