Duncum (Pyecraft), Barbara
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Dr Barbara Mary Pyecraft (married name: Duncum) (1910-2001)
active: spring 1931-November 1937
Worked with Lacaille cataloguing folklore collection, including amulets. Worked with Alec Haggis on the history of cinchona. On Materia medica, and also descriptions of medical practices in Africa from accounts of ‘travellers’. 1934, travelled with Haggis to photgraph medical saints in churches in East Anglia and Devon. 1936, tasked with organising a journal abstracting service covering research topics of other WHMM staff. (“It was not long before I found myself in much the same predicament as the sorcerer’s apprentice: I was fairly drowning in data. It taught me a salutary lesson. Collecting interseitng and important information is easy. The difficulty lies in putting it to good use if one has not started with a pretty definite idea of what that use is to be.” oral history p.24.)
Studied history at university of London. Left WHMM in November 1937 to join the Institute for Research in Agricultural Engineering, Oxford. Published The development of inhalation anaesthesia (1947) based on her ~PhD thesis. Published by WHMM research series, to accompany an exhibition on the centenary of anaesthesia. ('Centenary of Anaesthesia Exhibition' 1946. WA/HMM/EX/F.1. ) Duncum gave one of the papers at the associated opening event at the RSM History of Medicine Section.
Oral history in Symons 1987, pp. 19-24
Obituaries
David Zuck, “Dr. Barbara Duncum (1910-2001)”, Bulletin of Anesthesia History. Volume 20, Issue 1, January 2002, Page 6.
Neil Adams and David Zuck, – this obituary of Barbara Duncum, seems like it quotes from John Symons 1987 even though it says Symons 1982 in the obit?)
Extract from Neil Adams and David Zuck obituary:
Barbara's first work involved the classifying of items of folklore, amulets and various objects carried as mascots. Her job was to type the descriptions called out by Mr Lacaille, a model of patience and courtesy: 'There was a brief embarrassment when we came to mascots carried in the pockets of French soldiers during World War 1. "You must excuse it, Miss Pycraft", Lacaille called "a piss-pot, gunmetal; and another". Indeed, there were many scores of them; and although many soldiers must surely have been carrying other kinds of talismans l no longer remember what they were.'
In 1934 Barbara accompanied a senior member of staff, Alec Haggis, on a tour of churches in East Anglia and Devon, listing and photographing statues, carvings, and paintings of saints with medical connections. Then in 1936 she was asked to organise and run a journal-abstracting service covering the main fields of interest to the Museum. Within a short time she found that she was being swamped with data, little of which was of interest to her colleagues, and began to feel the need for a change of direction.
B. Duncum “The Development of Hospital Design and Planning” in The Evolution of Hospitals in Britain ed F. N. L. Poynter (London: Pitman Medical Publishing, 1964, 207-210.
WA/HMM/EX/B.12. Exhibition for the centenary celebrations of the first public administration of an anaesthetic.
WAHMM/EX/F/1. 'Centenary of Anaesthesia Exhibition' Oct-Dec 1946.
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[[museum staff]] [[materia medica]] [[folk medicine]] [[scientific staff]]