jane addams' travel medicine kit

ALTERNATIVE LABELING PROJECT

Can a common museum label — so often the omniscient voice that provides factual evidence that identifies art facts and objects in a museum’s collection — sensually engage us, inspire revolution and reform, or provide pleasure and comfort?

The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum asks these ques tions in its series of Alternative Labels that presents diverse voices and encourages visitors to view history from a fresh perspective.

JA

NE

AD

DA

MS

’ TR

AV

EL

ME

DIC

INE

KIT

T

ER

RI K

AP

SA

LIS

J

AN

E A

DD

AM

S H

UL

L-H

OU

SE

MU

SE

UM

JANE ADDAMS’

TERRI KAPSALIS is the author of The Hysterical Alphabet and Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum. She has taught and lectured at numerous medical schools, works as a health educator at Chicago Women’s Health Center, and teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

TERRI KAPSALIS

2

This publication was produced for the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum’s Alternative Labeling Project.

Jane Addams Hull-House Museumwww.hulhousemuseum.orgUIC College of Architecture & The ArtsCopyright © 2011 All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-1-4507-9569-2

Design by SonnenzimmerCover photo by Amy Turenne

First printingPrinted in China

JANE ADDAMS’

TERRI KAPSALIS

5

This is not a doctor’s medicine kit.

A doctor’s kit would be larger and contain more vials.

This kit measures approximately 3 x 3 inches. Jane Addams used this medicine kit for travel.

When she was four, Addams had tuberculosis. As a result, she had Pott’s disease which left her humpbacked and flat-footed. As a child, she was afraid her father would not want to be seen walking with her to church. It is doubtful that she used this travel medicine kit back then.

7

A doctor’s kit would contain instruments such as a stethoscope.

Jane Addams went to medical school for one year at the age of 21. She wanted something definite to do and a second degree seemed logical. Women like Jane Addams flocked to medicine at that time. Doctoring offered young women of means independence and an opportunity to travel.

Addams’ medicine kit is leather and has four glass vials. Each vial has a silver topped cork stopper. The kit is precious and on ex-hibit at the Museum. There are no marks to be found on the kit or vials. We do not know the year it was made or the medicines it contains. As much as we would like to, we cannot take the kit to Antiques Roadshow.

9

Two of the vials contain round black pills the size of BBs. Addams must have known when to take these pills. She placed her fingers on that topper there. She removed a pill just like this one and placed it on her tongue.

Addams never became a doctor. Following her only year in medical school, she had a nervous collapse. We might call it a severe depres-sion. She had done well in medical school, but many other things happened, including the death of her father. She had tremendous back pain too.

Many of us have a vulnerable part–a sensitive stomach, an aching head, a compromised back — that gives us information, if we care to listen. A bodily guide. Here, turn right instead of left, open this door and not that one.

Her back. Her nerves. She was treated by the famous Dr. Mitchell in Philadelphia. That is all Addams reported. Treated how? She does not say.

11

Charlotte Perkins Gilman does. She was treated by that Dr. Mitchell when she was 26. She recorded the treatment in her hidden note-book. Later she wrote a story titled “The Yellow Wallpaper” about a woman driven mad by her medical treatment. Then she published the story and sent a copy to that Dr. Mitchell in Philadelphia. Such a story ought not to be written, one Boston physician protested, it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.

Jane Addams and Charlotte Perkins Gilman were both born in 1860. Both died in 1935.

13

It is easy to forget that famous people have bodies too. They have rashes, blisters, and heartaches. Karl Marx, for instance, had many years of painful boils on and around his buttocks.

Years after her Rest Cure, Gilman traveled throughout the country lecturing to large audiences. Did she have her own well-worn trav-el medicine kit? In Addams’ kit, one vial contains white powder. Another contains brown oval pills.

Did the nearby stockyards provide the leather for the medicine kit’s case?

There must be some way to analyze the pills and powder: scientists with a laboratory and proper equipment.

