Winner of 2010 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine

Chailee Mann-Stadt, a third-year MD student in the UNC School of Medicine, is the winner of the third annual McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine. Sponsored by the Bullitt History of Medicine Club, the essay competition carries a $500 prize that is funded by UNC alumni S. Gregory Boyd (MD '03, JD '04) and Laura Boyd (JD '02). The award honors Dr. William McLendon and Dr. Colin Thomas, Jr. and recognizes scholarly excellence in the history of the health sciences.

Chailee's winning essay was entitled, "Drs. Dewey and Milligan: Early Women in American Medicine," and she will be delivering a presentation to the Bullitt Club during the lecture series for 2010-11.

The essay competition is open to all UNC-Chapel Hill students in the health sciences: medicine, pharmacy, public health, dentistry, nursing, and allied health sciences. The next deadline for submissions is April 1, 2011; for further information, please see the competition guidelines.

:: Greg and Laura Boyd live in New York City, where he is an attorney with Davis & Gilbert LLP and she is professional photographer. Greg considers the history of medicine to be one of the most important aspects of his medical education and Drs. McClendon and Thomas among the best role models possible. They both strongly believe that the history of medicine represents a critical perspective and focus on the art of medicine that are necessary for training the best possible physicians, health care executives, and policy makers.

:: Dr. William W. McLendon served from 1973-1995 at UNC as Director of the Hospital Clinical Laboratories and as Professor and Vice-Chair of Pathology. Since his retirement in 1995 he has been Professor Emeritus of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. An MD graduate of UNC in 1956, he and Bob Whitlock (MD '57) were the student co-founders in 1954 of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club. Dr. McLendon is the co-author, along with the late Drs. William Blythe and Floyd Denny, of the recently published Bettering the Health of the People: W. Reece Berryhill, the UNC School of Medicine, and the North Carolina Good Health Movement.

:: Dr. Colin G. Thomas, Jr. joined the faculty of the UNC School of Medicine in 1952, and is currently Byah Thomason-Sanford Doxey Professor of Surgery. From 1966-1984 he served as Chair of the Department of Surgery, and from 1984-1989 as Chief of the Division of General Surgery. Dr. Thomas was one of the early faculty members of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club, and is the co-author, along with Mary Jane Kagarise, of the 1997 history, Legends and Legacies: A Look Inside: Four Decades of Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1952-1993.

:: For more information on the Bullitt Club and mp3 recordings of past lectures, please visit the Bullitt Club website.

Dr. Benson Reid Wilcox, UNC Heart Surgeon, Dies at 77

Benson Reid Wilcox, M.D., a pediatric heart surgeon who served 29 years as chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, died May 11, 2010, at his home after a courageous battle with brain cancer. He was 77.

Dr. Wilcox served as chief of cardiothoracic surgery at UNC from 1969 to 1998. During that period, which was a time of dramatic advances in heart and lung surgery, the UNC hospital began offering coronary artery surgery, heart and lung transplantation, successful surgery for congenital heart defects in newborn infants, and a comprehensive program for the treatment of lung and esophageal cancer.

Dr. Wilcox was primarily a pediatric heart surgeon whose specialties were congenital heart disease, pediatric cardiac morphology, pediatric chest disease, and pulmonary circulation. He was a co-author of three books and an author of numerous medical journal articles and book chapters. He held important leadership posts in national medical organizations and was especially interested in the training of future surgeons.

Dr. Wilcox, known as Ben, was born May 26, 1932, in Charlotte, N.C., the son of James Simpson Wilcox and Louisa Reid Wilcox. He was raised in Charlotte and graduated from the Darlington School in Rome, Ga., in 1949. He was named 1997 Distinguished Alumnus of the Darlington School.

He earned an A.B. in history from the University of North Carolina in 1953 and an M.D. from the UNC School of Medicine in 1957. As an undergraduate at UNC, he was president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and Rex of the Order of Gimghoul. At the UNC medical school, he was president of his class and was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society in 1957.

While a medical student in 1956, Dr. Wilcox helped to conduct laboratory research on the application of newly developed heart-lung machines. A heart-lung machine was first used in the operating room at UNC in April 1957, beginning the era of open heart surgery at North Carolina Memorial Hospital.

After serving as a surgery resident at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis (1957-1959) and North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill (1959-1960), he spent two years as a surgical clinical associate at the National Heart Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. He then returned to UNC as chief resident in cardiovascular and thoracic surgery (1962-63) and as chief resident in surgery (1963-64).

He joined the UNC Department of Surgery faculty in 1964 and was appointed as chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery in 1969 and as a full professor in 1971. He was named a Markle Scholar in Academic Medicine in 1967. After he retired as chief of cardiothoracic surgery, Dr. Wilcox remained on the UNC medical school faculty as Professor of Surgery from 1998 until his death.

Dr. Wilcox also served the university in a number of other capacities. He was a member of the Selection Committee for the North Carolina Fellows Program; the UNC Faculty Committee on Athletics, serving as chairman from 1977 to 1985; and the Morehead Foundation’s Central Selection Committee, serving as chairman from 1989 to 1992. He was on the university’s Faculty Council and other campus-wide committees. He was a member of the executive committee of the Atlantic Coast Conference from 1978 to 1982 and was its president from 1980 to 1981. He also served on the board of directors of the Ronald McDonald House in Chapel Hill from 1981 to 1999.

