Corey Fitzpatrick Blog #3: A Room Full of Empty Carts

As my time in the History Office at the Food and Drug Administration nears an end, I sit alone in my office and stare at an entry for the latest artifact I have accessioned into the collection. I’m surrounded by a few rows of at least twenty blue locker cabinets, two stacked on top of each other at a time so that the tops reach a few feet over my head. Theses are the lockers that safely store over 25,000 individual artifacts, all related to the history of the FDA. 

I take pride in the fact I have contributed to this fascinating collection of pharmaceuticals, foods, devices, and quackery.

I twist in my swivel chair and stare at an empty metal cart on the other side of the room. At the beginning of my internship a few of these metal carts were stuffed with countless cardboard boxes. Inside those boxes were over 1500 artifacts, some big, some small, some sturdy, some delicate, some ordinary, others outright bizarre. Each artifact represented a product the FDA has regulated throughout its history. Each of these artifacts has its own story to tell. And, as of now, each artifact has been categorized, cataloged, photographed, labeled, and safely stored in those blue locker cabinets.

Before I started this internship, I knew next to nothing about the history of the regulation of foods, drugs, medical devices, and quackery. I remember way back when I was offered the job, I muttered something to the effect of “Am I qualified to do this?”

If you had told me that year ago that my time volunteering at the FDA History Office would bloom into me handling artifacts such as Yerkes Palatable Preparation Tonic and Stimulant for All Ages, or a Victor X-Ray tube from the 1920s, or an energy drink simply named “Cocaine” (the drink makers claimed it was 350% stronger than a Red Bull!)–well, I probably would not have believed you. I can’t ever fully express how much I appreciated my time here. This internship has only reinforced my desire to continue with a career in Public History. The fact that I could work with my hands, physically handling these objects and see the progression of my labor has been a rewarding experience. (Not to mention, I will never be able to look at a food or drug label the same without scrutinizing its contents!)

In truth, the greatest skill that I have developed during my internship is confidence. The great thing I’ve learned about Public History is that it requires a mishmash of skills–some skills that sit outside the world of academia. At times it requires out-of-the-box thinking, a strong level of communication (with the public and fellow workers), and a mind fitted towards presentation–all those skills requiring a level confidence in oneself (or at least the veil of confidence!)

My time at the FDA definitely involved some on-the-job training and there were a few mistakes along the way. I learned how to organize a large collection of artifacts and the ability to quickly navigate the systems that house all the information. (Also, this internship has allowed me some prime dinner party talk about all the quackery I’ve encounter) To my supervisors at the FDA, I will be eternally grateful. Dr. Swann and Dr. Burrows are experts in their fields and the fact they valued my contributes means the world to me. As I leave my internship at the end of June, I take with me many fond memories and many skills that I hope to use in the future–wherever my career takes me.

Thanks to everyone for reading about my internship journey. Now don’t mind me, but I’m off to my next Public History adventure!

Although, COVID Fraud still awaits!

(Also, if anyone is interested in reading about the creation of the FDA, I recommend The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Deborah Blum.)

Spring 2022 Internship: Special Collections Part III

 As the Spring 2022 semester draws to a close, my work in UMBC's Special Collections department with the Lewis Hine collection of photographs continues. I have previously described the scope of my digitization work and its importance, especially at a time when travel and access to material is limited. 

The digitization is nearing the halfway point - since beginning my internship in March, I and another student have photographed the back of almost two thousand of the approximately five thousand prints in UMBC's Hine collection. I will keep photographing them over the summer; others on the team in Special Collections have already begun some of the rehousing work associated with the project and the NEH grant. Just as my work is preserving the prints' contents digitally, the rehousing work will help to protect the physical media. I may have an opportunity to help with that part of the project later in the summer. 

I have gained some interesting new skills through this internship. In addition to clarifying my understanding of the mechanics of copy stand photography, I have gained some wonderful insight about the work that goes into digitizing records for research use. As a student and researcher who often relies on digital versions of the sources I use for my own projects, it is helpful to be on the other side of the desk, to understand all of the moving pieces involved in a request to scan or otherwise document some record in an archive. 

