The Boston Society for Medical Improvement was an elite society of Boston physicians, established in 1828 for "the cultivation of confidence and good feeling between members of the profession; the eliciting and imparting of information upon the different branches of medical science; and the establishment of a Museum and Library of Pathological Anatomy". It held regular meetings until at least 1917.
Contents
Founding and organization
The Society was established February 19, 1828 by John P. Spooner.
By-laws were established at a founding meeting of eleven members,
and the first regular meeting was held on March 10.
Within a year the Society had grown to 25 members.
Meetings were held on the second and fourth Mondays of each month,
originally in Spooner's home.
Usually a member's reading of a paper was
followed by discussion of recent cases of either special interest or on which the attending physician wished the opinion of his colleagues.
There were frequent presentations of remarkable tissues and organs obtained during post-mortems, or unusual specimens found in nature, those of particular interest being added to the "Cabinet" of the Society.
The Society's original officers were a committee of four and a secretary, who made up the "Prudential Committee", as well as a librarian and a cabinet keeper.
These offices were filled once a year by vote at the first meeting in January.
Members were admitted twice a year, in April and October, with only practicing physicians from Boston being eligible.
History
During its first year the Society's Anatomical Cabinet was established, and several members collaborated to combine the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery and the Boston Medical Intelligencer into the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal
(now the New England Journal of Medicine).
The Society's expenses in the first year were $7.50.
In 1830, after resolving to publish their transactions and to have a standing committee, the Society moved to a room on Washington Street, rented for an annual fee of $25.
In 1833 The Medical Magazine published a piece praising the Society and encouraging the formation of similar organizations.
The Society limited its membership to Boston's medical elite.
In 1835 a number ineligible physicians (mostly younger, less established members of the profession) formed a competing organization, the Boston Society for Medical Observation.
By 1838, when the Society was incorporated, membership had grown to 35,
with approximately 25 attending any given meeting.
Around 1840 the Society relocated once again, to Tremont Row.
Until 1840 the Society often held anniversary celebrations (frequently including the presentation of an original poem by member Oliver Wendell Holmes) but after that date they became increasingly rare.
Sometime during the summer of 1842 J. B. S. Jackson "asked the opinion of the Society as to the contagion of puerperal fever and the probability of physicians communicating it from one patient to another" following the death of a physician who had treated an infected woman, and the subsequent infection of the patients he had treated in the interim.
Collection
The Society had an expansive Anatomical Cabinet, begun in 1828, the year of its founding.
It included a number of specimens from the War of 1812, which had been acquired by the Society from Dr. S. D. Townsend and Charles H. Stedman of the Chelsea Naval Hospital.
It also included a number of Chinese paintings of medical cases donated by Robert William Hooper.
By 1840, the cabinet was estimated to contain around 600 specimens.
Beginning in 1831 the Cabinet was curated by J. B. S. Jackson
(also curator of the Warren Anatomical Museum from 1847 on).
The two were merged around 1870, and Jackson continued his work until his death in 1879.
The curator was tasked with keeping a catalog and a case history of each specimen in the cabinet.
Jackson published two descriptions of the collection in 1847: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Anatomical Museum of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, and later that year A Descriptive Catalogue of the Monstrosities in the Cabinet of the Boston Society of Medical Improvement, which focused solely on the anatomical oddities from the cabinet.
Both books were abridged versions of the complete catalog.
In the first volume, the specimens of the cabinet were divided into fifteen sections: healthy bones, diseased bones, soft parts about the bones, heart and blood vessels, organs of sense, vocal and respiratory organs, alimentary canal, organs accessory to the alimentary canal, urinary organs, female organs of generation, male organs of generation, utero-gestation, monstrosities, and parasites.
Locations
When it was first formed, the Society held its meetings at the houses of its members.
It then set up a regular establishment over a chemist's shop on Washington Street.
Some years later, it relocated again to Tremont Row, over another chemist's shop, before moving to Temple Place.
When its library was moved to the Boston Medical Library on Boylston Street, the Society relocated there. By 1901 it had moved to Fenway.
Notable members
Henry Jacob Bigelow
Charles Eliot Ware
Jacob Bigelow
Henry Ingersoll Bowditch
Thomas Dwight
John Dix Fisher
Augustus Addison Gould
Richard Hodges
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Charles Thomas Jackson
J. B. S. Jackson
Nathaniel B. Shurtleff
Nathan Ryno Smith
David Humphreys Storer
Jeffries Wyman