He held leadership positions in prestigious professional organizations, including chairman of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, chairman of the Advisory Council for Cardiothoracic Surgery of the American College of Surgeons, president of the Nathan A. Womack Surgical Society, and president of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the largest society of thoracic surgeons in the world. He received the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons in 2003.

He had a strong interest in graduate medical education, the training of resident physicians. He was instrumental in establishing the Thoracic Surgery Directors Association (TSDA) which was formed to improve cardiothoracic surgery training and education for doctors, and whose members are directors of cardiothoracic surgery residency programs across the United States. From 1985 to 1987, he served as president of TSDA. In 2009, the TSDA honored him by establishing the Benson Wilcox Award for Best Resident Paper, to be presented each year at The Society of Thoracic Surgeons' annual meeting for the best scientific abstract submitted by a cardiothoracic surgery resident.

He also was on the Board of Directors of the National Resident Matching Program from 1998 to 2007, serving as president from 2001 to 2002. He was a member of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s Residency Review Committee for Thoracic Surgery (1999-2005); the American College of Surgeons’ Graduate Medical Education Committee (1993-2001); and a member of the Committee on Graduate Education for the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (1992-2001).

In 1980, Dr. Wilcox spent time during a sabbatical at Royal Brompton National Heart and Lung Hospital in London, beginning a collaboration with Robert H. Anderson, M.D., a pediatric morphologist at Royal Brompton. After that visit, he and Dr. Anderson worked together on many research projects and publications, including the book Surgical Anatomy of the Heart (Raven Press, 3rd edition, 2004). The two physicians established a program that for many years enabled UNC cardiothoracic surgery residents to spend time in London studying with Dr. Anderson and attending rounds with him. Dr. Anderson also visited UNC.

Dr. Wilcox also was co-author of Atlas of the Heart (Gower Medical Publishing, 1988); and a co-editor of Diagnostic Atlas of the Heart (Raven Press, 1994). He was an author of more than 100 scientific and clinical articles that were published in medical journals.

After operating on many ill children, Dr. Wilcox had the idea of starting a support group for families of children who are undergoing heart surgery. The Carolina Parent Network, begun in 1986 and directed by Maggie Morris for many years, enables parents of children who are facing heart surgery at UNC to talk to parents who have already had the experience, and it also educates families about what to expect before, during and after surgery.

Dr. Wilcox loved history, especially medical history. As a medical student at UNC, he helped found the Bullitt Club for the study of the history of medicine. As a faculty member, he began collecting old and rare books about the history of medicine, particularly books about thoracic surgery and the specialties that preceded it. In 1984, he began presenting a rare book to the UNC Health Sciences Library each year in honor of his chief resident. In 1998 and 1999, he donated most of his medical book collection to the library. Since then the Benson Reid Wilcox Collection has grown to more than 1,400 books, journals, reprints and other items. He served on the board of visitors for the UNC Health Sciences Library.

"Dr. Wilcox' contributions to the historical collections at the Health Sciences Library were truly remarkable in both variety and scope. An avid and erudite bibliophile, he thrilled in the hunt for significant texts, and had a deep appreciation for the role of history in the theory and practice of medicine," said Daniel Smith, special collections librarian for the UNC Health Sciences Library.

Dr. Wilcox is survived by his wife, Patsy Davis, and by his four children: Adelaide W. King and her husband, Ruffin, of Charlottesville, Va.; Sandra W. Conway and her husband, Peter, of Charlotte, N.C.; Melissa W. Bond and her husband, Brett, of Charlotte; and Reid Wilcox and his wife, Suzanne, of Greensboro, N.C. He is also survived by 11 grandchildren, Alexandra and Ruffin King; Peter, Ben and Adelaide Conway; Brett, Lucinda and Reid Bond; and Ben, Henry and Ellie Wilcox. He is also survived by two stepdaughters, Harriet Kendall and Julia Klein; a brother, Bob Wilcox; two sisters-in-law, Dede Thompson and Louise Wilcox, and a brother-in-law Allan Davis. He was predeceased by his parents and by his brother Jim Wilcox.

A memorial service will be held Friday, May 14, at 2 p.m. in Gerrard Hall on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Gerrard Hall is on Cameron Avenue, across from the Old Well, between Memorial Hall and the South Building.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests memorial gifts to the TSDA Benson R. Wilcox Award. Checks can be made to the Thoracic Surgery Directors Association and mailed to Michael R. Mill, M.D., Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, CB#7065, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599-7065.

Note: See related Carolina Curator posts: Dr. Benson Wilcox: Surgeon, Scholar, and Benefactor and A Hearty Valentine's Greeting.

Bullitt History of Medicine Club Lecture Series Online

The entire 2009-10 lecture series for the Bullitt History of Medicine Club is now accessible online. Lectures have been digitally recorded since September 2008, and are available as mp3s on the Bullitt Club web site and as podcasts via Carolina on iTunes (navigate to School of Medicine section or click direct link). A listing of lectures for 2008-9 and 2009-10 follows below. For further information on the activities of the Bullitt Club, visit the organization's web site.