15

Dr. S. Weir Mitchell was renowned for his Rest Cure. He developed the Rest Cure to treat soldiers with battle fatigue, but it was mostly used to treat women with obstinate nervous systems. Mitchell was so famous he had his own Christmas calendar.

Mitchell: At first, and in some cases for four or five weeks. I do not permit the patient to sit up or to sew or write or read. The only action allowed is that needed to clean the teeth.

Was it the telegraph or the press? Was it steam power or science? What was it that caused all this nervous collapse? It was be-lieved that an increase in mental activity was the primary culprit. Mitchell decided that study made women sick. Blood was needed in their reproductive organs, not their small brains.

Mitchell: In some instances I have not permitted the patient to turn over without aid . . . In such cases I arrange to have the bowels and water passed while lying down, and the patient is lifted on to a lounge at bed-time and sponged, and then lifted back again into the newly-made bed.

17

Milk. Fed by the nurse, four ounces every two hours. No pen, no paper, no books. Four walls and a nurse, a bed and milk. Mitchell: You see that, following nature’s lessons with docile mind, we have treated the woman as nature treats an infant.

Dr. Mitchell claimed many victories. There was Mrs. S who had been anesthetized for the 200 mile trip into the country for her Rest Cure. Three months later, her health reclaimed, she took a world tour with her husband via India, Japan, and San Francisco. Mrs. S might have had a medicine kit like this one.

In spite of her public life, Addams was a private person. We know it is not right to snoop in somebody’s medicine cabinet. Are we no better than a nosy houseguest?

19

Since ancient Greece, physicians believed domestic life to be a wom-an’s ultimate remedy. Mitchell was no different. He put marriage in one vial. Motherhood in another. Moral reeducation in the third.

Why did Addams refrain from writing about Mitchell’s treatment? She knew that even the little antagonism that lives in the corner of the mind, if given too much attention, can someday find itself bearing arms. And war is not acceptable.

In her 1902 book Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams does not discuss her own health history. She does write, To be put to bed and fed on milk is not what [a young woman] requires. What she needs is simple, health-giving activity which involves the use of all faculties.

21

Mitchell believed inactivity to be a cure for inactivity. Mitchell: Wise women choose their doctors and trust them. The wisest ask the fewest questions.

Addams’ medicine kit does not contain any of Mitchell’s remedies.

Do we need to identify the medicines in order to understand Addams’ travel medicine kit? Would this knowledge change our minds? The University’s College of Pharmacy is down the street from the Museum.

23

Following Mitchell’s treatment, Addams refused her stepmoth-er’s pressure to marry. Addams’ back pain flared and she went to bed again.

Addams’ sister Alice invited her to Iowa. Alice’s physician hus-band, Harry, performed a new procedure on Addams’ spine. She was then bound to a bed for eight weeks while Alice read her Frankenstein and other books. Harry fitted her with a leather, steel and whalebone back brace.

After bed, Addams wrote: It seems quite essential for the establish-ment of my health and temper that I have a radical change. And so I have accepted the advice given to every exhausted American — ‘go abroad.’

Addams set off for Europe with friends and relatives. Two years. Ten countries. Travel is not rest. Did she have this medicine kit in that steamship cabin?

25

Addams was frustrated with their feverish search after high cul-ture. She was drawn to the poor quarters of each city. Dublin, London, Amsterdam, Berlin. Some say she stopped wearing a back brace in Rome. Others say it never left her luggage.

Addams: Before I returned to America I had discovered that there were other genuine reasons for living among the poor than that of practic-ing medicine upon them, and my brief foray into the profession was never resumed.

Only two years later, a second European tour. A bullfight in Spain, after which Addams confessed her dream of founding a Chicago settlement house to her dear friend and fellow traveler, Ellen Gates Starr. Then a visit to the world’s first settlement — London’s Toynbee Hall.

