INTO THE PAST
Mill Valley doctor collects medical artifacts
Dr. Toni Brayer never sought out to be a collector of medical artifacts. But, what started as her scrolling through eBay in its early days led Brayer, a longtime internal medicine doctor, on an unexpected path to uncover relics of medical history.
Now, the Mill Valley resident's collection features hundreds of pamphlets, bottles, books, tools and more — found online, in antique stores or given to her by patients — and gives a glimpse into the history of medicine and what we can glean from looking into the past.
Throughout her medical career, from the chief executive officer of Sutter Pacific Medical Foundation to the chief of staff for California Pacific Medical Center to volunteering after natural disasters, Brayer has always been inspired to help others.
Brayer volunteers at San Quentin State Prison, where she teaches GED prep to inmates weekly.
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AI was very interested in science and always wanted to work with people. And I was always interested in medical history, I read about it and enjoyed seeing all the way back to ancient medical practices, back to Hippocrates.
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What made you go to medical school at age 30?
What inspired your work at San Quentin?
A
Most of these guys are going to be out in our communities again and it's important to make sure that they have an education so that they can make it when they get released. It's really fun and a privilege to teach them. I am interested in social justice and saw in a newsletter that they were looking for volunteers. I have done that a lot in my life, just responded to things that I see. I have done a lot of medical relief work over the years and volunteer mission work. Right after Katrina, I saw a little blurb in one of my newsletters about needing doctors in New Orleans, and a day later, I was on a plane.
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What have your patients given you?
A
One guy brought me an old porcelain bed pan, probably from the 1920s or '30s. One man brought me these old pliers that may have been dental or from a doctor. And others brought bottles that had been dug up in San Francisco and other places.
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What were some of the first items you got?
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Back around the turn of the century, we were an agricultural country; only a few people lived in large cities and people were extremely isolated. Pamphlets would be sent out … it gave you medical
information and there were a lot of quackery ads in it. When you look through these,
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you get to see what women What's one of your favorite of that time were doing with finds? their families, because the
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women were really the doctors Little Chinese slippers. of their families. They didn't They are hand-embroidered have hospitals and doctors and they were for the and the kinds of things we binding of the feet of women have now. I have a couple of in China. That's also another them where the women have point of history that's so fascinating, actually written their home in particular what the remedies for their family. It's upper-class Chinese women really a great glimpse into our would have. They were crippled predecessors. but they shuffled along in
these beautiful shoes.
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How did you feel about seeing this as a woman in medicine?
evolved professionally, it all did tie together.
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How has collecting impacted how you view your medical career?
A A
I have also been always interested in the history I have always respected of women, and how that has the profession. Collecting changed over the decades, so it has made me more aware of kind of tied together that interest. how science changes and that Of course being a woman we are doing the best we have in medicine, now fortunately with the information we have it's about 50/50 in the profession now. It's definitely made me but in the late '70s when appreciate being in this golden I started medical school, that age of medicine. History does was not the case. My medical repeat itself so hopefully by school classes were just 13% looking back we can see where women. Seeing this change we have made mistakes and and seeing how women have improve the future.