2009-2010 Bullitt Club Lectures

Dr. Carol Otey, Associate Professor of Cell & Developmental Biology, UNC School of Medicine
Oral Contraception: From Ancient Plant Extracts to the Birth of the Pill
:: April 22, 2010 [download mp3 -- 26 MB -- 52:25]

Dr. Margaret Humphreys, Josiah Charles Trent Professor in the History of Medicine, Duke University
The South's Secret Weapons: Disease, Environment and the Civil War
:: March 30, 2010 [download mp3 -- 30 MB -- 1:03:27]

Dr. Alexander Toledo, Assistant Professor of Surgery, UNC School of Medicine
John Collins Warren: "Gentlemen, This Is No Humbug"
:: February 18, 2010 [download mp3 -- 24 MB -- 51:02]

Chris Dibble, MD/PhD student, UNC School of Medicine
Winner of 2009 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine
The Dead Ringer: Medicine, Poe, and the Fear of Premature Burial
:: December 10, 2009 [download mp3 -- 22 MB -- 46:25]

Dr. Michael McVaugh, Professor Emeritus of History, UNC
Arabic into Latin (Or, Why Medical Schools Got Started)
:: November 10, 2009 [download mp3 -- 31 MB -- 1:06:12]

Dr. Janna Dieckmann, Clinical Associate Professor of Nursing, UNC School of Nursing
Home-Visiting by Nurses, Physicians, and Physical Therapists in North Carolina, 1950-1965
:: October 19, 2009 [download mp3 -- 44 MB -- 47:16]

Dr. Barbara Clowse, Historian and Author
Dr. Frances Sage Bradley: Her Biographer's Dilemma
:: September 29, 2009 [download mp3 -- 42 MB -- 44:38]

Dr. Philip Klemmer, Professor of Medicine, UNC School of Medicine
Jack London's Mysterious Malady
:: September 15, 2009 [download mp3 -- 42 MB -- 44:35]


2008-2009 Bullitt Club Lectures

Dr. Sue Estroff, Professor of Social Medicine, UNC School of Medicine
Blemished Bodies and Persons: An Historical Perspective on Stigma
:: April 14, 2009 [download mp3 -- 75 MB -- 1:20:15]

Lisa Wiese, Second-Year Medical Student, UNC School of Medicine
Washington, D.C.: Understanding the Poverty-Health Link from an Historical Lens
:: April 6, 2009 [download mp3 -- 48 MB -- 51:22]

Dr. Todd Savitt, Professor of Medical Humanities, East Carolina University
Entering a "White" Profession: Black Physicians in 19th- and 20th-Century America
:: February 10, 2009 [download mp3 -- 59 MB -- 1:03:22]

Dr. Aldo Rustioni, Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, UNC School of Medicine
The Neuron Doctrine of 1891 and the 1906 Nobel Award for Physiology or Medicine
:: January 21, 2009 [download mp3 -- 55 MB -- 59:32]

Dr. Vanessa Northrington Gamble, University Professor of Medical Humanities, George Washington University
"Without Health and Long Life All Else Fails": A History of African-American Efforts to Eliminate Racial Disparities in Health and Health Care
:: December 10, 2008 [download mp3 -- 60 MB -- 1:04:24]

Chris Dibble, MD/PhD Student, UNC School of Medicine
Winner of 2008 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine
Edward Livingston Trudeau: The First American Physician-Scientist and the Fight against Tuberculosis
:: November 17, 2008 [download mp3 -- 49 MB -- 52:38]

Dr. Elizabeth Fenn, Associate Professor of History, Duke University
Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82
:: October 21, 2008 [download mp3 -- 61 MB -- 1:05:18]

Wendy Moore, Freelance Journalist and Author (England)
The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery
:: September 23, 2008 [download mp3 -- 58 MB -- 1:02:02]

Ansley Herring Wegner, Research Historian, North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryPhantom Pain: North Carolina's Artificial Limbs Program for Confederate Amputees
:: September 17, 2008 [download mp3 -- 34 MB -- 36:32]

Note: Bullitt Club lecturers maintain individual copyright in online presentations.

Bullitt Club Lecture on History of Oral Contraception

The last meeting of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club for 2009-10 will be Thursday, April 22, 2010 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us from 12-1pm for light refreshments and lecture. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Carol Otey, Associate Professor of Cell and and Molecular Biology at UNC, will be presenting a lecture entitled, "Oral Contraception: From Ancient Plant Extracts to the Birth of the Pill."

The evolution of contraceptive practices from ancient times to the present will be discussed, within the context of the legal and social forces at work in human populations during different historical periods. The emphasis will be on plant-based contraception, including ancient herbal medicines, the development of rubber-based barrier methods (starting from raw plant sap), and the genesis of birth control pills in plant-based organic compounds.

Dr. Otey earned degrees in cell biology at Trinity University (BS) and UCLA (PhD), before pursuing post-doctoral work at UNC. She worked as Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia from 1993-1998, and joined the UNC faculty in 1998.

For further information about the Bullitt Club, including mp3 recordings of past lectures, please visit the organization's web site.

Bullitt Club Lecture: "The South's Secret Weapons: Disease, Environment, and the Civil War"

The next meeting of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club will be Tuesday, March 30, 2010 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us at 5:30pm for light refreshments followed by the lecture at 6pm. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Margaret Humphreys, the Josiah Charles Trent Professor in the History of Medicine at Duke University, will be presenting a lecture entitled, "The South's Secret Weapons: Disease, Environment, and the Civil War."

