Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Finance Committee

Margaret Marsh, AAHM Treasurer, sent the committee her report on the financial status of the AAHM as of early March 2014. Her report covers three areas: the accountant’s report, the statement of the AAHM Endowment Management Account, and the report on the holdings of the AAHM Foundation account. The committee finds the Treasurer’s report and the supporting documentation to be in good order. The AAHM books balance. The allocations within the investment accounts are in accord with the investment policy that that Council approved in 1999.

The committee had serious discussions with Margaret about the item of most concern: the accrued loss of $40,122 from the annual meetings in Chicago (2014: $32,736) and Atlanta (2013: $7,072) paid in 2014. The membership has come to expect necessary audio video services, along with breakfasts, snacks during breaks, and generous food at the receptions, for a relatively modest registration fee. While Local Arrangements Committees (LACs) have been historically successful in raising extra funding for the meeting, we cannot depend upon such resources in the future. The Finance Committee supports the hiring of a meeting planner who will be responsible for monitoring costs so that we do not experience a major deficit in the near future. We expect that the Executive Director will take over the responsibility of assisting the LAC in managing meeting revenue and expenses once we are able to hire one.

We commend Margaret for her dedication as Treasurer and express our heartfelt thanks to her for her skilled service. We look forward to working with Hughes Evans when she takes on this position at the annual meeting.

Respectfully submitted, Susan C. Lawrence (Chair), Jennifer Gunn, and Gerald Grob [End Page 563]

Nominating Committee

The AAHM Nominating Committee is pleased to provide you with our slate for AAHM Officers and Council—for circulation in advance to the AAHM membership through the Newsletter and for voting at the next Business Meeting in New Haven in 2015.

Treasurer     Hughes Evans (two-year term)

Secretary     Jodi L. Koste (two-year term)

Council Members (three-year terms beginning after the 2015 annual meeting)

Joel Braslow, UCLA

Beth Linker, University of Pennsylvania

Paul A. Lombardo, Georgia State College of Law

Micaela Sullivan-Fowler, University of Wisconsin

Respectfully submitted and with our gratitude to all the nominees for their willingness to continue to serve AAHM in this way, Michael Flannery, Wendy Kline, and Jacalyn Duffin (chair).

Publications Committee

New proposed members for the Bulletin of the History of Medicine editorial board are: Wendy Kline, David Rosner, Kavita Sivaramakrishnan, and David Wright.

We discussed the question of open access and the Bulletin and decided that the next step should be to contact Randy Packard and Mary Fissell and see whether the Bulletin would be willing to make some items openly accessible, such as the Garrison lectures, presidential lectures, AAHM award-winning essays, and other AAHM-related items.

We corresponded with Kelly O’Donnell and Jean Whelan of the AAHM Ad Hoc Committee on New Media, who were seeking information to help them move toward forming a standing committee. Their primary interest was in understanding the “hot topics” currently facing our committee. We responded that open access and the Bulletin required the most attention at this time. Submitted by Rima Apple, Scott Podolsky, and Arleen Tuchman, chair.

Committee on Annual Meetings

The AAHM Annual Committee had before it two principal issues in the past year. The first consisted of recruiting venues for future annual meetings in 2018 and 2019. The second consisted of considering possible changes in the format and composition of future annual meetings, not so much in terms of content but rather instructure or organization. [End Page 564]

On the first charge, we have tentative, and hopefully soon to be confirmed, commitments for 2018 and 2019. Russell Johnson of UCLA has offered to host the AAHM in Los Angeles in 2018. We had several conversations about the desire to see the AAHM host a West Coast meeting (not having been on the Pacific side since Seattle hosted in 1992). The Los Angeles area offers several resources of interest that will be outlined by Russell in his invitation to the Council. For 2019 we have a potential offer from Columbus, Ohio, tendered by Jacqueline Wolf (Ohio University) and Susan Lawrence (Ohio State University). At present, this invitation is still very tentative, as Wolf and Lawrence remain hesitant to commit until they feel they have a firmer grasp upon funding. They asked that we confer with them at the New Haven meeting and said they would likely defer a firm commitment until 2016.

During the many phone conversations that I had in the past several months, yet other venues emerged for consideration beyond 2019. These include possibly Cincinnati and Houston, and I will continue to pursue those possibilities.

