Dittrick Museum of Medical History

Dittrick Museum
Entrance of the Dittrick Museum

James Edmonson
Curator of the Dittrick Museum

The Dittrick Museum of Medical History is part of the Dittrick Medical History Center of the College of Arts and Sciences of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. The Dittrick Medical History Center is dedicated to the study of the history of medicine through a collection of rare books, museum artifacts, archives, and images. The museum was established in 1898 by the Cleveland Medical Library Association and today functions as an interdisciplinary study center. It is housed in the Allen Memorial Medical Library on the campus of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio's University Circle.

The Dittrick started as a collection about doctors and the medical profession and has been transformed by the artifacts that the curator and founder provided in attempt to document the advancement of medical history in relation to instruments and technology. Since the foundation and initial intent of the founders the Dittrick Museum has become more analytical of mediciacl technology of the past and seeks to study the doctor-patient relationships throughout time. A prominent figure in making the Dittrick Museum was a man by the name of Dudley Peter Allen who was a surgeon in the late 19th century. In 1894 when the committee for the museum came to be, Allen was a major contributor who donated throughout his life and until he died in 1906. He steadily continued to add to the museum’s collection. After his death his wife Elizabeth Severance Allen continued to donate funds in order to build a library in her husband’s memory named the Allen Memorial Medical Library as well as a museum. In 2017, the museum serves as a study center for the College of Arts and Sciences at Case Western Reserve University as well as a museum.

Allen was born on March 25, 1852 in Kinsman, Ohio. His father Dudley Allen and grandfather Peter Allen were both doctors as well. He went on to study at Oberlin, where he received his A.B in 1875, and then onto Harvard Medical School where he received his M.D in 1879. After college he chose to return to Ohio and settled in Cleveland in 1883. Allen was one of the first physicians in Cleveland to confine his medical practice to surgery. He went on to have a successful medical career, teaching surgery at Western Reserve Medical College from 1884 to 1890, becoming the Professor of Principles & Practice of Surgery in 1893, and finally the professor emeritus of surgery in 1910 and senior professor of surgery in 1911.