Dr. Humphreys received her PhD in the History of Science (1983) and MD (1987) from Harvard University. She is the author of Yellow Fever and the South (1992) and Malaria: Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States (2001), books that explore the tropical disease environment of the American South, and its role in the national public health effort. She teaches the history of medicine, public health, and biology at Duke University, where she also edits the Journal of the History of Medicine. Her current research concerns the impact of the Civil War on American Medicine. The first book to emerge from that project, Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War, appeared in 2008.

For further information about the Bullitt Club, including the schedule for 2009-10 and mp3 recordings of past lectures, please visit the Bullitt web site.

Bullitt Club Lecture on John Collins Warren: "Gentlemen, This Is No Humbug"

The Bullitt History of Medicine Club will be meeting Thursday, February 18, 2010 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us from 12 to 1pm for light refreshments and lecture. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Alexander Toledo, Assistant Professor of Surgery at UNC, will be speaking on: "John Collins Warren: 'Gentlemen, This Is No Humbug.'"

Dr. Warren was one of the great figures of American surgery of the nineteenth century. This lecture will focus on the pedigree, career, and contributions of Warren, with special consideration for the birth of anesthesia.

Dr. Toledo works in the Division of Abdominal Transplant Surgery in the UNC Department of Surgery. He received his undergraduate and medical education at the University of Michigan, followed by a residency in general surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center and a fellowship in transplant at Northwestern University. Among his specialties are solid organ transplant, pediatric transplant, living-related organ donation, and adult and pediatric intestinal transplant.

For further information about the Bullitt Club, including the schedule for 2009-10 and mp3 recordings of past lectures, please visit the organization's web site.

Image source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Scene above is believed to be a re-enactment of the demonstration of ether anesthesia by W.T.G. Morton on October 16, 1846. Mr. Holman with surgeons: John Mason Warren, George Hayward, Solomon D. Townsend, John Collins Warren and James Johnson around man on operating table.

Bullitt Club Lecture on the History of Pain Medicine

The next meeting of UNC's Bullitt History of Medicine Club will be Tuesday, January 19, 2009 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us at 5:30pm for light refreshments followed by the lecture at 6pm. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Keith Wailoo, Professor of History at Rutgers, will be presenting a lecture entitled, "Over-Prescribed / Under-Medicated: The History and Cultural Politics of Pain Medicine in America."

Dr. Wailoo is Director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity and Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University. During 2009-10 he is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Princeton University. His work focuses principally on health care politics, the ethnic and racial relations of medicine, and the ways scientific and technological understandings have interacted with politics, society, and culture to shape health experiences, disease disparities, and social responses to disease in the 20th century and into the 21st century.

Dr. Wailoo is also an award-winning author and editor of several books, including The Troubled Dream of Genetic Medicine: Ethnicity and Innovation in Tay-Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis, and Sickle Cell Disease (2006), A Death Retold: Jesica Santillan, The Bungled Transplant, and Paradoxes of Medical Citizenship (2006), Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health (2001), and Drawing Blood: Technology and Disease Identity in Twentieth-Century America (1997).

For further information about the Bullitt Club, including the schedule for 2009-10 and mp3 recordings of past lectures, please visit the web site.

Where the Bullitt Club Got Its Name

The namesake for the Bullitt History of Medicine Club is, of course, Dr. James Bell Bullitt [1874-1964]. Dr. Bullitt served as professor of pathology at the UNC School of Medicine from 1913-1947, and as shown in the photograph here, was fond of pipe-smoking and the whittler's craft, something he practiced often, particularly during meetings.

Dr. Bullitt was well known to Dr. John Graham, who first met him in 1939 while a second-year medical student at UNC. As UNC only had a two-year program at that time, Dr. Graham's medical degree was earned at Cornell University in 1942. He joined the faculty at UNC in 1946 as an instructor in pathology, and spent his entire illustrious career at the university, being instrumental in establishing a genetics curriculum which laid the groundwork for today's Carolina Center for Genome Sciences. Dr. Graham retired in 1985 as Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and was an internationally recognized expert in blood coagulation, genetics, and human population dynamics.

In 1985, Dr. Graham was also named the School of Medicine's first Norma Berryhill Distinguished Lecturer. (The Berryhill lectures have been compiled into two volumes; the first collection, covering 1985-1999, will be made available online shortly, and the second, covering 2000-2008, is now online).

In 2002, Dr. Graham published the book, Memories and Reflections: Academic Medicine, 1936-2000. It contains 29 fascinating essays, including two biographical pieces on Dr. Bullitt. Entitled James Bell Bullitt, M.D., 1874-1964: A University of North Carolina Giant and The James Bell Bullitt Enigma: A Case of Metaphorical Siamese Twins, these have been added to the Bullitt Club web site for those interested in learning more about the man who was referred to as "Gentleman Jim" and whose creed was mens sana in corpore sano (a sound mind in a sound body). His method of examining medical students' knowledge of histological slides was governed by strict rules and led to what Graham describes as "Bullitt-English." Exams lasted exactly 30 minutes, and no more than 50 words could be used to describe both tissue and diagnosis; anyone exceeding either limit risked an "F."