Did Addams know that the words “cure” and “care” are derived from the same Latin root?

27

Dr. Koch, a pharmacy professor, has a special knowledge of antique medicines. Teresa Silva, the Museum curator, presents the vials in her white cotton gloves. Dr. Koch can see they are handmade pills, not machine-made tablets. The white powder could be sodium bicarbonate, commonly used for stomach upset. They will not compromise the medicines by opening the vials at this moment. Dr. Koch will consult with his colleagues in the fo-rensic science program.

The writer Edith Wharton received the Rest Cure under Mitchell’s supervision. Virginia Woolf was given Mitchell’s Rest Cure too. Before they lived at Hull-House, Julia Lathrop and Ellen Gates Starr received their Rest Cures.

One might begin to believe that a nervous collapse had been man-datory for young women, like military service for men.

29

A medical diagnosis can provide community and comfort. Here is a group that suffers just like me. Was this the community Addams had imagined? A group of educated young women bound by a prognosis that pain would continue without the domestic remedy of husband and children?

Addams’ hero, John Ruskin, had empty pages in his notebooks to mark the period of his mental collapse. There are many ways to arrive at an understanding. We must not conflate brilliance with ease and comfort. Trembling knees and an unrelenting sense of failure is one way forward.

To be at war with social expectations. To be at war with one’s own mind. When we battle ourselves, just who is battling whom? How to be a pacifist here too?

31

Addams often quoted John Stuart Mill: There is nothing, after dis-ease, indigence, and guilt, so fatal to the pleasurable enjoyment of life as the want of a proper outlet of active faculties.

What if this medicine kit contains Mill’s remedy? How might “prop-er outlet of active faculties” appear under a dissecting microscope?

The forensic team and Dr. Koch enter Addams’ bedroom with a camera and specimen collection supplies. This is not a crime scene; it is a history museum. Teresa has placed a white sheet on Addams’ bed so that Amy Turenne, a forensics graduate student, can retrieve samples of the pills and powder.

Teresa has brought her white cotton museum gloves and Amy a pair of blue nitrile lab gloves. Teresa removes the vials wearing her white gloves while Amy pulls on her blue ones.

33

Dr. Negrusz, a professor of forensic science, takes photographs: the medicine kit on display; the medicine kit on the white sheet; the medicine kit on the white sheet with all four vials removed; close-ups of the vials containing brown pills, black pills, and white powder; Amy with blue gloves retrieving samples; Dr. Koch and Teresa; Dr. Gaensslen, chair of the forensic science program, in conversa-tion with the writer.

Does the forensic team usually take photos? No, we do not, says Dr. Negrusz, this is just for documentation of the process. Today, I am a tourist.

35

This project is unusual for them. The vast majority of what they do in forensic science are criminal cases. They test crime scene biological specimens such as hair and semen. They test the urine of winning race horses in Illinois to check for controlled sub-stances. They analyze inks, gunshot residue, and fingerprints.

However, Dr. Gaensslen was once asked to analyze the blood on the velvet cloak Mary Todd Lincoln wore the night of the assas-sination. This request resulted in an article for Science magazine about ethical guidelines regarding bioanalysis, such as DNA test-ing, and historical figures.

We are not testing for Addams’ DNA; we want to identify her medicines.

Forensic specialists figure out the unknown. Pharmacists know medicine. This is why Dr. Koch is so important to this process, Dr. Gaensslen explains, he is the intelligence. The forensic team will conduct the analysis based on his research and leads. Analysis will take four to six weeks. There is no all-knowing machine: put in a pill and the answer comes out. If we have some idea of what we are looking for, it’s possible we’ll find something.

37

The Greeks say a mind with ideas is like a woman giving birth.

Addams neither birthed children nor married a man. Hull-House was not the marriage and motherhood Mitchell prescribed but it was a cure for Addams nonetheless. It could be argued, a domes-tic cure at that.

