Collection Description

The Walter Channing (1786-1876) papers form part of the Channing family collection and consist of personal papers, correspondence, lectures, essays, and case notes of Dr. Walter Channing, a Boston physician and pioneer in the field of obstetrics. The collection is housed in 8 manuscript boxes and 2 cased volumes.

The collection includes both personal and professional correspondence. Family members represented include his grandson Walter Channing, his brothers William Ellery and George Gibbs Channing, and his sister Lucy Channing Russel. The professional correspondence includes letters from grateful patients, letters from other physicians regarding mutual patients, and letters of appointment to various professional positions and organizations.

Personal papers include autobiographical writings, reminiscences of his career at Harvard Medical School, wills, an account book kept from 1869-1871, and a scrapbook containing diary entries made by his wife, Barbara Higginson Perkins, Mar.-Oct. 1821. Also included are manuscripts for Channing's travel memoirs, A Physician's Vacation (1856), describing his travels to Europe in 1852, and "A Sketch of a Short Tour into the Highlands of Scotland in the Autumn of 1810," later published in Reminiscences of Foreign Travel (1856).

Many of the medical lectures were delivered at the Harvard Medical School, where Channing taught from 1815 to 1847. The lectures concern various aspects of women's health, childbirth, legal medicine, and general medicine, including cholera and homeopathy. Non-medical writings and lectures cover topics including art, education, and politics. Lectures covering topics such as temperance and public health reflect Channing's personal interest in social and moral reform. Many of these non-medical lectures were delivered to organizations, including the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, and the Harvard Temperance Society.

The case notes include Channing's midwifery casebook (and a photocopy for use in the Reading Room), kept from 1811-1822, which contains notes on approximately 195 cases attended by Channing. The collection also contains notes on several additional midwifery and general medicine cases, many of which are undated and/or fragmentary. In general, Channing's notes are very detailed and include names and ages of patients, dates of treatment, and relevant medical history. For childbirth cases, Channing also describes the sex of the child delivered and general notes on the delivery, including the progression of labor and the presentation of the fetus.