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TML News and Notes: March 2010

This Week @ TML

Monday, March 29, 2010 
12:00 - 1:00 PM
Evidence-Based Research
Sanger Hall, Room B1-020

Tuesday, March 30, 2010
10:00 - 11:00 AM
Q & A with a Librarian
Library Instruction Classroom, Room 2-012 

Wednesday, March 31, 2010
10:00 - 11:00 AM
Web of Science
Sanger Hall, Room B1-020

Wednesday, March 31, 2010
4:00 - 5:00 PM
Library Orientation
Library Instruction Classroom, Room 2-012 

Thursday, April 1, 2010
3:00 - 3:45 PM
Anatomy.TV
Sanger Hall, Room B1-020

Friday, April 2, 2010
12:00 - 1:00 PM
CINAHL
Library Instruction Classroom, Room 2-012

Traveling Exhibit: The Literature of Prescription: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "The Yellow Wall-Paper"

Tompkins-McCaw Library is proud to host the traveling exhibit "The Literature of Prescription: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and 'The Yellow Wall-Paper'" through May 2 in the Special Collections & Archives Reading Room, room 1-032. The exhibit, sponsored by the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine, examines a nineteenth-century writer's challenge to the medical profession and the relationship between science and society. Artist and writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who was discouraged from pursuing a career to preserve her health, rejected the ideas in a terrifying short story titled "The Yellow Wall-Paper." The famous tale served as an indictment of the medical profession and the social conventions restricting women's professional and creative opportunities. For more information, visit the official exhibit website: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/theliteratureofprescription/

Neurasthenia, Rest Cure, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The entrance of neurasthenia into medical knowledge, coined by Dr. George Miller Beard in the late 19th century, spawned a pandemic throughout Europe and North America affecting the middle class, especially women. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, a physician deeply interested in psychological ailments after working with Civil War soldiers experiencing "phantom limb syndrome," became the leading expert in treating neurasthenia with his rest cure. Denying the patient any movement, thought, or extraneous effort for a long period of time was thought to relieve their symptoms and cure them of their ailments. Dr. Mitchell received a letter from Charlotte Perkins Gilman imploring his help. He diagnosed her with neurasthenia and prescribed his rest cure method. In a few weeks Ms. Gilman became thoroughly depressed and alarmed that her mind was deteriorating. She abandoned the treatment. She wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" as a reactionary tale towards Dr. Mitchell and others like him who advocated that women shun intellectual advancement for fear of it being a detriment to their health. The short story was disturbing to many at the time and later brought back into the public eye by feminists in the mid-20th century. Ms. Gilman's work revealed the deep division between the sexes during the early 20th century and how detrimental prevailing thought on "modern" medicine was to women. Neurasthenia was eventually removed as a legitimate disease from medical journals, however, the disease and its cure are fascinating topics still today.

For more information on Neurasthenia and the Rest Cure:
Beard, George Miller. American Nervousness: Its Causes and Consequences, a supplement to nervous exhaustion (neurasthenia). 1881, Putnam: New York. [Tompkins-McCaw Library: RC552.N5 B368A 1881]

Mitchell, S. Weir. Fat and Blood: and how to make them. 1877, J.P. Lippincott & Co.: Philadelphia. [Tompkins-McCaw Library: RC343.M6 1878]

Mitchell, S. Weir. Lectures on the Diseases of the Nerves, Especially in Women. 1885, Lea Brothers & Co.: Philadelphia. [Tompkins-McCaw Library: RC340.M682 1885]

For more information on Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Feminist Theory:
Golden, Catherine; Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Captive Imagination: A casebook on The Yellow Wallpaper. 1992, Feminist Press at the City University of New York: New York. [Cabell Library: PS1744.G57 Y453 1992]

Bassuk, Ellen L. The Rest Cure: Repetition or Resolution of Victorian Women's Conflicts? Poetics Today, 1985, 245-257

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland, The Yellow Wallpaper and selected writings. 1999, Penguin Books: New York. [Cabell Library: PS1744.G57 A6 1999a]

For more information online, go to:
Reflections on Health in Society and Culture. University of Virginia, Historical Collections at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Print the handout!

Compiled by Paxton Schunter
Special Collections & Archives
Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences

This Week @ TML

Monday, March 22, 2010
12:00 - 1:00 PM
RefWorks: Tools You Can Use
Library Instruction Classroom, Rm. 2-012

Monday, March 22, 2010
6:00 - 6:30 PM
Web of Science
Online

Tuesday, March 23, 2010
12:00 - 1:30 PM
Who's Citing You?
Library Instruction Classroom, Rm. 2-012 

Wednesday, March 24, 2010
12:00 - 1:00 PM
Look Before You Leap
Sanger Hall, Rm. B1-020

This Week @ TML

Thursday, March 18, 2010
12:00 - 1:00 PM
Managing the Money
Library Instruction Classroom, Rm. 2-012

This Week @ TML

Monday, March 8, 2010
3:00 - 3:45 PM
RefWorks
Sanger Hall, Rm. B1-020

Tuesday, March 9, 2010
3:00 - 4:00 PM
PubMed
Online

Wednesday, March 10, 2010
12:00 - 1:30 PM
Film Screening: Supersize Me
Hunton Student Center, Learning Center

Thursday, March 11, 2010
12:00 - 1:00 PM
Using RSS Feeds to Keep Current with Health Science Research
Library Instruction Classroom, Rm. 2-012

Searching for NIH Grants.

There are many reasons to search for information on NIH grants. You might want to find out who has grant money and how much, or who is doing similar research to yours but hasn't published yet. Or you might want to see if the NIH is funding certain fields of research. Or you may be looking for new ideas. You can search through awarded NIH grants using RePORTER. This system replaces the old CRISP system. It is easier to search and contains more information, including publications and patents resulting from a grant.

As always, if you have any questions or need help searching, please email Tompkins-McCaw Library Research Services.

NIH Public Access Policy: Using MyNCBI to manage your articles.

MyNCBI is a feature of the Entrez databases, such as PubMed or Entrez Gene, which allows you to save PubMed searches, collections of articles or gene records, etc., and update your searches automatically.

But MyNCBI can also be used to manage your personal list of publications for use with the eRA Commons, making sure you are in compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy. Complete information is available in the NLM Technical Bulletin.

NOTE: The Awards View is only available to eRA Commons users with active grants in their portfolios who have linked their My NCBI account with their eRA Commons account

For more information about the NIH Public Access Policy please see our Resource Guide.

If you have any questions about MyNCBI , PubMed , or gene or protein databse searching, please email Tompkins-McCaw Library Research Services

This Week @ TML

Tuesday, March 2, 2010
10:00 - 11:15 AM
RefWorks
Library Instruction Classroom, Room 2-012

Wednesday, March 3, 2010
10:00 - 11:00 AM
Advanced PubMed
Sanger Hall, Room B1-020

Thursday, March 4, 2010
10:00 - 11:00 AM
CINAHL
Library Instruction Classroom, Room 2-012 

Friday, March 5, 2010
1:00 - 2:00 PM
Library Orientation
Library Instruction Classroom, Room 2-012