Annual Report 2005-2006

     The Historical Committee met eight times during 2005/2006; our members still give generously of their time in support of the Medical Museum.  We have had some decline in attendance this year with a few of our members moving from active status to corresponding status due to health concerns.  On the other hand, several new members have joined our committee and have been active contributors.  We will continue to actively recruit new members this next year.  This past year we scheduled one evening meeting each quarter in an attempt to accommodate those members and potential members who still maintain an active medical practice and find it difficult to attend noon meetings.   However, many of our regular members found it difficult to attend in the evening and we did not succeed in attracting new members with this schedule, so we will stay with the noon meeting schedule. 

Highlights of the Historical Committee activities this year include:

Museum Displays:

* Reorganized and updated displays cases to assure that like items were grouped together in one display case and not duplicated unnecessarily throughout the museum.  This gave us room to create some new displays and expand others as noted below.

* Updated all the museum display signage to a more professional and uniform format.

* Our first rotating display, History of Infant and Invalid Feeders, was set up from August to March 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).

* This has now been replaced with the next rotating display, “Blood Letting, Blistering, and Blood Suckers: Medical History or Cutting Edge?” from the collection of Dr. Bert J. (Hans) Davidson.

* Added a new display showing _How Botanicals and Seeds Become Drugs._   The display includes photographs of the plants, a written narrative of the drug derived from the plant, and specimens of the plant and/or the drugs derived from

it.  Items in this display will periodically be rotated out and other plants highlighted since there is such a wide variety of plants to showcase.

* Received a donation of two large boxes of dental and medical instruments from Professor Eugene Boring.  These greatly enhanced our dental display cabinet.  These and other dental item donations received this year greatly expanded the scope of the dental collection.

* Placed a guest sign-in book in Museum to collect information from those who tour the Museum for sending membership information and announcements of upcoming events.

* Placed a donor book in the Museum listing the names of all those who have donated items for display as well as those who have supported the Museum financially

Future Goals and/or Projects:

* Create a Docent Tour Guide Training Manual and train additional members of the committee to be docent tour guides. 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.

* Consider the feasibility of establishing a “Medical Museum Community Day” on either a bi-monthly or quarterly basis.  The Museum would be open for two to four hours on a specific Saturday of the month to generate more interest and publicity for the Museum.  By having a regular day and time when the Museum is open to the public, we would be able to list the Museum in publications such as the AAA Tour Guide and the Museums listing section of local newspapers and magazines.

* Have a regular monthly or quarterly evening short lecture series given by committee members and open to the community at large.  This will hopefully encourage greater awareness of the Museum.

* Utilize student interns from the Communications and Public Relations Department at Cal Poly Pomona.  Students are required to donate hours to community service projects, and interest has been expressed by a student who may be able to work with the Museum this summer to update our brochure and website and possibly work on a public relations campaign for the Museum.

* Continue to explore the possibility of publishing a book about the History of Medicine in the Inland Empire using photographs from Museum displays with narrative captions.

Donations

* Each month the Historical Committee continues to receive donations of medical memorabilia and books.  As previously mentioned, we received a donation of two boxes of dental and medical equipment, plus acquired some other dental items and expanded that display to fill an entire case.  

* We also received a donation of three boxes of medical artifacts from Dr. Robert Kravetz from Arizona who has written and published two books about his collection of medical artifacts.

Medical Museum Open House

* At the end of April, the Committee hosted our Ninth Annual Medical Museum Open House.  Our featured speakers were Dr. Marilyn Herber, Dr. Hans Davidson, and Dee Gibson, RN, CNM presenting “The Feeding of Babies and Invalids Through the Ages.”  The speakers exhibited items from their personal collections as they traced the fascinating history of feeding devices used for the infants and the sick.

* This year we added a Silent Auction to the event and received donations of 39 items for the Silent Auction.  We were successful in raising just over $1,700 from the Silent Auction; those monies have been designated for the acquisition of additional artifacts for the Museum.

* We rented a tent again this year for the speakers_ presentation, had the Silent Auction set up in the RCMA lobby, and offered docent tours and served refreshments in the Museum.  We received financial grants from two pharmaceutical companies totaling $1,000 plus a third pharmaceutical firm paid $300  directly to the caterer to provide refreshments for the event, thus offsetting almost one-half of our total costs for the Open House.

* We would like to express our appreciation to the Alliance for assisting at the registration table and assisting with the Silent Auction, and to and to the Medical Society as a whole for all their assistance with the logistics of this year’s Open House.

    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. I also want to express our thanks for the tremendous help the Medical Society staff has been to our Committee and Museum, particularly the contributions of Michele Brown.  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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