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By Hanna Clutterbuck-Cook, June 11, 2019

The Center for the History of Medicine is pleased to announce that the first portion of the Vernacular Archive of Normal Volunteers (VANV), 1940-2018 is now open to research.

VANV is a collection of oral histories, associated archival documents, and project records created and collected by Laura Jeanine Morris Stark to explore the lives of the first “normal control” research subjects at the Clinical Center of the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland who were recruited through NIH’s Normal Volunteer Patient Program. The Normal Volunteer Patient Program (renamed the Clinical Research Volunteer Program in 1995) began in 1953 as a program of the NIH and later operated through the NIH Patient Recruitment and Public Liaison Office. VANV interview subjects participated in the program from 1954-2002.

The collection includes oral history interviews (audio recordings and transcripts) conducted by Stark between 2010 and 2017 with individuals who were involved with the Normal Volunteer Patient Program (volunteers, scientists, and staff), along with archival documents from interviewees’ personal collections. It also includes digital duplicates of materials related to the Normal Volunteer Patient Program compiled by Stark from the special collections of organizations that were the sources of “normal volunteers” for the NIH Clinical Center. The materials from source organizations include photographs, correspondence, and clippings. The collection also includes records generated by, or pertaining to, the Normal Volunteer Patient Program collected by Stark through a first-time FOIA request and release from NIH as well as project administration records including templates for legal forms, interview instruments, ethics-review approvals, and grant proposals.

View VANV data files on the Harvard Dataverse.

A selection of VANV data files are currently open for research; access to some data files is restricted until the publication of Laura Stark’s book, The Normals: A People’s History, University of Chicago Press. Access to the restricted data files may be granted at the discretion of the author.  Anyone with interest in viewing restricted files are warmly invited to contact Laura Stark at laura.stark@vanderbilt.edu

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By Joan Ilacqua, June 10, 2019

It is with great sadness that I report that Amalie Moses Kass passed away on May 19, 2019. Amalie was a great friend to the Archives for Women in Medicine and Countway Library, both as a patron but also as a researcher and writer. Amalie was a lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and a historian of medicine. She published Midwifery and Medicine in Boston: Walter Channing, M.D., 1786-1876 (a short biography of Dr. Channing written by Amalie was published in Harvard Magazine) and co-authored Perfecting the World: The Life and Times of Thomas Hodgkin, MD with her late husband Edward H. Kass.

Amalie (right) and Eleanor Shore speaking at “Celebrating 10 Years of the Archives for Women in Medicine”

Amalie was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1928, and attended Wellesley College. She received her master’s degree in education from Boston University, and spent many years teaching high school in Newton. In addition to her position at Harvard Medical School, she was the first woman to chair the Massachusetts Historical Society’s board, and served as an associate editor for the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. In addition to her academic pursuits, Amalie raised eight children. She had five children with her first husband, Malcolm Hecht Jr., and welcomed three stepchildren when she married fellow widower Edward H. Kass in 1975.

I met Amalie in 2015 when I became the Archivist for Women in Medicine. She and her research partner, Eleanor Shore, were working on a piece about the life of Anne Pappenheimer Forbes (1911-1992). Dr. Forbes was a pioneer in endocrinology, a Harvard Medical School professor, and a mother of five. Eleanor and Amalie dove into the Forbes papers and painstakingly looked at every document in the collection in order to illuminate her story. The duo were fixtures in the reading room, and their tireless efforts led to an article in Harvard Medicine and a presentation at the 10th Anniversary Celebration of the Archives for Women in Medicine attending by many of the Forbes children and other descendants.

Next, the research duo moved on to Mary Ellen Avery (1927-2011). Dr. Avery was the first woman to head a major clinical department at Harvard Medical School and physician-in-chief at Boston Children’s Hospital; among her many achievements and contributions, her identification of surfactant saved the lives of countless premature babies suffering from respiratory distress syndrome. Amalie and Eleanor’s meticulous research led to an article on Dr. Avery’s life and achievements, published in the Harvard Magazine.

Amalie (left) and Eleanor, conducting research in the archives, from The Benefactor, Spring 2017

Amalie’s presence and dedication to highlighting the overshadowed achievements of women will be missed at the Center for the History of Medicine. Her passion for the history of medicine and telling these stories was only matched by her generosity. A 2016 $500,000 gift from Amalie has supported advancing the mission and work of the Archives for Women in Medicine to collect, preserve, and share the achievements of women leaders in medicine. Her philanthropy, in addition to her research in the archives, has empowered the history of medicine to inform and shape contemporary medicine and society. I can only hope that her legacy will inspire others to follow in her footsteps.