One vial contains the sounds of a bustling dining hall and mean-ingful conversation. Another, the hum of day care programs and kindergarten classes.

At Hull-House, there was too much to do. No time to be made sick. Sweatshop laborers need rest. Children need clean milk. How could one not protect a child, any child, from disease and rotten meat? It is as natural as motherhood.

Cholera and malnutrition are symptoms. Greed and corruption are contagions. Medicine is clean water and fresh vegetables free of city grime. A child’s playground. Air and light from a window. Was there any hope of health without them?

39

Medicine is that day of rest after six solid days of work. A child’s body unconstricted by hard labor. A factory free of toxic dust. Medicine is poetry and painting, Italian opera and Greek tragedies.

Addams believed the patronizing pursuit of charity to be a hidden contagion all its own. Medicine is the meaningful work found in a mutual exchange between people.

Addams’ immigrant neighbors had been international travelers. How many of them had travel medicine kits?

How to live in a body deemed weak? Or dirty? Or doomed? What to do with a baseless prophesy disguised as prognosis? When con-fronted with your alleged mental, moral and physical inferiority, the heart can sink.

43

During the Depression of 1893, Hull-House offered a free health clinic. Addams: It takes something in these hard times to keep up one’s spirits.

Depression, depression. A pressing down . . . mental, spiritual, economic. Addams: At times, we are filled with a sense of the futility of our efforts.

After visiting the Russian writer and social reformer Leo Tolstoy, Addams committed to following his example and resolved to spend at least two hours each day in the Hull-House bakery making bread. But when she arrived home, her other duties took precedent.

Addams’ bedroom, now a museum room, had never been a hospi-tal room. Yet, it was here that Addams’ appendix was removed in 1895. Unnecessarily so, for it appears that what was believed to be an attack of appendicitis was actually typhoid fever.

45

That same year, at Addams’ invitation, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, came to live at Hull-House for three months. Gilman worked on her theories of women’s domestic work and economic independence. She gave readings of her poetry. Gilman: It is a nobly beautiful place. A house of vast proportions — big as a Sanitorium but simple and true in line and color, and just a home of comfort and love.

Addams and Gilman discussed social reform. Addams must have read the “Yellow Wallpaper” and known of Gilman’s Rest Cure. Did Gilman know of Addams’ treatment?

The white powder might be bicarbonate of soda. The black pills might contain charcoal. Charlotte might have asked Miss Addams, Do you take milk in your tea? Miss Addams might have responded, I no longer have a taste for milk.

47

It is unlikely that the white powder is a controlled substance even though young Jane and her friends experimented with opium while in school at Rockford Seminary.

As a forensic scientist, Amy’s job is observational. She says it’s very important not to bias what you’re seeing. The less you know about a crime, the better, which is why police and forensic scien-tists are kept far apart. If you’ve been told you’re supposed to see green, you’re more likely to see only green, even if the specimen is actually green-brown.

With a degree in forensics, you can do casework, research, teach, testify in court. You’re helping society, Amy says. Law isn’t about right or wrong. There are people in jail who shouldn’t be there and people who aren’t in there who should be. A verdict should be based on evidence, not a lawyer’s competence.

49

Amy doesn’t believe we are snooping in Addams’ medicine kit. We are getting a sense of a pharmacist’s abilities at that time. It is so uncommon to find such well-preserved samples. Light and moisture break down active ingredients. That is why hydrogen peroxide is stored in brown bottles.

Addams did not have a husband, but she did have a spouse. Addams to Mary Rozet Smith: Dearest, you have been so heavenly good to me all these weeks. I feel as if we had come into a healing domesticity which we had never had before.

Is there some evidence you would destroy before you die? Addams destroyed many of the letters Smith wrote to her. Addams did not destroy the contents of her travel medicine kit.

Addams to Smith: There is reason in the habit of married folks keeping together.