A portion of my work feels very mechanical: add the print's metadata to the project spreadsheet, place the print on the copy stand, take a photograph of its verso [its back], crop the resulting image, and save the new digital photograph in the database drive. Other aspects of my work, though, are fascinating and unusual just like the best research problems and projects that I enjoy outside of this internship. What's the best workflow for this task I need to complete? What states and cities will we visit with today's section of Hine prints? They are organized based on their object number, rather than their subject matter, so it's possible for one session of digitization to involve a whirlwind tour of as many as five or six destinations.

Hine spent a lot of time documenting mill workers in New England, fishermen, crabbers and oyster shuckers along the coast, and agricultural workers in the deep south. Given the diversity of industry in many of the places Hine visited, it seems surprising (and sad) that despite his travel to cities and areas which have majority Black populations, there are vanishingly few Black subjects in the prints I've encountered so far. As Hine's work looks at child labor, the oversight seems especially egregious. Where are the Black children toiling long hours in factories, or in the fields? Is this gap in his subject an intentional one on Hine's part, or just an accident? 

I do not have those answers. 

The Hine collection is fascinating, even for someone like me who has very little free time. On their surfaces, the prints are often blurry, chaotic images of a single child or group of children looking small and proud and defiant. The contextual information from Hine on the back of each print is also important, in a different way. I am eager to continue digitizing the backs of these images through the summer! 

Maryland Center for History and Culture Internship Part 3: Final Reflections

     Towards the end of my internship, I had been almost entirely focused on transcribing an interview of Esther McCready. This had been a very time consuming and at times difficult task, but ultimately very rewarding. This was the most notable project I had worked on due to Esther McCready's significance in the civil rights movement in Baltimore. 

    Esther McCready had been the first black woman to attend the University of Maryland School of Nursing. It had been her legal case in 1950 which was responsible for the desegregation of the school. In her interview, she describes her experiences dealing with the legal issues of her attending the school as well as her experiences of discrimination during her time there. 

    Transcribing her interview served as an excellent way to round off my internship. It had served as a way for me to learn both an extremely interesting and important part of Baltimore's history and how to properly transcribe oral histories, and the difficulties that occur in the process. Transcribing the hour long interview had taken several days of patient listening. Many of the issues I had experienced was due to the low quality nature of the interview, as it had been recorded from a phone call. I spent hours listening and re-listening to the same paragraphs in order to make sure I had been correct. Despite the challenging and sometimes frustrating process, the satisfaction of completing the work and contributing to project had made it worth the time. 

It would be fairly shortly after my completion that my internship at the Maryland Center for History and Culture would end. Due to the COVID-19 epidemic my time working in person had been limited, yet the staff had made sure to be accommodating during such a difficult time. My brief internship at the MCHC had been overall a great experience that exposed me to some of the work done by those at the center, as well as great pieces of Maryland history.

Corey Fitzpatrick Blog #2: What could this be?

What is this object? A pharmaceutical? Maybe it's a food? Wait...is it actually quackery?

For the nearly 1500 uncatalogued artifacts that I had been assigned to process, I needed to ask that question first: What category does this object fit in?

The categories include: Pharmaceuticals (100); Biologics (200); Foods (300); Medical Devices (400); Cosmetics (500); Veterinary Products (600); Inspection Equipment (700); Laboratory Equipment (800); Quackery (900); Ephemera (1000); Pesticides (1100); Colors (1200); Consumer Products Safety Items, Child Health Items, etc. (1300); Tobacco (1400). Many of the categories also include sub-categories. For example, the 310s are Food Supplements like vitamins and dietary supplements. The 940s are specifically Quack Devices (like the Manhood Belt or the Relaxacizor) while the 910s are Quack Pharmaceuticals (the snake oil that enterprising gentlemen of all centuries continue to peddle without mercy). Some objects could fit into multiple categories. This came in question with a bottle of 1916 medicinal whiskey. Alcohol is a drug, so could it fit in the 100s (Pharmaceuticals). Maybe it should be in quackery (the 900s) because it did not exactly treat the illnesses as it had promised. In the end, I decided that it was a food (300s).

 

2016.300.78.426

The bulk of my internship begins with determining what category an object fits in. But that’s only the first step in getting each artifact accessioned into the FDA History Office’s collection. Eventually each object will earn its own individual classification number. The way a classification number is generated is:

Year Object Acquired.Object Category.Donor Code.Index Number.