2010 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine

The Bullitt History of Medicine Club is pleased to announce the 2010 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine, which is open to all UNC-Chapel Hill students in the health sciences.

Purpose: To encourage interest and recognize scholarship in the history of medicine, the McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine, with a prize of $500, will be given annually for the best unpublished essay on an historical topic in the health sciences.

Eligibility: Any current medical, dental, pharmacy, nursing, public health, or allied health sciences student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill may submit an essay. Prior winners are not eligible.

Format: The essay may address any aspect of the history of the health sciences and should be 3000-5000 words in length.

Judging: Faculty advisors of the Bullitt History of Medicine of Club will assemble a team of faculty members from various departments to judge the scholarship and quality of the submissions. The winner will be encouraged to present the essay at a program of the Bullitt Club.

Submissions: Entries must be submitted on or before April 1, 2010. Entries should be sent electronically via email attachment to Dr. Elizabeth Dreesen.

:: DR. WILLIAM W. MCLENDON served from 1973-1995 at UNC as Director of the Hospital Clinical Laboratories and as Professor and Vice-Chair of Pathology. Since his retirement in 1995 he has been Professor Emeritus of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. An MD graduate of UNC in 1956, he and Bob Whitlock (MD '57) were the student co-founders in 1954 of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club. Dr. McLendon is the co-author, along with the late Drs. William Blythe and Floyd Denny, of the recently published Bettering the Health of the People: W. Reece Berryhill, the UNC School of Medicine, and the North Carolina Good Health Movement.

:: DR. COLIN G. THOMAS, JR. joined the faculty of the UNC School of Medicine in 1952, and is currently Byah Thomason-Sanford Doxey Professor of Surgery. From 1966-1984 he served as Chair of the Department of Surgery, and from 1984-1989 as Chief of the Division of General Surgery. Dr. Thomas was one of the early faculty members of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club, and is the co-author, along with Mary Jane Kagarise, of the 1997 history, Legends and Legacies: A Look Inside: Four Decades of Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1952-1993.

Bullitt Club Lecture on the Fear of Premature Burial

The Bullitt History of Medicine Club will be meeting Thursday, December 10, 2009 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us from 12 to 1pm for light refreshments and lecture. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Chris Dibble, MD/PhD student at UNC, will be speaking on "The Dead Ringer: Medicine, Poe, and the Fear of Premature Burial."

Chris' presentation is based on his winning entry for the 2009 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine, an essay competition sponsored by the Bullitt History of Medicine Club, which honors Dr. William McLendon and Dr. Colin Thomas, Jr. and recognizes scholarly excellence in the history of the health sciences.

The essay competition is now accepting submissions for the current academic year, and is open to all UNC-Chapel Hill students in the health sciences: medicine, pharmacy, public health, dentistry, nursing, and allied health sciences. The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2010. For further information, please see the competition guidelines.

For further information about the Bullitt Club, including the schedule for 2009-10 and mp3 recordings of past lectures, please visit the Bullitt web site.

Note: The image above is a 1848 daguerreotype in the photograph collection of the American Antiquarian Society.

Bullitt Club Lecture on Medieval Medical Education

The next meeting of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club will be Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us at 5:30pm for light refreshments followed by the lecture at 6pm. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Michael McVaugh, Professor Emeritus of History at UNC, will be presenting a lecture entitled, "Arabic into Latin (Or, Why Medical Schools Got Started)."

In medieval Europe medicine was a craft, not a subject that could be studied from books, until the twelfth century, when Latins discovered in Arabic manuscripts this new source for medicine knowledge, translated them into their own language, and made them the basis for a new invention, the medical school, with a set curriculum, examinations, and degrees.

Dr. McVaugh received his education at Harvard (AB, 1960) and Princeton (PhD, 1965). He has been on the UNC-Chapel Hill faculty since 1964 and is presently William Smith Wells Professor of History (Emeritus). His books include Medicine before the Plague: Practitioners and Their Patients in the Crown of Aragon, 1285-1345 (Cambridge, 1993), The Rational Surgery of the Middle Ages (Florence, 2006), and he is a member of the editorial commission for the Arnaldi de Villanova Opera Medica Omnia (12 vols. published since 1975).

For further information about the Bullitt Club, including the schedule for 2009-10 and mp3 recordings of past lectures, please visit the organization's web site.

Bullitt Club Lecture on Home-Visiting by Health Professionals

The Bullitt History of Medicine Club will be meeting Monday, October 19, 2009 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us from 12 to 1pm for light refreshments and lecture. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Janna Dieckmann, Clinical Associate Professor of Nursing, will be speaking on "Home-Visiting by Nurses, Physicians, and Physical Therapists in North Carolina, 1950-1965."

Dr. Dieckmann received her education at the College of Wooster (BA), Case Western Reserve University (BSN), and the University of Pennsylvania (MSN and PhD). She has been on the faculty at the UNC School of Nursing since 1998, and has taught previously at La Salle University, Villanova University, Temple University, and the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Caring for the Chronically Ill: Philadelphia, 1945-1965, and in 2007 was awarded The Carolina Women’s Leadership Council Mentoring Award for Faculty-to-Faculty Mentoring at UNC. In addition, Dr. Dieckmann has extensive experience in clinical practice, particularly in community health.

