University Libraries Receive Grant to Support "Good Medicine: Greensboro’s Hospitals and Healers, 1865-2015"

St. Leo's, Greensboro's First Catholic Hospital

 Dead men tell no tales, but those helped by Greensboro’s history of good medicine and medical care do, and the University Libraries at UNCG is partnering with three other area institutions on a project to make the records of the history of medicine in the Gate City--a total of thirteen unique archival collections--better known and more accessible to scholars, students and community researchers.

insurance plan offered
by St. Leo's Hospital
(click to enlarge)

Today's Greensboro Historical Museum,
built as the First Presbyterian Church,
served as a hospital during the Civil War

Early in the twentieth century, for example, St. Leo’s, the first Catholic hospital in the city, was also home to the first of Greensboro's many nursing education programs. Building on this tradition, Wesley Long Hospital, founded by Dr. John Wesley Long and now part of the Cone Health System, had an early program for teaching nurses as well. Now, of course, Cone Health is now one of the largest and most prominent nonprofit healthcare organizations in the Southeast, and the development of this organization—and its nursing education program—is a key element in the history of medicine and medical treatment in the Piedmont Triad and throughout the state.

Nursing education expanded from these local hospitals into the local colleges in 1956 when Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital helped to develop the school of Nursing at the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina (now UNCG). Woman’s College was the first public nursing program in the state to pair with an external medical institution. Records pertaining to the beginning of the School of Nursing and those from the program, the first faculty, and academic dean will provide a greater understanding of this unique partnership. The digitization project will focus in part on the development of these local institutions and nursing education programs through the records of medical history researcher Dr. Robert L. Phillips and through other records housed at Cone Health and UNCG.

Good Medicine will provide digital access to more than 47,100 items from thirteen archival collections and also from several monographs. The material documents Greensboro’s rich medical history, from its origin in church-housed hospitals during the Civil War and the arrival of Greensboro’s first Catholic hospital, to the development of nursing education programs and large health care providers.  Along with institutions, Good Medicine will document the contributions of individuals such as Dr. Anna Gove (one of the first woman physicians in North Carolina) and Dr. Wesley Long during the World War I era, as well as the important roles of philanthropists such as Moses H. Cone and Lunsford Richardson. Good Medicine will build on the significant content currently being digitized on the history of the Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital and the correspondence of Dr. Anna Gove. The project is a collaborative effort of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro University Libraries, the Cone Health Medical Library, the Greensboro Historical Museum Archives, and the Greensboro Public Library.

Collections to be included:
•    Dr. Anna Maria Gove Papers, 1826-1952 (UNCG)
•    Department of Nursing Education records, 1957-1967 (UNCG)
•    Margaret Catherine Moore Papers, 1913-1982 (UNCG)
•    Eloise Patricia Rallings Lewis Papers, 1953, 1985 (UNCG)
•    Robert L. Phillips Collection, 1890s-2003 (Cone)
•    Callie Mae Shepard Collection, 1926-1936 (Cone)
•    Wesley Long Hospital Collection (Cone)
•    Jean Payne Rabie Papers (GHM)
•    Arthur E. Ledbetter Register (GHM)
•    Susanne B. Hoskins Papers (GHM)
•    Jacob Henry Smith Family Papers (GHM)
•    American Red Cross (Greensboro) Collection (GHM)
•    Richardson-Vicks Collection (GHM)
•    Guilford County Collection (GHM)
•    Selections from the North Carolina Collection (GPL)
This grant is made possible through funding from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources.