Collecting area: Medical

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

A lifelong activist for social and environmental justice, Kevin McVeigh was among the founders of two prominent antinuclear and environmental organizations in Northern California, the Pelican Alliance (1978) and Interhelp (1981). After relocating to Massachusetts, he continued in environmental activism, founding the Green River Center in Greenfield in 1987, but in response to the intense public health crisis, he gradually shifted his focus to become an advocate for persons with HIV/AIDS. As a founder of the AIDS Community Group of Franklin County (Mass.), he has coordinated AIDS services for Tapestry Health, a not-for-profit organization providing affordable health care to in Western Massachusetts.

The McVeigh Papers document a career as a committed antinuclear activist and advocate for persons with HIV/AIDS. The collection includes organizational materials from each of the groups McVeigh helped found: The Pelican Alliance, Interhelp, the Green River Center, the AIDS Community Group of Franklin County, and Tapestry Health, as well as correspondence, newspaper clippings, journals and magazines related to the issues concerning, notes from HIV/AIDS caregivers’ conferences, materials relating to men’s support groups, and other material related to environmental protection and anti-war activism. Finally, the collection includes audio files of an oral history (approximately two hours) conducted with McVeigh in July 2010, and a small collection of antinuclear books from small publishing houses.

Known in the psychiatric survivors’ movement as Kalisa, Cynthia Miller was a radical activist on behalf of the mentally ill. An ex-patient based in New York, she became a member of Project Release in the early 1970s, one of the first wave of organizations fighting for the civil rights of mental patients and combatting forced institutionalization, and was a contributor to Madness Network News and other publications. A poet, writer, and a committed feminist and out lesbian, she took part in civil disobedience to oppose electroconvulsive therapy, working with Judi Chamberlin, George Ebert, Leonard Roy Frank, and others.

Though varied and fragmentary, Cynthia Miller’s collection is a rich resource for study of the early history of the psychiatric survivors movement and the work of one activist in resisting psychiatric oppression. The collection contains some of Kalisa’s writings and correspondence along with ephemera and a varied collection of newspapers, newsletters, and other publications relating to Project Release and several other organizations that Kalisa supported, including the Mental Patients Liberation Front and the Alliance for the Liberation of Mental Patients.

The physician Cyrus Morton, (1797-1873) came from a notable medical family from Plymouth County, Mass. His father Nathaniel and son Thomas were both physicians, and his sister-in-law, Julia A.W. (Drew) Winslow was one of the first female medical doctors in the Commonwealth. Morton’s second wife, Lydia Hall (Drew) Morton, was one of the first teachers at the Perkins School for the Blind, and a member of the first graduating class of the Lexington Normal School. Morton died in Halifax on May 18, 1873.

Morton’s account book contains records of frequent visits to his patients, dispensing medicine, his fees and receipts for payment (often received in kind as pigs, fish, beef, hay, wood, the use of a horse, spinning done by widows or wives, digging a well, carpentry, etc.), and a copy of a prayer in Morton’s hand. Among Morton’s patients were Timothy Wood, Stafford Sturtevant, Jacob Thompson, Capts. Knapp and Cushman, and Cyrus Munroe.

Homeopathic physician from Arlington, Vermont. Daybook contains patients’ names, including many women, identification of some cases (such as vaccination, extraction of teeth, treatment of swellings, fractures, and burns, and the delivery of babies), methods of treatment (such as purges, bleeding, cupping, and the use of blistering ointments), prices for his services, and method and form of payment (including goods such as fruits, vegetables, meats, clothes, and services such as butchering and timbering). Also contains personal entries and notation of goods he sold such as poultry, leathers, and fabrics.

In 1973 Hampshire Day House was established to provide day treatment to patients released from the Northampton State Hospital, which first opened as the Northampton Lunatic Asylum in 1858. As the Day House expanded its services it became known as the Northampton Area Mental Health Services (NAMHS). Valley Programs assumed responsibility for the operation of residential programs for deinstitutionalized individuals in Hampshire and Franklin counties in 1983, and seven years later the NAMHS and Valley Programs merged.

The collection consists of reports, financial records, board minutes, and correspondence for the Hampshire Day House.

The Northampton State Hospital was opened in 1858 to provide moral therapy to the “insane,” and under the superintendency of Pliny Earle, became one of the best known asylums in New England. Before the turn of the century, however, the Hospital declined, facing the problems of overcrowding, poor sanitation, and inadequate funding. The push for psychiatric deinstitutionalization in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in a steady reduction of the patient population, the last eleven of whom left Northampton State in 1993.