On the second charge, regarding the format of AAHM meetings, several ideas and concepts came up, but may be offered only as suggestions for consideration at present. Clearly, as evidenced by the survey presented in the most recent AAHM Newsletter (by the Education and Outreach Committee), there is an openness to change. Part stems from dissatisfaction with some aspects of the annual meeting, notably the awards banquet, but there is also a sense that new formats will emerge as the history of medicine is pursued and presented via new media and platforms.

The members of the 2015 committee were Jim Edmonson, (chair), Sarah Tracy, James Mohr, Janet Golden, Beth Linker, and Aimee Medeiros.

Committee on Student Affairs

The committee consists of Mary Augusta Brazelton, Yale University (chair) and Prof. Walt Schalick, University of Wisconsin (Faculty Representative).

The AAHM Committee on Student Affairs continues to be an efficient and vocal body whose aim is to provide assistance, community, and representation to the graduate and professional student members of AAHM.

Forty-six students attended the eighth annual graduate student luncheon in Chicago, on par with last year’s figures. We again thank Mindy Schwartz and the Local Arrangements Committee for coordinating the logistics of the event and providing supplementary funding. This luncheon extended the opportunity for students in a range of disciplines from many different institutions to convene, meet one another, and trade [End Page 565] ideas, information, and advice. Walt Schalick continues to be an exemplary faculty representative.

Courtesy of the webmaster and secretary, Jodi Koste, we maintain a section on the AAHM webpage that provides students with an opportunity to join our committee. We are also maintaining a page that posts anonymized book lists that student members used when preparing for their qualifying exams; this page has provided a valuable resource for students. We maintain a Facebook page for the AAHM graduate/medical student committee, which Kristen Ehrenberger, to whom we are most grateful, continues to manage. We also maintain an email distribution list enabling us to reach the entire medical/graduate student community. This year, Sean Phillips and Marion Schmidt assumed administrative responsibilities for the email list. We have also developed an online “roommate finder,” restricted to members of the email list, that allows students to find fellow students with whom to share a hotel room at the annual meeting of the AAHM. The email list currently has 159 members, and we look forward to adding more this year in New Haven at the annual luncheon.

At last year’s meeting, the AAHM accepted our proposal to become a full Standing Committee. This represents a major step in the development of the Student Section as a permanent forum for student members and a stable space for the discussion and resolution of student issues. We are especially grateful to former Chair Justin Barr, Dr. Jeremy Greene, and Professor Julie Fairman for their advice in moving this proposal forward and making this development possible.

We plan to host our ninth annual graduate student luncheon at the AAHM meeting in New Haven. We sincerely thank the Local Arrangements Committee, and especially John Harley Warner, for their work in coordinating this event. In addition to addressing any issues student members suggest, we will discuss several new ideas for possible implementation, including the possibility of having student-specific panels and reaching out to student groups in comparable associations (History of Science Society, American Society for Environmental History, etc.).

Osler Medal Committee

The Osler Medal Committee received three submissions, two in the last twelve hours the competition was open. All submissions were qualified. The committee read and graded the submissions individually, exchanged comments, and confirmed via conference call that the submission receiving the highest average score, Julia Cockey Cromwell’s (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) essay, “Viral Knowledge: Autopsy and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic,” was the best essay by a small but significant margin and deserved the medal. The essay by [End Page 566] Dr. John Thomas Stroh (a resident at Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, DC, and graduate of the University of Kansas School of Medicine in 2014), “The English Reformation and the Birth of London’s Royal Hospitals,” deserved honorable mention. The chair notified the submitters with copy to the mentor, editor of the Bulletin, and Secretary Treasurer. The person who did not place was also notified and hopefully encouraged to remain engaged in medical history. The members of the committee were Paul Berman, Charles S. Bryan, Elizabeth B. Dreesen, Edward C. Halperin, and Dale Smith (chair).

Shryock Medal Committee

The 2014–2015 Shryock Medal Committee consisted of David Barnes (chair), Jeff Brosco, Flurin Condrau, Bert Hansen, and Julia Irwin. We received twelve submissions for the 2015 Shryock Medal competition—a fairly significant increase from recent years—and the overall quality of the submissions was excellent.

The winner of the 2015 Richard H. Shryock Medal is Marissa Mika (Ph.D. candidate, History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania), for her paper, “Surviving Experiments: Burkitt’s Lymphoma Research in Idi Amin’s Uganda.” Honorable Mention was awarded to Cara Kiernan Fallon (Ph.D. candidate, History of Science, Harvard University) for her paper, “Husbands’ Hearts and Women’s Health: Gender and Heart Disease in Twentieth-Century America.”

