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(MEDICINE.)
Charter of the
Professional Club of Philadelphia.
Elaborately hand-calligraphed certificate
of incorporation for the Club. 26-1/4 x
20 inches; with affixed and embossed
seals. Signed by Louis D. Senat, “Penman”
in the lower margin.
Philadelphia, 1913
[2,000/3,000]
The Professional Club of Philadelphia was
composed of the most successful AfricanAmerican
doctors in the city.This elaborate Charter would
have hung where the group met.The Professional
Club, and many other organizations like it,
sprang up right after the Civil War, and came
under the general umbrella of Booker T.
Washington’s “Negro Business League,”
founded in 1900.An example of the degree of
organization within the black community less
than a half century after emancipation.
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(MEDICINE.) MAXWELL, CHRYSTALEE.
Scrap Book of an African
American Army Nurse.
27 large, loose folio (17 x 12 inch) leaves, filled with
photographs, written material, as well a some printed material and clippings; the front
cover is not present, rear cover bears a graphite portrait of Lieutenant Maxwell.
SHOULD
BE SEEN
.
Vp, 1930s-1940s
[1,000/1,500]
Chrystalee Maxwell, second lieutenant of the Army Nurse Corps, assembled this unusual scrap
book. It contains a brief history her life as a nurse in pictures, with a full-page hand-written
“dedication” from one of her teachers and mentors during her internship.Dr. J. Edward Perry writes
regarding the three “S’s: Sympathy, Service and Science.” Ms. Lee graduated from Kansas City
General Hospital School of Nursing.Other doctors write words of praise and advice.There are many
sentiments from doctors and friends written throughout the book, as well as her graduating grades in
all course, all above 90 to 100.There is material relative to her wartime military service in Africa
including a photograph of her kneeling next to man on a stretcher with two corpsmen, an article
headed “Lieutenant Maxwell Returns from Africa, and another article on the little Liberian child
she adopted. Loosely laid in is a copy of “The African Nationalist,” a newspaper from Monrovia.
Also present are her NAACP card, andYWCA cards. Lt. Maxwell appears in G.I. Nightingales:
The Army Nurse Corps inWorldWar II By Barbara BrooksTomblin (Norton, 1945).
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(MEDICINE—MIDWIFERY.) UNDERWOOD, FELIX J.
Manual of
Midwives.
Copious illustrations. 58 pages. 8vo, original wrappers [together with] a
Mississippi State Board of Health Midwife Permit for Lucretia Turner.
[Jackson, Miss. 1956-1958]
[250/350]
We could find no copies of the present edition of this manual, and only one of the original
edition of 1925.As late as the 1950’s many people in the rural South were still having their
babies at home.This was especially true among poor blacks and whites alike, since the cost of
a hospital birth was often beyond their reach.
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