51

The three black pills are small with an average weight of 42 mil-ligrams. Under the lab’s Bausch and Lomb dissecting scope, Amy observes that the pills have a gray and black marble appearance like something you would see on a granite countertop. When cut in half with a scalpel, the pill gives off a strong tea leaf smell.

The inner substance of the brown oval pill resembles brown sugar. Its coating appears to be more than one layer, could be as many as four. Dr. Koch explains that pharmacists back then would make a dough using bread crumbs, flour or starches and then mix the drug into the doughy mass. They would cut the dough, roll the pills, and then allow the water to evaporate. Dr. Koch has an antique pill cutter in his office. He says that Addams must have had a particu-larly talented pharmacist as these pills are exceptionally smooth and well-shaped.

53

Pills are missiles launched by the tongue.

During WWI, in front of a large audience at Carnegie Hall, Addams said that in practically every country she had visited, she had heard a certain type of soldier say that it had been difficult for him to make the bayonet charge unless he had been stimulated, be it ether or absinthe or rum.

The brutality of war begins with the “I” and the “You.” Antagonism smiles there between the two, convincing us that there is no in-between. There is no table with two chairs. Only here and there, bayonets and bombs.

Words can be missiles too.

55

Addams was attacked for her pacifism, by the press and old friends alike. Even President Roosevelt had his shot. Addams: Suddenly to find every public utterance willfully misconstrued, every attempt at normal relationship repudiated, one must react in a baffled suppression which is health destroying.

A scapegoat. That is what Addams had become. What the ancient Greeks termed a pharmakos, one blamed and banished in order to fortify national authority. Addams knew their antagonism for what it was — a poison.

Addams: I fell ill with a serious attack of pleuro-pneumonia, which was the beginning of three years of semi-invalidism. During weeks of feverish discomfort I experienced a bald sense of social opprobrium and wide-spread misunderstanding which brought me very near to self pity, perhaps the lowest pit into which human nature can sink.

57

She was to travel to Europe on Henry Ford’s peace ship in 1915 in order to negotiate an end to the war but instead she lay in a hospital bed in Chicago, her travel medicine kit at rest.

Like a soldier in battle, the patient endures. The bed, a trench, the fever, a blast.

Battling depression, battling disease. If we were to relinquish the antagonism and befriend our illness, would that be the same as surrender?

Addams: The large number of deaths among the older pacifists in all the warring nations can probably be traced in some measure to the pe-culiar strain which such maladjustment implies. More than the normal amount of nervous energy must be consumed in holding one’s own in a hostile world.

59

Did Addams know that the words “agony” and “antagonism” are derived from the same Greek root?

Addams remained in her hospital bed because of a surgery for tu-berculosis of the kidney and missed the 1916 Neutral Conference in Stockholm.

Addams: It is useless to speculate on what might have occurred at various times but for our physical limitations; we must, perforce, accommodate ourselves to them, and it is never easy, although I had had the training which comes to a child with “spinal disease,” as it was called in my youth.

When the body is confined to bed, the mind still travels. We are complicated organisms comprised of organs and hopes, bones and ambitions, blood and disappointments.

Addams: Indeed the pacifist in war time . . . faces two dangers. Strangely enough he finds it possible to travel from the mire of self pity straight to the barren hills of self-righteousness and to hate himself equally in both places.

61

With the help of the staff at McCrone Research Institute, Amy is able to ID the white powder. She has used both optical properties (indices of refraction, appearance under crossed polars) and chemi-cal ones (testing for sodium and carbonate). The white powder is sodium bicarbonate and potato starch. It would have been added to water and taken for hyperacidosis or indigestion, Dr. Koch explains. The potato starch serves as a desiccant or drying agent, like grains of rice in a salt shaker.

What can a pacifist do in times of war? Feed others. Addams: Peace and bread had become inseparably connected in my mind. She led “bread peace” rallies, working to provide food relief to hungry women and children in war-torn enemy countries.

