Patent model for Jonathan Dodge, “Setting Artificial Teeth,” U.S. Patent 2985 (March 1, 1843). Dodge was a dentist in New York City who won an award for the “Best Incorruptible” artificial teeth on display at the American Institute Fair of in 1832. In 1835, Dodge won a premium gold medal, a silver medal, and a diploma for “the best Incorruptible Teeth, superior methods of inserting and fixing them in the mouth, and other improvements in Dental Surgery.”
Patent model for Walter H. Bulloch, “Turn-Table for Microscope Slides,” U.S. Patent 226,648 (April 20, 1880). Walter H. Bulloch (1835-1891) was born in Glasgow, worked for Benjamin Pike & Son in New York, and opened his own microscope shop in Chicago in 1866.
Parmelee’s “Artificial Leg” included an atmospheric pressure-conforming rubber bucket molded from the patient’s remaining limb. Parmelee held several patents using India-rubber.
Description
Patent model for DuBois D. Parmelee, “Improvement in Artificial Legs,” U.S. Patent 37,737 (Feb. 10, 1863). Dubois Duncan Parmalee (1829-1897) was a chemist and inventor in New York City.
A coal miner made this artificial lower limb some time before 1977, when the museum acquired it. He used available materials, including a metal bucket for a socket, nails, chain and chicken wire for securing the parts, and a leather boot.
Beck’s Improved National Monocular Microscope is a compound instrument with coarse and fine focus, circular stage, sub-stage bar that holds condenser and mirror and that can swing around the stage, inclination joint, and tri-leg base. This example came from the U.S. Military Academy. The inscription on the base reads “R. & J. BECK / LONDON & PHILADELPHIA.” The serial number 10198 appears on the back of one foot. There is a strong wooden box, and small wooden box holding 3 objectives and 3 eyepieces.
R. & J. Beck began in business, as such, in 1865, and by 1877 had established an American shop under the leadership of W. H. Walmsley.
Ref: R. & J. Beck, An Illustrated Catalogue of Microscopes and Accessories (Philadelphia, 1891), pp. 18-19.
Patent model for Hamilton L. Smith, “Improvement in Microscopes,” U.S. Patent 52901 (1866). Hamilton Lanphere Smith (1819-1903) was a graduate of Yale College who taught natural philosophy and astronomy at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, from 1853 to 1868, and then moved to Hobart College in Geneva, N.Y. Smith was also an avid microscopist. His invention, he claimed “consists in the use of a movable reflector inserted into the tube of a microscope and arranged so as to transmit the light down through the lens on the object in such a manner that by the action of said lens or object glass of the microscope the light is condensed on the object to be viewed, and an object viewed as opaque will be illuminated for the microscope.”
This heavy compound monocular microscope has a push-pull focus, square stage, sub-stage aperture ring, sub-stage mirror, and tri-leg base. The “Lerebours Opticien / Place du Pont Neuf N. 13 / à Paris” inscription on the tube refers to the firm begun by Noël Marie Lerebours (1762-1840) and continued by his son, Noël Marie Paymal Lerebours (1807–1873). This was purchased for the U.S. Military Academy in 1829. That was one year before the first achromatic microscope lenses were produced, in England.
Thirty-five years have passed since the 33rd World Health Assembly declared the world free of smallpox, an infectious disease that had plagued humankind for most of written history. This momentous achievement was the result of a massive global eradication campaign begun in the late 1960s, but its real beginnings can be traced back much further—to a medical discovery made in the English countryside, which spread across the Atlantic and to the small towns of the new republic. This commemorative vaccination card is a small piece of evidence of this long and rich history.
This unassuming 3 x 5 inch card in the collections at the National Museum of American History attests to a remarkable event that took place over two hundred years ago in a small town outside Boston. On October 25, 1809, in Milton, Massachusetts, twelve children were released from quarantine after fifteen days of close observation for any sign of smallpox infection. This may not sound unusual for a time when smallpox epidemics were a part of life, but these children had been purposefully inoculated with virulent smallpox matter in order to make a public test of a new medical discovery—vaccination.
The discovery had been made over a decade earlier by Edward Jenner, a country doctor in Gloucester, England. In 1798 he published a pamphlet entitled An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae vaccinae, a disease discovered in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire and Known by the Name of Cow Pox. The booklet described his successful experiments using inoculation with cowpox to provide protection from the more serious disease smallpox. Jenner's method was named "vaccination," referring to the medical term for cowpox, Variolae vaccinae, and the Latin vacca, meaning "cow." Vaccination provided a potentially much safer alternative to the older practice of variolation, in which immunity was conferred by deliberately infecting a person with a small dose of smallpox.
As word of the vaccine's effectiveness spread, Jenner supplied cowpox vaccine matter to doctors throughout England. In 1800 vaccine material reached the United States through Benjamin Waterhouse, a professor at Harvard Medical School. Acceptance of vaccination did not come easily, and many members of the medical profession and the church opposed a method that introduced an animal disease into humans. In 1802 Waterhouse felt obliged to extol the virtues of the cow in an attempt to persuade the Boston Board of Health to set aside its objections to the "contemptible origin" of the vaccine. "The earth maintains not a more clean, placid, healthy, and useful animal than the Cow," he appealed. "She is peculiarly the poor man's riches and support. From her is drawn, night and morning, the food for his ruddy children; […] every part of her has its particular uses in commerce and medicine. On these accounts she is an [sic] useful, though invisible wheel in the great machine of state."