Note on conflicts of interest: Because I knew that at least one or two students with whom I had worked were planning to submit papers for the Shryock competition, I instituted a strict conflict-of-interest policy. As always, all papers were anonymized before being sent to the committee members. I asked each member to notify me if s/he recognized a paper as the work of a student or friend, and to refrain from ranking or commenting on that paper. There were four individual instances of recusal. (When tabulating average rankings in the first round of evaluation, I took the recusals into account by adjusting the denominator accordingly.) I also anonymized all rankings and comments, so that the other members would not know whose students were involved, and to reduce as much as possible the chance of even unconscious bias in the evaluation process. One of the members had a conflict with two of the final three papers under consideration; that member did not participate in the final round of deliberations.

Because the mere appearance of conflict of interest can be as harmful as actual bias, I recommend that some version of this procedure be adopted by future Shryock committees. (I assume that past committees [End Page 567] have worked out their own ways of dealing with this, but it may be worth codifying.)

One member suggested that the AAHM might benefit if it broadened the competition to include doctoral students at institutions outside the U.S. and Canada. The same member wondered whether a separate essay competition devoted to the history of “non-Western” medicine would be viable.

Welch Medal Committee

The Welch Medal Committee (Pat D’Antonio, Luke Demaitre, Mariola Espinosa, David Jones, Susan Smith, Mick Worboys, and Sue Lederer, chair) recommends that the William H. Welch Medal for 2015 be awarded to Professor Leslie J. Reagan for her book, Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, and Abortion in Modern America (University of California Press, 2010).

The Welch Prize Committee received 54 books to consider for this year’s competition. Ten of these books were ineligible for one of two reasons: they either did not fall within the years specified in the committee’s charge or they were authored by individuals who have already been awarded the Welch Medal and therefore, according to the by-laws as certified by Jodi Koste, are also not eligible for the Medal. For the most part, presses nominated the books. In somewhat of an irony, the University of California Press did not nominate Professor Reagan’s book, and it was only with considerable nudging, emails, and telephone calls that we were able to get copies for our consideration.

In a very strong field, Professor Reagan’s book stood as an exemplary model of scholarship. Dangerous Pregnancies is a fascinating study, tightly and cogently argued, employing wide-ranging sources that position middle-class married mothers at the heart of significant social change: abortion rights, disability rights, and changing vaccination policies. Focusing on an epidemic outbreak of rubella, also known as German measles, in the years 1963-1965 in the United States, Reagan explores the ways that this disease threatened pregnant women and their developing fetuses, elegantly demonstrating how “an epidemic may act as a catalyst for social change.”

One of the most remarkable features of Dangerous Pregnancies is the successful combination of sharp focus with open-ended discourse, as it moves smoothly from the rubella epidemic of the 1960s to its profound, but increasingly forgotten, impact and beyond to issues that remain contentious to this day. A keen awareness of the present captivates the reader throughout, without distorting the past. The author manages to balance animated narrative with dispassionate presentation of the evidence and with elegant construction of the arguments. Her sources [End Page 568] range widely, from the responses of authorities and amplification by the media to the concerns of prospective parents. Her analysis remains lucid while reflecting the complexity of developments. The subject, moreover, consistently appears in the broader context of contemporary medicine, legal frameworks, political situations, and public sentiment. Indeed, from the dramatic inception to the sound conclusion, Dangerous Pregnancies should serve as a model for writing history—in any area and on any level.

Genevieve Miller Lifetime Achievement Award Committee

The Genevieve Miller Lifetime Achievement Award Committee selected Caroline Hannaway as the winner of the 2015 award. The committee was composed of Ann LaBerge, John Burnham, and John Parascandola, chair.

J. Worth Estes Prize Committee

The committee consisted of Dominique Tobbell (chair), Justin Barr, and Kavita Sivaramakrishnan. The committee reviewed thirty-one articles. The committee received five nominated articles and identified the remaining articles following a review of articles published in 2013 and 2014.

