Taking the Waters: 19th Century Medicinal Springs of Virginia, 2009-2010

This exhibit was inspired by The Mineral Springs of Western Virginia by William Burke, the first volume purchased by the Weaver Family Endowed Rare Book and Medical Materials Fund. Published in 1846, the book describes the setting and development of eleven springs in what are now Virginia and West Virginia. Dr. Burke, a one-time owner and resident physician at Red Sulphur Springs, remarks on the usefulness of the various mineral waters in certain diseases as well as contraindications to their use. The springs range from those that are well known today such as the White Sulphur Springs, currently the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, to the Blue Sulphur Springs, once able to accommodate several hundred people and now represented by a lone Greek Revival pavilion in the middle of a field near Smoot, West Virginia.

This exhibit was written and organized by Janet Pearson, a member of the staff of Historical Collections and Services, under the direction of Joan Echtenkamp Klein, the Alvin V. and Nancy Baird Curator for Historical Collections at The Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia. Claudia Sueyras, Normajean Hultman, and Sonya Coleman did preliminary research. Rod Martin and Victoria Meyer scanned items from Historical Collections and the Charles L. Brown Science & Engineering Library. David Moody, with the assistance of Bart Ragon, provided the programming architecture for the Web exhibit. Sonya Coleman contributed to the design elements. Special thanks has been given to the staff at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, as they retrieved dozens of documents and also to the Digital Curation Services staff for their scanning of the documents.