Whatever their attitudes toward cows may have been, in 1809 the citizens of the town of Milton, Massachusetts, became part of the first municipal effort in the United States to offer free vaccination to all inhabitants. Over three hundred persons were inoculated during a three-day campaign in July. Following this program, the town leaders took an unusual step—they decided to hold a public demonstration to prove without a doubt that cowpox vaccine offered protection from smallpox. On October 9, 1809, twelve children, selected from those vaccinated in July, were inoculated with fresh, virulent smallpox matter by Dr. Amos Holbrook and witnessed by eighteen town members. The children were confined to a single home for fifteen days and on October 25 were discharged with no sign of smallpox infection.
Each child received a personalized certificate pronouncing them a living testament to the "never failing power of the mild preventative the Cow Pox," "a blessing great as it is singular in its kind." Several other small certificates were produced to commemorate this remarkable demonstration, including the one now in the museum's collection. The names of the twelve children subjected to the vaccine test are inscribed on the back of the card:
"Joshua Briggs, Samuel Alden, Thomas Street Briggs, Benjamin Church Briggs, Martin Briggs, George Briggs, Charles Briggs, John Smith, Catharine Bent, Suzanna Bent, Ruth Porter Horton, Mary Ann Belcher"
Milton's councilmen published a detailed account of the vaccination experiment and sent a copy to the officers of every town in the state, as well as to Governor Christopher Gore, a proponent of vaccination. In 1810 the State of Massachusetts passed the Cow Pox Act directing every town, district, or plantation, within the Commonwealth, to provide for the vaccination of their inhabitants.
The world is now free of small pox—a remarkable global achievement that owes a small debt to the citizens in a little town in New England in the early years of our republic.
Front of card: He is slain. Milton 25th October 1809. The twelve children whose names are written on the back of this card were vaccinated by Doctr. Amos Holbrook at the town innoculation in July last. They were tested by smallpox inoculation on the 10th Inst. and discharged this day from the Hospital after offering to the world in the presence of most respectable witnesses who honored Milton with their attendance on that occassion, an additional proof of the never failing power of that mild preventative the Cowpock, against Smallpox infection. A blessing as great as it is singular in its kind, whereby the hearts of man ought to be eleveated in praise to the Allmighty Giver. (Signed) Oliver Houghton, Chairman of the Committee for Vaccination.
Back of card: Joshua Briggs, Samuel Alden, Thomas Street Briggs, Benjamin Church Briggs, Martin Briggs, George Briggs, Charles Briggs, John Smith, Catharine Bent, Susanna Bent, Ruth Porter Horton, Mary Ann Belcher
Jonas Salk used this syringe during the testing of his polio vaccine. In the early tests carried out in 1952 and 1953, Salk gave all the vaccinations himself. The first subjects included children at the D. T. Watson Home for Crippled Children, residents of the Polk State Home, Salk, and members of his laboratory staff. In 1953, the first community-based, pilot vaccine trial was carried out with volunteer families in the Pittsburgh area. A second pilot trial included thousands of Pittsburgh schoolchildren. The success of these early tests paved the way for the Salk Vaccine National Field Trial of 1954.
Round solid wood cylinder with four concentric rings of drilled holes to hold test tubes. Used by Dr. Enders to roll test tubes containing tissue cultures of the polio viruses.
Jonas Salk first tested his polio vaccine on humans in July 1952 when he inoculated thirty children at the D. T. Watson Home for Crippled Children near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. These children had already had polio, so Salk's test was designed to prove that his vaccine would create a higher level of immunity than a natural infection. Salk also tested his vaccine on residents of the Polk State Home and on himself and members of his laboratory staff.
This vial contains residue of polio vaccine from these first tests. The polio virus exists in hundreds of different strains, all of which fall into three major types. A complete vaccine must contain a strain from each of these three types. However, the children at the Watson Home received only one type of vaccine matching the strain of their original polio infection. This vial is labeled for the MEF-1 strain (Type II). The MEF-1 polio virus strain was originally isolated in 1942 from incidents of poliomyelitis occurring among the Middle East Forces of the British Army, in Cairo, Egypt.
Wood rack holds 6 small glass flasks. Flasks have handwritten labels on pieces of adhesive tape and are sealed with tape. Each contains a small amount of yellowish liquid (residue of original cultures of poliovirus in human embryonic and muscle tissue).
Jonas Salk first tested his polio vaccine on humans in July 1952 when he inoculated thirty children at the D. T. Watson Home for Crippled Children near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. These children had already had polio, so Salk's test was designed to prove that his vaccine would create a higher level of immunity than a natural infection. Salk also tested his vaccine on residents of the Polk State Home and on himself and members of his laboratory staff.
This vial contains residue of polio vaccine from these first tests. The polio virus exists in hundreds of different strains, all of which fall into three major types. A complete vaccine must contain a strain from each of these three types. However, the children at the Watson Home received only one type of vaccine matching the strain of their original polio infection. This vial is labeled for the Saukett strain (Type III).
Researchers isolated this strain from James Sarkett who contracted polio when he was ten years old. However the label on the sample taken from Sarkett was misread as “Saukett.” In scientific and medical research the strain continues to be referred to as the “Saukett strain.”