Health and Medicine

“Social” scale of patient progress

“Social” scale of patient progress used to evaluate participants in the University of Minnesota’s Transsexual Research Project. Donald W. Hastings, MD, and Colin Markland, MD, “Post-Surgical Adjustment of Twenty-Five Transsexuals (Male-to-Female) in the University of Minnesota Study,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 7, no. 4 (1978), 332. From the Transgender Informational Files, 1941–2014, in the Transgender Research Guide (Tretter-357), Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies, University of Minnesota.

"Economic" scale of patient progress

“Economic” scale of patient progress used to evaluate participants in the University of Minnesota’s Transsexual Research Project. Donald W. Hastings, MD, and Colin Markland, MD, “Post-Surgical Adjustment of Twenty-Five Transsexuals (Male-to-Female) in the University of Minnesota Study,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 7, no. 4 (1978), 330. From the Transgender Informational Files, 1941–2014, in the Transgender Research Guide (Tretter-357), Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies, University of Minnesota.

Dr. Donald W. Hastings

Dr. Donald W. Hastings, 1958. University Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries, Minneapolis.

Transsexual Research Project news articles

Articles announcing the start of the University of Minnesota’s Transsexual Research Project. Minneapolis Tribune, December 18, 1966, page 1.

Transsexual Research Project

The University of Minnesota performed sex-reassignment surgeries (as they were called at the time) on twenty-five trans women from 1966 to the mid 1970s as part of a program called the Transsexual Research Project. Helmed by psychiatrist Donald W. Hastings and surgeon Colin Markland, the project sought to alleviate the gender dysphoria of its patients through hormone treatment, psychotherapy, and surgery. At the same time, it tried to reform them into middle-class, heterosexual, conventionally respectable members of American society. Fueled by a complex mix of empathy, sensationalized concern, and pity, the project established Minnesota as the center of trans life it remains today.

Cover of Food Is Medicine

The cover of Food Is Medicine, by Winona LaDuke with Sarah Alexander. The book was published in 2004 by the White Earth Land Recovery Project and Honor the Earth.

MN90: The Genesis of Artist George Morrison

When George Morrison was ten, he was living away from his Chippewa (Ojibwe) community in Minnesota’s Arrowhead, convalescing in a children’s hospital and working on his art. That child became one of America’s great post-war abstract artists. MN90's Britt Aamodt reports.

Uprising at St. Peter State Hospital, 1969

Twin News reporter Richard Albers visits St. Peter State Hospital after a patient uprising. The clip includes an interview with Dr. Carl Schwarz, the hospital's medical director. Filmed on September 9, 1969.

St. Peter State Hospital Museum

St. Peter State Hospital Museum, July 24, 2020. The building served as the administrative center of the Minnesota Hospital of the Insane between 1866 and 1893, at which point the institution was renamed St. Peter State Hospital. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons user Myotus, July 24, 2020. CC BY-SA 4.0

Aerial view of St Peter State Hospital

Aerial view of St Peter State Hospital (St. Peter, Minnesota), April 13, 1954. Photo by the Minneapolis Star Journal–Tribune.

Gale Family Library