We all know that museums have a plethora of archives, but there are also a lot of organizations that have their own archives.

Well, today, nationwide children's Hospital has invited us to look at some items from their collection.

And I'm looking forward to seeing what they have for us.

Hi, John.

Hi.

Welcome to Nationwide Children's Hospital library and archives.

Well, thank you so much for inviting us to look at your archives.

Can you just tell us a little bit about your archives and where we're standing right now?

Absolutely.

Well, I have three great items here to show you to start with.

Here is the cornerstone from the building that was on this site.

It was laid in 1922 and 1924.

We opened our doors.

Right over here we have the statue that was in the fountain in the original lobby.

And if next to this statue, what we have over here is a sculpture called the Bambino, which was technically our first logo for the hospital.

And that was placed on the wall in that lobby next to the statue.

So now, was this the first hospital that these were part of?

No, actually, the first, very first hospital was on the corner of Miller and Fair Avenues across from Franklin Park in 1892, and the doors opened in 1894, and we were there until this hospital opened.

Well, I love that you still have these items to show out here on display.

Do you have other things to show us in your archive?

Absolutely.

Come on inside.

You can take a look.

This is a cool space.

Yeah.

It's great.

It's a brand new space that we remodeled.

But this is definitely great for the archives.

And I would love to show you some of the earliest pictures of the hospital.

And those are great.

On the top right is actually the backyard playground at the very first hospital that I mentioned earlier on near Franklin Park.

And then right here, we have a personal donation from a physician from the 1700s up until 1920.

So we keep these here just out of curiosity.

So these weren't connected with the hospital.

They were just donated.

Yeah, just donated from the physician who was connected to the house.

And do you take donations from people who are, you know, it's medical related but not related to this hospital.

We focus on mostly things that are related to the hospital, maybe something on special occasions we'll do that, something like this.

But it's mostly the hospital's history that we focus on.

Okay, great.

I see a cornerstone here.

Yes, yes.

So this was a souvenir, a cornerstone for doctor Earl Baxter, who was one of the early chief of staff.

So this was given to him as sort of a memento before he retired.

Great.

And then here's an aerial of a children's hospital.

Unfinished Interstate I-70.

Not many of us have seen that.

I know this is a very rare picture that the engineering department gave me, which was a great find to show.

It's really great.

It's a lot of development since that time, Tons of development.

And then what's here?

So what we have here is James Elliott was one of the first open heart surgery patients at children's.

And this is 1957.

This was the clipping from the Dispatch in March of that year.

And there he is at a visit he did last year.

And he's doing really well.

He's actually did some Olympic running.

So.

Oh, wow.

So amazing.

The surgery was definitely a success.

So he's doing very well.

So I see a sign over here Monroe Street entrance.

What's the story behind that?

Well, that sign was for the Monroe Street employee entrance at the hospital.

It was originally on this site, the second hospital.

And that predates Interstate 70, so that Monroe Street would actually come all the way over to this side.

We had that in storage, and we thought it would be great to bring it in and display it.

Yeah, it's a great piece of history.

Yeah.

All right.

Now, these are the things that the public gets to see.

But do you have some things in your storage that you can get out for us?

Definitely a really interesting thing.

So if you just follow me, I'll show you.

All right.

Let's go.

Okay.

Great.

So this is a great piece I wanted to show you first.

This is called a bovie, which is a electric surgical device.

And it was created by William Bovie.

The idea behind it is a current would pass through something that looks like a scalpel.

And you have the surgical loop is what they call that.

The increased current would allow for a clean incision and prevent a lot of bleeding, so that that heat from the electricity would actually coagulate the wound while they're operating.

How interesting.

So when did they use this?

This is from the 1920s and was used at the hospital.

Again, we don't have all the pieces for it like that scalpel, but that's when we used it.

What's so cool that you kept it in the family?

Absolutely brought it in for onsite storage.

And it's going to stay here for for the time being.

That's amazing.

So show me some other things you have here.

Sure.

Well, we have a few photos I want to show you.

I do have this photo of the lobby.

And as we mentioned earlier, the Bambino sculpture you'll see here.

And the statue in the fountain.

This was from the original hospital on this site circa 1950s.

Okay.

And some other photos we have here.

I love old photos.

Oh, it's a story tastic.

It's the most popular part of the collection as far as stuff.

This is the goings on at the original hospital across from Franklin Park.

This is probably from the early 1900s, before we came here.

And then we have the exterior of the hospital that was on this site.

I believe this was 1924, 25.

So this hospital, does it exist anymore?

Is this the brand new hospital?

Now, the last remnants of this hospital was knocked down in the late 90s.

