Vital Signs

Then & Now

A reminder of the pace of change, and of timeless truths, from the 1957-58 edition of the Dartmouth Medical School Bulletin:

"The medical library occupies the mezzanine floor of the Baker Library, where over 30,000 volumes have been segregated from the stacks. The current numbers as well as the bound volumes of over 300 periodicals devoted to the medical sciences are to be found in the journal room on this floor."

2
Number of biomedical libraries now (one in Hanover, one in Lebanon)

302,000
Volumes in the collection

>3,800
Number of electronic journal subscriptions

3 million
Hits on the biomedical libraries' website in FY08

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A reminder of the pace of change, and of timeless truths, from this magazine's Summer 1989 issue:

Dr. Robert Markison, DMS '74-5, wrote about the use of multimedia computing in medical education: "The creation of multimedia teaching materials involves the assembly of text, data, animation, and sound. . . . Multimedia computing is still a brand-new medium, just as 'talkies' were still new to the motion picture industry through the late 1920s."

2006
Year this magazine launched multimedia "web extras" in its online edition

>1,500
Average monthly visits to the most popular web extra

2008
Year that DM's web-extras won a national award

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A reminder of the pace of change, and of timeless truths, from a 1943 book titled Fifty Years of Service: A History of the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital:

"As early as 1776, mention is made of [a hospital] 'located in the Lebanon woods.' . . . During the next year, the college mill on Mink Brook, just below the bridge on the Lebanon road, was converted temporarily into a hospital. These, however, were isolation centers rather than hospitals in the true sense. . . . As a result of . . . the fear that these hospitals might serve as centers of contagion . . . neither served its purpose for very long."

1893
Year Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital opened

225
Acreage of the wooded site in Lebanon where the Hospital is now housed

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A reminder of the pace of change, and of timeless truths, from the 1981 DHMC Annual Review:

"Hemodialysis, the use of an artificial kidney machine to remove toxic wastes from a patient's bloodstream, has extended life for thousands of people whose kidneys have failed. . . . 'As recently as 24 years ago, if both kidneys failed the person was sure to die,' stated Frederick Appleton, M.D., medical director, Dialysis Unit. . . . A five-station hemodialysis unit opened at Mary Hitchcock in November 1980."

>150
Radius in miles of the area from which the DHMC Chronic Dialysis Unit currently draws patients

10
Number of specialists in kidney disease and transplantation at DHMC