Boredom, purposelessness, self-pity, isolation, all poisons. To work on behalf of others is medicine.

63

Addams celebrated the vote with other suffragists, but she main-tained that a healthy democracy ensures the vote for all its citizens, regardless of sex or race or creed.

The forensic team will use gas chromatography-mass spectrom-etry (GC-MS) to analyze the contents of the brown and black pills. GC-MS is a gold standard in forensic toxicology/forensic chem-istry. The gas chromatography separates the compounds in the mixture. They are subsequently identified by mass spectrometry. Each compound offers a unique picture called a mass spectrum, like a fingerprint. They have a database with thousands of mass spectra so they can easily identify an unknown.

Peace is not simply the absence of war. Health is not simply the absence of illness.

GC-MS technology has been used to track organic pollutants in the environment, to detect illegal narcotics, to detect and mea-sure food and beverage contaminants, to screen newborns for congenital diseases, to analyze the atmosphere of Venus. Many of the explosive detection systems used in US airports post-9/11 are based on GC-MS.

65

Are we closer to understanding Addams’ travel medicine kit?

Did Addams have this kit with her in 1922 and 1923, when she and Mary Rozet Smith traveled to Europe, Burma, India, the Philippines, Korea, Manchuria, and China? She had hoped to meet Mahatma Gandhi, but he was in jail at that time.

In Beijing, a lump was detected. In Tokyo, Addams’ breast was removed. Hull-House resident and physician Alice Hamilton was at her bedside as she recovered. A few days after they left Tokyo, an earthquake and fire destroyed the city, including the hospital where they had been.

Most science is about proving or disproving hypotheses, but fo-rensics is a science of comparison.

The GC-MS results are back from the brown and black pills. Both contain strychnine.

67

Strychnine is an amazing discovery for both the pharmacists and the forensic scientists. In small doses, strychnine increases appe-tite, the flow of gastric juices, and peristalsis, and is said to give a strong and hopeful feeling. In larger doses, strychnine causes a most horrific death; while the mind remains alert, the victim experiences muscle spasms to the point of crushed vertebrae and suffocation. The forensic scientists rarely see strychnine poisoning these days. The taste is exceptionally bitter. But strychnine cases do happen, especially suicidal.

The brown pills also contain phenolphthalein and would have been used as a laxative. Phenolphthalein was used as the active ingredient in Exlax, but was banned from use in 1997 because its exact mechanism of action could not be identified. The black pills were most likely used as an appetite stimulant since strychnine is the only active ingredient found. That’s why the black pill is so small, Dr. Negrusz explains. Its size suggests something very potent.

69

Dr. Koch says strychnine was discovered in 1818 and had several uses between the time of discovery until it fell out of use by about 1940. Because they found strychnine in combination with phenol-phthalein in the brown pills, Dr. Koch is led to believe that the medicines in the travel kit are from the early 1900s; somewhere between the 1900 and 1930 period of Jane Addams’ travels. Today, strychnine is not used in American medicine. It is primarily used to kill rats.

Dr. Koch wants to know if the brown pill is coated in gelatin, if the black pill is coated in activated charcoal. Dr. Negrusz says they are not equipped to do that. They are forensic scientists; they are looking for drugs. Active ingredients are what matter. Inactive in-gredients are not of interest to them. Plus, Dr. Negrusz says, we already know how these pills were made since they do not appear to be clandestinely produced.

71

Jane Addams’ travel kit contains common medicines used for com-mon ailments — stomach upset and constipation.

Many of us have had occasional constipation, especially when sitting for long periods in a car or on a plane. Sluggish bowels can be an uncomfortable distraction and leave one feeling rest-less and agitated.

In 1926, Addams had a heart attack while in Dublin for a Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom congress. More bron-chitis, flus, a weakened heart.

73

How to be at peace with one’s warring nation? How to be at peace with one’s failing body?

