Newark’s Sherlock Holmes? Dr. Harrison Martland - Newark Public Library

Newark’s Sherlock Holmes? Dr. Harrison Martland

Tuesday, May 24, 2022
6:00 PM
Main Library–Centennial Hall
And Live Via Zoom or Facebook Live

A Program Sponsored by the Newark History Society, Newark Public Library, and Medical History Society of New Jersey.

Presenter: Bob Vietrogoski, Special Collections Librarian, Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences–Newark campus

Newark Public Library, Centennial Hall, 5 Washington Street, Newark
Open to the public at no charge |
Free parking available at Bears & Eagles Stadium Parking Garage–Essex County Lot–entrance on Bridge Street.

Also live-streamed via Zoom webinar. Register in advance here.

Newark native Dr. Harrison Martland (1883-1954) served as pathologist at Newark City Hospital (after 1908) and as the first Medical Examiner of Essex County (after 1927). In these positions, he conducted groundbreaking research on radiation poisoning in the case of the “Radium Girls,” and on “punch-drunk” syndrome in boxers. For his investigations and deductions in pathology and forensics, Martland was regarded by his colleagues as a modern-day Sherlock Holmes. But Martland himself was a Sherlock Holmes fan, and once dismissed the comparison in a memorably gruesome demonstration.

Bob Vietrogoski is the Special Collections librarian in the History of Medicine at George F. Smith Library of the Health Sciences, Rutgers University Libraries, on the Newark campus of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences. Please join this presentation to learn about Dr. Martland’s life, his influence on Newark and New Jersey medicine, his work in human radiobiology and what is now known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and finally, the connections between doctors such as Martland and the great detective Sherlock Holmes.

Click here to view the flier.