'Tis the Season: a spirited little exhibit for the holidays

‘Tis the Season is on view in the 1st floor lobby/research commons and 4th floor reading room of the UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library.

Items range from our 1843 handwritten letter from Santa Claus to a little girl who has been good to take her medicine and “have the leeches on”; Santa used to advertise an alcohol-morphine-vegetable patent medicine for coughs, colds, and pretty much anything else; medicinal whiskey during the Prohibition (with a curious seasonal tie-in); Christmas Seal stamps and posters (to promote donations for tuberculosis research and treatment from the 1930s and 1940s); and, if there’s time to cradle them, several baby record books with entries for Christmas or Hannukah.