Addams: We must learn to trust our democracy, giant-like and threat-ening as it may appear in its uncouth strength and untried application.

Before surgery to remove an ovarian mass in 1931, Addams wrote Hull-House co-founder Ellen Gates Starr about financial arrange-ments for Starr’s pension fund. The letter ends: Naturally I am planning to come back from the hospital, and then everything will go along as usual, but I am writing this in case I do not come back.

Addams was recovering from that surgery in a hospital bed in Baltimore when the Nobel Committee officially announced her prize.

75

Even though she was eight years younger than Addams, Mary Rozet Smith died first. Addams: I suppose I could have willed my heart to stop beating, and I longed to relax into doing that, but the thought of what she had been to me for so long kept me from being cowardly.

The deep love of another being makes us human and therefore in-terdependent. Reciprocity is our remedy.

A body and mind make us human too. Best to keep courage, patience, and equanimity close at hand.

77

The dosages of the active ingredients in the brown and black pills are found to be appropriate. However, it is impossible to know the rate of decomposition. If a written doctor’s prescription were to be found in the Museum archives, it would be a prescription that had never been filled.

Whatever sample pills remain following analysis will be returned to their respective vials.

SOURCESJane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, 1902 The Long Road of Woman’s Memory, 1916 Peace and Bread in Time of War, 1922 Twenty Years at Hull-House, 1912 Victoria Bissell Brown, The Education of Jane Addams, 2004Mary Lynn McCree Bryan, Barbara Bair, and Maree De Angury, eds. The Selected Papers of Jane Addams: Volume 1 Preparing To Lead, 1860 – 81, 2003Mary Jo Deegan and Michael R. Hill, eds. With Her in Ourland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1997Gioia Diliberto, A Useful Woman: The Early Life of Jane Addams, 1999Jean Bethke Elshtain, Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy, 2002 The Jane Addams Reader, 2002Jeffrey L. Geller and Maxine Harris, Women of the Asylum: Voices from Behind the Walls 1840 – 1945, 1994Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1935 “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper,” in The Forerunner, 1913 “The Yellow Wallpaper,” in New England Magazine, 1892Sander L. Gilman et. al, eds. Hysteria Beyond Freud, 1993Delores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes,

Neighborhoods, and Cities, 1982Denise D. Knight, The Abridged Diaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1998Louise K. Knight, Jane Addams: Spirit in Action, 2010Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, 2001S. Weir Mitchell, Doctor and Patient, 1888 Fat and Blood: And How to Make Them, 1877 Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System: Especially in Women, 1885Suzanne Poirier, “The Weir Mitchell Rest Cure: Doctor and Patients,” in Women’s Studies, 1983Barbara Sicherman, “The Uses of a Diagnosis: Doctors, Patients, and Neurasthenia,”

in Journal of the History of Medicine, 1977Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 1977Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill, 1930

p 40 – 41:Round Black Pill Cut in Half. Photo by Amy Turenne

ALTERNATIVE LABELING PROJECT

Can a common museum label — so often the omniscient voice that provides factual evidence that identifies art facts and objects in a museum’s collection — sensually engage us, inspire revolution and reform, or provide pleasure and comfort?

The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum asks these ques tions in its series of Alternative Labels that presents diverse voices and encourages visitors to view history from a fresh perspective.

JA

NE

AD

DA

MS

’ TR

AV

EL

ME

DIC

INE

KIT

T

ER

RI K

AP

SA

LIS

J

AN

E A

DD

AM

S H

UL

L-H

OU

SE

MU

SE

UM

JANE ADDAMS’

TERRI KAPSALIS is the author of The Hysterical Alphabet and Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum. She has taught and lectured at numerous medical schools, works as a health educator at Chicago Women’s Health Center, and teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

TERRI KAPSALIS

jane addams' travel medicine kit

Documents

addams medicine kit

doctors kit

doctors medicine kit

kit measures

art institute of chicago

health educator

common museum label

chicago womens health