With the Government Documents staff, SCUA has digitized the annual reports of the Northampton State Hospital from the beginning until the last published report in 1939. The reports appeared annually from 1856 until 1924 and irregularly from then until 1939.

Stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

Founder of Post-Polio Health Internation, Gini Laurie was born in 1913 and named after two older sisters who died of polio. Known as the “grandmother” of the independent living movement, Laurie urged people with all kinds of disabilities to work together to end institutionalization and to support independence. As a hospital volunteer, she founded Rehabilitation Gazette, a newsletter that became an internationally known advocacy journal. Beginning with this publication, which enabled polio patients who finished rehabilitation to stay in touch, PHI evolved into a networking organization. By the early 1980s PHI established the first post-polio conferences, bringing together polio survivors and physicians with the goal of determining why polio survivors were developing new disabilities. In 2019, PHI adopted a new mission “to collect, preserve, and make available research and knowledge to promote the well-being and independence of polio survivors, home ventilator users, their caregivers and families, and to support health professionals who treat them.”

The Post-Polio Health International records include materials throughout the organization’s history from its founding in 1960 to the 2010s. The collection captures the efforts and initiatives behind PHI’s vital mission to enhance the lives and independence of polio survivors and home mechanical ventilator users by promoting education, networking, and advocacy among these individuals and healthcare providers. Offering a comprehensive overview of PHI’s history, the collection contains correspondence, runs of newsletters and other publications, photographs, clipping files, board minutes, and financial documents.

Jennifer P. Schneider, M.D., Ph.D., is a physician certified in Internal Medicine, Addiction Medicine and Pain Management. She is the author of 15 books and numerous articles in professional journals. She is a nationally recognized expert in two addiction-related fields: addictive sexual disorders and the management of chronic pain with opioids. She also has experience and interest in the area of osteoporosis and its drug treatment, and maintains an email support group for people who have experienced atypical femur fractures related to the use of bisphosphonate medications. Dr. Schneider has written several articles in medical journals about egg donation and its potential long-term risks. Now retired from direct patient care, her professional activities include writing, lecturing at conferences, serving as an expert witness in legal settings, and appearing as a media guest on television and radio. One of her main current activities is to teach a remedial 21-Continuing Medical Education course on appropriate prescribing of controlled substances for chronic pain, under the auspices of Professional Boundaries Education in multiple locations in the U.S. 

The collection contains Dr. Schneider’s published articles, books, and book reviews on sex addiction and its effects on the partner; use of opioids in the treatment of chronic pain; femur fractures caused by the usual osteoporosis treatment with bisphosphonates; and potential cancer risk from egg donor protocol. In addition to her professional work, the collection also documents the family history of Raphael Patai and Naomi Nir along with their children, Daphne Patai and Dr. Schneider, through extensive correspondence, original paintings by Naomi Nir, a journal kept by Nir and Raphael Patai from 1949-1951. SCUA holds the papers of Naomi Nir and Daphne Patai.

Established by Laurie Block and John Crowley in 1989, Straight Ahead Pictures is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to developing innovative multimedia presentations about topics in American history and culture. Working in film, video, radio, and print, Straight Ahead Pictures has often focused on the cultural history of the body, and especially the meaning of fitness, disability, health, and related concepts. They are the sponsor of the Disability History Museum, a virtual resource containing primary documents, educational materials, and exhibits.

The film and video that comprises the bulk of the Straight Ahead Pictures collection was collected, used, and produced by the company in its productions. The collection also contains several linear feet of research materials, publications, and ephemera including newsletters and publications from disability rights organizations, historical ephemera, and magazines centered on the concepts of fitness and health.

In response to an epidemic of scarlet fever at Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1912 and the death of four students, the Massachusetts Legislature finally appropriated funds to construct an infirmary. Staffed initially by a nurse, and later (1930) by a physician, the infirmary had grown sufficiently by the 1940s to require the creation of a separate department of Student Health. Formal instruction in public health began in 1939 and the first public health department, Bacteriology, was created one year later, followed by Nursing and other departments. In 1973, the School of Health Sciences was formed, comprised of the Division of Nursing, the Division of Public Health, and (after 1975), the Department of Communication Disorders. The School of Health Sciences split into the School of Public Health and the School of Nursing in 1989. In 1993, the School was renamed the School of Public Health and Health Sciences, which provides education for graduate and undergraduate students, as well as health professionals.

Record group consists of annual reports; department histories; accreditation reports; correspondence and memoranda; proposals; technical reports; faculty lists; course descriptions, course of study guides and syllabi; training handbooks and laboratory exercises; brochures and fliers; newsclippings, newsletters and articles; surveys; conference materials; and related materials.