For further information about the Bullitt Club, including the schedule for 2009-10 and mp3 recordings of past lectures, visit the organization's web site.

Bullitt Club Lecture on Dr. Frances Sage Bradley

The Bullitt History of Medicine Club will be meeting Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us from 12 to 1pm for light refreshments and lecture. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Barbara Clowse, historian and author, will be speaking on "Dr. Frances Sage Bradley: Her Biographer's Dilemma."

Dr. Bradley [1862-1949] was a social activist and reformer who graduated from Cornell Medical School in 1899. For the next decades she advocated simple, cheap means to save infants and their mothers from death and increase odds that school age children would become healthy, productive adults. Writing the life story of this feisty, formidable woman presents challenges for even an experienced biographer.

Dr. Clowse received her education at Duke (AB) and UNC-Chapel Hill (MA, PhD), and was a professor at several institutions, including NC A&T, NC School of the Arts, UNC-Chapel Hill, Salem College, Guilford College, and UNC-Greensboro. She is the author of the following books: Ralph McGill: A Biography; Women, Decision Making, and the Future; Brainpower for the Cold War: The Sputnik Crisis and National Defense Education Act of 1958; and A Social Gospel For the 21st Century.

For further information about the Bullitt Club, please visit the organization's web site.

Bullitt Club & Trent Society Speakers for 2009-10

The Bullitt History of Medicine Club sponsors a collaborative series of monthly evening meetings with the Trent History of Medicine Society (alternating between UNC and Duke), as well as a series of noon meetings (at UNC). Both evening and noon schedules are provided below. All meetings are free and open to the public.

All UNC events will be held in the Fifth Floor Conference Room (#527), UNC Health Sciences Library. All Duke events will be held in the History of Medicine Reading Room (#102), Duke Medical Center Library.

For more information and directions, see the Bullitt Club web site. Bullitt lectures are also available as mp3s on the web site and via iTunes. Please note that the schedule is subject to change; check the web site for up-to-date information on Bullitt events.

Bullitt / Trent Evening Lectures

:: Dr. Philip Klemmer, Professor of Medicine, UNC School of Medicine
Jack London's Mysterious Malady
[UNC] September 15, 2009 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

:: Dr. Gordon Klintworth, Wadsworth Research Professor, Ophthalmology, Duke University
The Lady in America’s Most Famous Painting
[Duke] October 13, 2009 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

:: Dr. Michael McVaugh, Professor Emeritus of History, UNC
Arabic into Latin (Or, Why Medical Schools Got Started)
[UNC] November 10, 2009 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

:: Dr. Edward C. Halperin, Dean, School of Medicine, University of Louisville
Historical Problems Posed by the 100th Anniversary of Flexner’s Report on Medical Education
[Duke] December 8, 2009 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

:: Dr. Keith Wailoo, Professor of History, Rutgers University
Title to be announced.
[UNC] January 19, 2010 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

:: Dr. H. Michael Jones, Professor of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, UNC School of Medicine
Poverty, Pellagra, and the Tale of a Tar Heel
[Duke] February 9, 2010 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

:: Dr. Margaret Humphreys, Josiah Charles Trent Professor in the History of Medicine, Duke University
The South's Secret Weapons: Disease, Environment and the Civil War
[UNC] March 30, 2010 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

:: Dr. William Bradford, Professor of Pathology, Duke University
Pathology at Duke As I Remember It
[Duke] April 13, 2010 — Tuesday, 5:30pm

Bullitt Noontime Lectures

:: Dr. Barbara Clowse, Historian and Author
Dr. Frances Sage Bradley: Her Biographer's Dilemmas
[UNC] September 29, 2009 — Tuesday, 12-1pm

:: Dr. Janna Dieckmann, Associate Professor of Nursing, UNC School of Nursing
Home-Visiting by Nurses, Physicians, and Physical Therapists in North Carolina, 1950-1965
[UNC] October 19, 2009 — Monday , 12-1pm

:: Chris Dibble, MD/PhD student, UNC School of Medicine; Winner of 2009 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine
The Dead Ringer: Medicine, Poe, and the Fear of Premature Burial
[UNC] December 10, 2009 — Thursday, 12-1pm

:: Dr. Alexander Toledo, Assistant Professor of Surgery, UNC School of Medicine
Title to be announced.
[UNC] February 18, 2010 — Thursday, 12-1pm

:: Dr. Carol Otey, Associate Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology, UNC School of Medicine
Oral Contraception: From Ancient Plant Extracts to the Birth of the Pill
[UNC] April 22, 2010 — Thursday, 12-1pm

Bullitt Club Lecture on Jack London

The first joint meeting of 2009-10 for UNC's Bullitt History of Medicine Club and Duke's Trent History of Medicine Society will be Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us at 5:30pm for light refreshments followed by the lecture at 6pm. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Philip Klemmer, Professor of Medicine at UNC, will be presenting a lecture entitled, "Jack London's Mysterious Malady." The lecture will present an analysis of the possible cause of Jack London's death from uremia at age 40 based on his own writing and life events on the cruise of the Snark in the South Pacific.

Dr. Klemmer received his education at Gettysburg College (BA) and Temple University Medical School (MD). After residencies at UNC and an early stint on the faculty, Dr. Klemmer served 18 years in private practice before rejoining the UNC faculty, where he has been Professor of Medicine since 1988.