The committee was very happy to select as the winner of the Estes Award Hoi-eun Kim, “Cure for Empire: The ‘Conquer-Russia-Pill,’ Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, and the Making of Patriotic Japanese, 1904–45,” Medical History 57 (2013): 249-68. Kim provides a rich cultural analysis of Japan’s popular anti-diarrheal pill, Seirogan, to illustrate the complicated and evolving relations between the state, industry, and popular culture in Japan in the first half of the twentieth century. Through an analysis of contemporary advertisements for Seirogan, Kim describes how Japanese pharmaceutical manufacturers transformed the drug into “an icon of the health, vitality, and military prowess of Japan,” capitalizing upon and amplifying imperialist and patriotic fervor in the country. Through these advertisements, pharmaceutical manufacturers conveyed to Japanese consumers that when they swallowed Seirogan they “were not just digesting a highly effective pharmaceutical product, they were consuming a cure for empire.”

Jack D. Pressman-Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Development Award Committee

The Pressman-Burroughs Wellcome Award Committee, composed of Projit Mukharji, Dennis Doyle, and Richard Keller (chair), received and reviewed four submissions for the 2015 award.

The winner of the 2015 award is Deborah Doroshow of Yale University, for her project titled “Emotionally Disturbed: The Care and Abandonment [End Page 569] of America’s Troubled Children.” Submissions came from scholars at Yale University (2), the University of Cambridge (1), and the University of Michigan (1). The applicants had completed their dissertations at Yale University, New York University, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Illinois.

The committee’s only suggestion for improving the process would be to switch to an electronic-only submission format. All proposals were submitted electronically, but a postmark deadline meant that the chair needed to wait a week for any possible postal submissions before distributing the electronically submitted essays to committee members.

George Rosen Prize Committee

The George Rosen Prize Committee was composed of Judy Leavitt, Lisa O’Sullivan, Tom Gariepy, Jacob Steere-Williams, and John Eyler (chair). For its first year, the committee was pleased by the number of nominations it received—thirty-nine in total, thirty-four of them books. Among the books nominated for the Rosen Prize were some strong contenders that demonstrate that the areas of history of medicine that George Rosen pioneered are thriving today. The winner of the first George Rosen Prize, The Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War by Margaret Humphreys, is a significant contribution to both the history of public health and the history of social medicine.

The Committee was disappointed to find a number of nominations that could not be considered eligible for the prize, being neither histories of public health nor the histories of social medicine. There seems to be some confusion over the prize definition. The committee also regretted receiving no nominations for public history projects in spite of special efforts to notify those who might be able to make a nomination. We address both of these problems in our recommendations to follow.

Recommendations for Council consideration:

First is the prize definition itself. Judging from some of the books submitted and conversations the chair of the committee had with authors considering nominating their books, there is confusion about the term “social medicine.” In extreme cases the “history of social medicine” was equated with the “social history of medicine.” “Social medicine” is, admittedly, difficult to define concisely. In the prize announcements, the committee briefly considered referencing George Rosen’s article, “What is Social Medicine? A Genetic Analysis of the Concept,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 21 (1947): 674–733, but that did not seem a very practical solution. It suggests instead that Rosen Prize be hereafter defined as recognizing contributions to the “History of Public Health or the History of Health Policy.” The history of health policy was also an area that George [End Page 570] Rosen pioneered, and it is an area that the AAHM might properly recognize in this way.

Second is language eligibility. The committee received a question from an author asking whether he might nominate his own book, which was written in French. After consulting the AAHM President, the chair informed this author that only English-language projects were eligible. The committee suggests that this fact be explicitly stated in the prize announcements.

Third is the inclusion of public history. The committee believes that the AAHM ought to recognize and encourage public history projects in the history of medicine, and that the inclusion of such projects in the eligibility requirements for the George Rosen Prize is a worthwhile step in that direction. It does so while recognizing that the inclusion of exhibits, websites, films and other public history projects in the same competition as books and articles will complicate the process of picking a winner. This first year announcements of the Prize were posted on a number of websites likely to be visited by public historians, librarians, and archivists. These included those of the organizations: Medical Museums of America, European Association of Museums of the History of Medical Sciences, and Archivists and Librarians in the History of the Health Sciences as well as Mersenne, Caduceus, and H-Sci-Med-Tech. As mentioned above, the Committee received no nominations for public history projects. The Wellcome Trust informed the chair that it intended to nominate its London Pulse project, but despite being reminded of the deadline for submissions, it failed to do so. The committee recommends that in the future the AAHM explore additional means to attract nominations of public history projects.

Fourth is the matter of continuity. These recommendations indicate that the AAHM is still in the experimental stage of making the Rosen Prize function as intended. The committee has spent a good deal of time discussing the issues raised above, and it believes that it is important to have continuity between these first and second years. Each member of this first year’s committee has agreed to serve a second year if asked. The entire committee would be willing to serve a second year, were that not to establish a precedent of future two-year terms. However, the present chair does not believe that it would be wise for him to serve as chair again, even if he were reappointed to the committee.