So, for example, Bayer Cough Syrup for Children has a classification number of:

2017.100.62.1573

This means that the FDA History Office acquired the specific artifact in the year 2017. The object category is a 100 (Pharmaceutical). The Donor Code is 62 to show that it is one of the objects donated by a specific donor (in this case Linda Amendt, CBER). And the artifact is the 1573rd object in the Pharmaceutical category (the 100s).

The next steps include inputting all available information–physical description, researched background details, overall condition–about the artifact into the EMu Collections Management System. The artifact will then be photographed and tagged with its classification number, before getting stored in its proper locker. Once that’s done, it’s time to move to the next object.

 

My dungeon office!

Before transitioning to the EMu Collections Management System, the FDA History Office relied on spreadsheets to hold all the artifact information. By the time of my arrival, the spreadsheet printout was as thick as a 1950s law textbook (In the event of a robbery, I could do some serious damage defending the FDA’s collection!). Searching for a specific artifact was a cumbersome exercise–involving turning page after page and squinting one’s eyes until finding that exact classification number. But the transition to the online EMu program allows that search to be completed in a matter of moments–all with only the strike of a few keyboard letters and the click of a computer mouse. 

You want to see the artifacts acquired in 2012? Here you go. How about the quackery donated by the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices (donor code: 48)? No problem at all. What about all the pharmaceutical (100s and 910s) that include the ingredient of cocaine? Well, I could show you what we have but I might need to ask a follow up question or two!

As with any automated transition, there have been a few bumps in the road. Some of the artifact photographs were mislabeled. A few classification numbers got duplicated. An artifact’s information may have never made it into EMu. Whenever I run into any inconsistencies, I report the issue to my supervisor and we think of a remedy. Overall, the problems have been few and far between. By the time of this blog post, I have accessioned nearly all of the 1500 artifacts that my contract stipulated.

For my last post, I will give my final impressions about my internship–what I’ve learned and what I hope to take with me in my career going forward!

A Public History and The Civil Right History of Maryland: Part 3

Upon nearing the end of my internship, I found most of the work from start to finish to be quite influential towards my journey of sparking more within the work of public historians. One of my biggest takeaways from this internship was that it has allowed me to learn about difficult times in Baltimore and why the Civil Rights movement scene is so unique compared to the other states. It shows me that there are many out there with a voice and a story waiting to be heard or who just need the inspiration to do so. Perhaps with the fact that I was able to create summaries of past interviews, there was still a creation of theme within the summary that would let someone know that this can be their story too. Another important thing to note is that the internship helped me understand the connection between history, museums, and communities.

Even so, I was already introduced to public history and have worked with history professors to craft new perspectives about the past. This internship solidified my understanding of public history and sort of brought me into a whole new field that I did not know before as a history major. Though I have done oral history in the past, this internship helped me go deeper by translating and transcribing copies of oral histories that were created by others. When I started studying history, it wasn’t always doing public history work or getting into fieldwork and such, but the MCHC allowed me to see different aspects of history and how we do history. Whether it is critical analysis, or the use of different media to look into the bigger picture.

Though I wasn’t able to attend certain events and exhibitions, I still had a memorable experience at the MCHC. I think that with the COVID-19 pandemic and getting through another year without a spike of cases, I truly understand the reasoning behind working virtual. I think that it would have been better to be there in person to learn more about the different ways that we do history but still appreciate the small moments we had to be able to do certain works. It was an experience that I didn’t imagine to happen but I truly enjoy every little moment at the museums and having to witness the doing of history. It was a momentum to remember. Who could have thought that the MCHC was a place for a public historian or the broader spectrum of history? I am glad to be a part of that movement to reconnect with the past. It was an amazing experience to engage and work with people that share the same passion as me. We are the future when we collectively work together as historians.

Overall, my work with MCHC truly taught me the importance of inclusion and why we must acknowledge certain dark histories of the past. For example, the topic of slavery and racism towards African Americans is not fully taught or explained at its greatest truth and so I think that it is also the job of the public historian to do so. I can’t wait to be that someone who will be teaching others about the marginalization of black, brown, and Native American history. I truly enjoyed this internship and the fact that it has given me the opportunity to work on the McKeldin Project, which opened doorways to learning about Maryland's Civil Rights history.