Gradually through the years, they built in front of it.

But the actual brick hospital and facade was demolished.

Actually, this really interesting old book.

What is this?

This is the minutes from the women's board from the early 1900s.

1915 to 1916.

And it's just great to see the oh my goodness, writing handwritten, handwritten, handwritten is just anymore and written is rare.

But, it's definitely one of the oldest items we do have in this collection.

Okay, what a great book.

So what about this?

This is interesting as this was an ad for fundraising to build this hospital and this was at Ohio Stadium.

And what's interesting about this is this was the first event at the stadium when it opened.

It's actually pre-dates the first football game.

Oh my God.

So this is kind of one of our other prized possessions here.

Okay cool.

And so this is the original this is the original flier for that.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

This is actually our most important record.

And the oldest record we have.

This is the very first patient record from 1894 when the doors opened.

Wow.

This is from, girl named Lucy Wetzel.

I believe she was six years old.

She came in here for hip ailment.

And a cool story about this that we just figured out last year.

Is that her last name?

For decades, through the history of the hospital was wrong.

So with the help of the genealogy department at the main library, we actually figured out for years it was metal, but it actually was.

Wetzel.

Well, right, a great record.

I see the Bambino.

Oh, that's right, this is the first hospital publication for employees and this came out in July 1917.

This is another one of our oldest documents here.

So what would have been inside of this?

Just the goings on and certain events happening at the hospital.

And then some of these would have actually the earliest annual reports within them.

Now I see this plaque.

What is that plaque?

This plaque is for the polio ward, and it was named after Daisy sellers, who was head of the Women's group here for the longest time, for about 30 or 40 years.

The room was named after her as a, homage.

Used to be the polio ward from the 1940s up until the early 1950s.

So I see this box.

Is there a surprise inside?

No surprise, unfortunately.

But what's great about this, and interesting is that this was the first records box.

First hospital, and it's dated from 1894.

So the record system was obviously not as complicated as today.

And all handwritten, probably all handwritten.

Absolutely.

Well, I love that you still have a lot of these old items from the original hospital.

What a what a great treasure.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Well, now what I'm really excited about is the thing that's next to me.

Can we look at it?

Let's do it.

So this is an iron lung.

And this was from the 1940s and used fairly frequently from the 1940s up to the 1950s for polio victims.

And what they would do is because of the paralysis from the polio, it would be hard for people to breathe.

So due to certain functions of the pressure, and here it would actually mimic the breathing.

So they would stay in here and basically just to keep them exhaling and inhaling.

So set up a little bit about the polio epidemic.

We don't in my generation we don't typically know this history.

So can you set up a little bit of that history for us?

Sure.

It it started gaining traction around the world in late 1920s and 1930s really became prevalent in the 40s.

And, it was, you know, it was a pretty, an epidemic.

And these, as I mentioned, these were fairly, fairly common in the hospitals just to help people.

Now, these gradually were taken away, the advent of the vaccine by the early 1950s.

Well, I'm interested to know if you know what any of these things on here do.

Can you show me a couple things?

Sure.

I know a few things.

So obviously this is a, just a viewing area just to check on the patient.

And here we have an area to.

Treat the patient physically with their hands or make the sleeping arrangements and stuff and things like that.

So that's what these were for.

And these things on a top is to gauge the pressure.

And they would step in here and open this up.

They would open this up and they'd be wheeled in on a platform of sorts and then closed back up.

And their head would be just be out here.

So their whole body wouldn't be in there.

The head would be only part of them that would be sticking out of that, hopefully with support.

With support.

Okay.

And sometimes a mirror here so they can see and this was used at the children's hospital.

Talk about you know, how did they treat those patients.

Yeah.

We had a word here, called the seller's ward, as I mentioned earlier and named after, prominent, person here.

And there were a bunch of these in that ward.

And as that phased out, they used that for other, other functions as well.

And have you collected stories?

I mean, I know you have photographs, but of stories of people who were here as patients.

We're working on oral histories.

We do have oral histories of the physicians.

There was an oral history project in the early 80s, so it was great.

Some of those, physicians actually were here in the 20s and 30s, were still around to give their stories, but we're trying to get that up and running again.

So it's definitely something not just the physicians, but definitely even community members and patients.

But talking about that, for donations, what type of things do you look at from people?

You know, we are really in need of even just the hospital uniforms.

Nurses uniforms and medical instruments are always, always a plus for us.

And, photographs.

Photographs are really popular, so I'm always looking to build that collection.

Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

I hope other people get to see this at some point and have some great items.

I hope you get more.

You can come back and look at them absolutely anytime.

So thank you so much.

You're welcome.