Charles K. Mills scrapbooks

Charles K. Mills was born in Falls of Schuylkill, Pennsylvania, on December 4, 1845. He attended Central High School, although a year of service in the Civil War delayed his graduation until 1864. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Medical School in 1869 and received his Ph.D. in P...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Mills, Charles K. (Charles Karsner) 1845-1931 (Creator)
Collection:Charles K. Mills Scrapbooks
Collection Number:0424
Format: Manuscript
Language:English
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Online Access:Link to finding aid
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Physical Description: 3.3 Linear feet 11 volumes
Summary: Charles K. Mills was born in Falls of Schuylkill, Pennsylvania, on December 4, 1845. He attended Central High School, although a year of service in the Civil War delayed his graduation until 1864. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Medical School in 1869 and received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the same university in 1871. He was married to Clara Elizabeth Peale in 1873, and with her had four children. Dr. Mills was a preeminent neurologist who did much to advance his field in Philadelphia, having established the nervous ward of the Philadelphia General Hospital in 1877 and founded the Philadelphia Neurological Society in 1884. He was instrumental in the reform of the city’s General Hospital and he advocated improved health and sanitary conditions in many public sectors. Dr. Mills was a professor emeritus of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught from 1877 to 1915, and a member of and frequent lecturer to many medical organizations. In 1923, he was elected president of the American Neurological Society. Dr. Mills died May 28, 1931, at the age of eighty-five. Dr. Mills’s eleven scrapbooks, 1863 to 1931, document his professional career, but contain very few materials from his educational and military careers. Letters of appointment and re-appointment to various medical organizations, as well as notices of Dr. Mills’s frequent lectures before these organizations, constitute the bulk of the volumes. Dr. Mills’s lecture transcripts and reports on his medical research are pasted throughout the scrapbooks, as are many University of Pennsylvania course schedules for the period during which he taught there. Newspaper clippings report on Dr. Mills’s involvement in several major events of his day, including the reform of the Blockley Almshouse and the post-mortem examination of Charles Guiteau, who was executed in 1882 for the assassination of President Garfield. Dr. Mills was also a poet and devoted historian of the Falls of Schuylkill, his cherished childhood home. He published several poems, mainly inspired by historical topics, many of which can be found in the scrapbooks, and wrote a book on the history of his birthplace, an excerpt of which is contained in a newspaper clipping. Dr. Mills’s obituaries are the last items in the scrapbooks.