For further information about the Bullitt Club, please visit the organization's web site.

Winner of 2009 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine

Chris Dibble, a third-year MD/PhD student in the UNC School of Medicine, is the winner of the second annual McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine essay competition sponsored by the Bullitt History of Medicine Club. Funded by UNC alumni S. Gregory Boyd (MD '03, JD '04) and Laura Boyd (JD '02), the McLendon-Thomas Award honors Dr. William McLendon and Dr. Colin Thomas, Jr. and recognizes scholarly excellence in the history of health sciences.

Chris' winning essay was entitled, "The Dead Ringer: Medicine, Poe, and the Fear of Premature Burial," and he will be delivering a presentation to the Bullitt Club on December 10, 2009. Chris was also the winner of the inaugural McLendon-Thomas Award for his paper on Edward Trudeau Livingston's work on tuberculosis; a recording of his Bullitt lecture on Livingston is available online, along with all other lectures for 2008-9.

The essay competition is now accepting submissions for the current academic year, and is open to all UNC-Chapel Hill students in the health sciences: medicine, pharmacy, public health, dentistry, nursing, and allied health sciences. The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2010. For further information, please see the competition guidelines.

:: Greg and Laura Boyd live in New York City, where he is an attorney with Davis & Gilbert LLP and she is a legal recruiter with SJL Attorney Search. Greg considers the history of medicine to be one of the most important aspects of his medical education and and Drs. McClendon and Thomas among the best role models possible. They both strongly believe that the history of medicine represents a critical perspective and focus on the art of medicine that are necessary for training the best possible physicians, health care executives, and policy makers.

:: Dr. William W. McLendon served from 1973-1995 at UNC as Director of the Hospital Clinical Laboratories and as Professor and Vice-Chair of Pathology. Since his retirement in 1995 he has been Professor Emeritus of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. An MD graduate of UNC in 1956, he and Bob Whitlock (MD '57) were the student co-founders in 1954 of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club. Dr. McLendon is the co-author, along with the late Drs. William Blythe and Floyd Denny, of the recently published Bettering the Health of the People: W. Reece Berryhill, the UNC School of Medicine, and the North Carolina Good Health Movement.

:: Dr. Colin G. Thomas, Jr. joined the faculty of the UNC School of Medicine in 1952, and is currently Byah Thomason-Sanford Doxey Professor of Surgery. From 1966-1984 he served as Chair of the Department of Surgery, and from 1984-1989 as Chief of the Division of General Surgery. Dr. Thomas was one of the early faculty members of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club, and is the co-author, along with Mary Jane Kagarise, of the 1997 history, Legends and Legacies: A Look Inside: Four Decades of Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1952-1993.

For more information on the Bullitt Club and events for 2009-10, please visit the Bullitt Club website.

Bullitt Club Lectures Now on iTunes

A new listening option is now available for the lecture series sponsored by the Bullitt History of Medicine Club: iTunes! The Carolina on iTunes U initiative hosts a variety of audio, video, and multimedia content from across the University of North Carolina, including health affairs, law, information and library science, journalism, and more.

Educational in nature, the digital content is free and ranges from lecture podcasts to tutorials to special events coverage. As the organizers state, "The initiative's primary goal is not only to provide a foundation for intelligent technology integration with measurable pedagogical impact and campus-wide benefit, but also to serve as a model for intra-campus partnerships and federated governance of a major technology-driven project."

Bullitt Club lectures for 2008-9 can be found by navigating to the School of Medicine section of Carolina on iTunes U or can be accessed directly. One can listen to individual lectures via streaming audio, download individual or all lectures in their entirety, or subscribe to podcasts, which will deliver new content directly as it becomes available. The iTunes software itself is free. At present there are nine lectures from the 2008-2009 lecture series on iTunes. These lectures are also available from the Bullitt Club web site. The new speaker schedule for 2009-2010 begins this September--stay tuned!

UNC Medical Student Wins Bean Student Research Award

For the third time in four years, a UNC medical student has won the William B. Bean Student Research Award from the American Osler Society. This year Chris Dibble, currently a third-year MD/PhD student, took the honors for his proposal entitled “Osler and Trudeau: The North American Campaign Against Tuberculosis.” Chris last year also won the inaugural McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine sponsored by the Bullitt History of Medicine Club for earlier research on Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau [1848-1915], and presented his essay at a Bullitt Club lecture in November 2008.

UNC is linked historically to Dr. Trudeau and his sanitarium in Saranac Lake, New York through two well known individuals. Dr. Henry T. Clark [1917-2008], former UNC Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs, was an intern and fellow at the Trudeau Sanitarium from 1940-1943. Dr. Clark’s papers are archived in the Southern Historical Collection in Wilson Library; a finding aid is available online. Dr. Louis Round Wilson [1876-1979], University Librarian and first director of the UNC School of Library Science, was a patient at the sanitarium in 1916, during which time he wrote letters to Edward Graham Kidder and maintained a “Tuberculosis Record Book.” These items and many others are part of the Wilson Papers housed, appropriately enough, in Wilson Library, for which Dr. Wilson is the namesake; a finding aid to the collection is available online.

Previous winners of the Bean Award are James Fraser in 2008 and Lee Hampton in 2006. James’ project title was “Molding an Independent Specialty: Plastic Surgery in Postwar America, 1919-1941” and Lee’s was “Albert Sabin and the Western Hemisphere Polio Eradication Campaign.” Both students gave earlier versions of their research at Bullitt Club lectures.

The Bean Award supports “research in the broad areas of medical history and medical humanities,” and carries a $1500 cash prize and $750 travel stipend for students to present their work at the annual meeting of the American Osler Society. As part of the application for the award, candidates must submit “a letter of support from a faculty sponsor who will assume responsibility for planning and guidance of the fellowship.” At UNC, this role has been played by Dr. H. Michael Jones, Clinical Professor of Pathology in the School of Medicine. Dr. Jones is an active member of the American Osler Society and the co-creator of Ask Osleriana, a searchable database available online.

Bullitt Club Lectures for 2008-9 Available Online

The Bullitt History of Medicine Club has completed its 2008-9 lecture series, and made the audio portion of each presentation available online as MP3s. The Bullitt Club sponsors a collaborative evening lecture series in conjunction with Duke University's Trent History of Medicine Society, with lectures alternating monthly between the two venues. The Bullitt Club also presents noon-time lectures in months when there is no evening lecture at UNC. The lineup for 2009-10 is currently being prepared, with the first lecture in the new academic year planned for September 2009.

Bullitt Club Speakers for 2008-9:

Dr. Sue Estroff, Professor of Social Medicine, UNC School of Medicine
Blemished Bodies and Persons: An Historical Perspective on Stigma
:: April 14, 2009 [75 MB, 1:20:15]

Lisa Wiese, Second-Year Medical Student, UNC School of Medicine
Washington, D.C.: Understanding the Poverty-Health Link from an Historical Lens
:: April 6, 2009 [48 MB, 51:22]

Dr. Todd Savitt, Professor of Medical Humanities, East Carolina University
Entering a "White" Profession: Black Physicians in 19th- and 20th-Century America
:: February 10, 2009 [59 MB, 1:03:22]

Dr. Aldo Rustioni, Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, UNC School of Medicine
The Neuron Doctrine of 1891 and the 1906 Nobel Award for Physiology or Medicine
:: January 21, 2009 [55 MB, 59:32]

Dr. Vanessa Northrington Gamble, University Professor of Medical Humanities, George Washington University
"Without Health and Long Life All Else Fails": A History of African-American Efforts to Eliminate Racial Disparities in Health and Health Care
:: December 9, 2008 [60 MB, 1:04:24]

Chris Dibble, MD/PhD Student, UNC School of Medicine
Winner of 2008 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine
Edward Livingston Trudeau: The First American Physician-Scientist and the Fight against Tuberculosis
:: November 17, 2008 [49 MB, 52:38]

Dr. Elizabeth Fenn, Associate Professor of History, Duke University
Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82
:: October 21, 2008 [61 MB, 1:05:18]

Wendy Moore, Freelance Journalist and Author (England)
The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery
:: September 23, 2008 [58 MB, 1:02:02]

Ansley Herring Wegner, Research Historian, North Carolina Office of Archives and History
Phantom Pain: North Carolina's Artificial Limbs Program for Confederate Amputees
:: September 17, 2008 [34 MB, 36:32]

History Essay Deadline Extended

The deadline for the McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine has been extended to May 31, 2009. Open to all current UNC-CH students in Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Public Health, and Allied Health, the award is sponsored by the Bullitt History of Medicine Club and offers a prize of $500 for the best essay on any aspect of the history of the health sciences. Visit the Bullitt Club web site for essay guidelines.

Funded by UNC alumni S. Gregory Boyd (MD '03, JD '04) and Laura Boyd (JD '02), the McLendon-Thomas Award honors Dr. William McLendon and Dr. Colin Thomas, Jr. and recognizes scholarly excellence in the history of health sciences. Greg and Laura Boyd live in New York City, where he is an attorney with Davis & Gilbert LLP and she is a legal recruiter with SJL Attorney Search. Greg considers the history of medicine to be one of the most important aspects of his medical education and and Drs. McClendon and Thomas among the best role models possible. They both strongly believe that the history of medicine represents a critical perspective and focus on the art of medicine that are necessary for training the best possible physicians, health care executives, and policy makers.

Dr. William W. McLendon served from 1973-1995 at UNC as Director of the Hospital Clinical Laboratories and as Professor and Vice-Chair of Pathology. Since his retirement in 1995 he has been Professor Emeritus of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. An MD graduate of UNC in 1956, he and Bob Whitlock (MD '57) were the student co-founders in 1954 of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club. Dr. McLendon is the co-author, along with the late Drs. William Blythe and Floyd Denny, of the recently published Bettering the Health of the People: W. Reece Berryhill, the UNC School of Medicine, and the North Carolina Good Health Movement.

Dr. Colin G. Thomas, Jr. joined the faculty of the UNC School of Medicine in 1952, and is currently Byah Thomason-Sanford Doxey Professor of Surgery. From 1966-1984 he served as Chair of the Department of Surgery, and from 1984-1989 as Chief of the Division of General Surgery. Dr. Thomas was one of the early faculty members of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club, and is the co-author, along with Mary Jane Kagarise, of the 1997 history, Legends and
Legacies: A Look Inside: Four Decades of Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1952-1993.