Finally, the chair would like to thank the other members of the committee for their hard work, good judgment, and timely completion of assignments. [End Page 571]

Garrison Lecture Committee

The Garrison Lecture Committee consisted of Celeste Chamberlain, Cynthia Connolly, Daniel Goldberg, Caroline Hannaway, and Norman Gevitz, chair.

The process was as follows: Committee members were each asked to select up to five candidates. Thirteen distinguished individuals were nominated. Their names and short bios were then sent to the whole committee, and each member was asked to rank in order their top five. As a result of this process three individuals became “finalists,” having far more votes than the others on the list. Once again, the finalists were rank-ordered by each committee member.

Susan Lederer was the clear favorite (ranked first by four members and second by one member) and is our choice as the 2016 Garrison Speaker.

Local Arrangements Committee Report

In 2011, a formal proposal was submitted to the AAHM Committee on Annual Meetings for the opportunity to hold the 87th annual meeting in Chicago in 2014. It had been over 50 years since the national meeting was held here and there was great interest in having it return.

Following the 2011 Philadelphia meeting, Jill Slater, the official representative from Helms Briscoe, had vetted a number of local hotels in Chicago; the Chicago Downtown Renaissance Hotel was chosen as the meeting headquarters. While there were a number of other excellent choices, it was felt that the central downtown location of the hotel together with its proximity to mass transit made this hotel ideal. Of note, the hotel agreed to “lock in” in the nightly room rate at $199, a terrific price for a high-end downtown hotel in Chicago. We were also able secure a nearby alternative hotel, the Guest Quarters Hotel, for those who desired a more economical room rate.

In August 2011, Jodi Koste, the AAHM Secretary, came to visit the location together with Jill Slater and the contract was signed shortly thereafter. Official preparation by the LAC included careful study of the blue book together with the LAC summaries from the preceding ten years. Throughout this process we maintained close contact with Howard Kushner and Mary Horton from Emory University, both of whom were invaluable as sources of information.

CME offices at academic medical centers vary tremendously, and the University of Chicago did not have the facilities or manpower to help with an event of this magnitude. It was quickly realized that a contract with an outside professional event planner was needed to provide the requisite expertise for this project. This proved to be a wise choice, and the planner’s knowledge, local connections, and experience were essential to the [End Page 572] success of running an event of this size. Many individuals who initially offered to help with the LAC were in fact unavailable due to competing projects, scholarly activities, retirement, or sabbaticals.

In the summer and fall of 2013, letters were sent to the academic medical centers, and colleges and universities in the greater Chicago area with a “Save the Date” announcement (attached in the packet). This allowed us to capture a modest number of individuals in the local Chicago area who subsequently registered and actively participated in the meeting. We also sent information to all constituent societies—as listed in the previous website and blue book. Most of the organizations are no longer active with the exception of the Osler Society and the Sigerist Circle. The Osler Society is no longer meeting at the same time as the AAHM but will be linked in the future. The Sigerist Circle does attend the meeting. Historically they have asked for rooms and tables but have not contributed any financial support to the meeting or the LAC. The formal relationship of the Sigerist Circle with the AAHM remains ill defined.

Once the meeting planning began in earnest, the biggest issue was where to hold the Garrison lecture. At many of the prior meetings, the Garrison lecture was held at a venue outside of the hotel and often was a “destination venue.” Historically this event has been a key highlight of the annual meeting. We initially considered holding the Garrison at a lecture hall on the University of Chicago campus but reconsidered in light of the logistical challenges of moving 400 people to and from a downtown location to the campus, which is eight miles south and can take up to 30–40 minutes to reach in rush hour traffic.

We also considered using the Rubloff Auditorium at the Art Institute of Chicago. While this is a beautiful space, we felt that the high cost would not justify the benefit and ultimately decided to hold the Garrison lecture at the headquarters hotel. Since the hotel is located in walking distance of many of the most famous Chicago landmarks, we felt that the participants would easily be able to take advantage of the city throughout the meeting and that there was no urgency to find an offsite venue for the Garrison.

The fact that the entire meeting was at the hotel turned out to be very convenient. We were fortunate to have the expertise of Sandy Sufian, a historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago whose work focuses on disability studies. Sandy met with us several times and we also walked through the hotel with her (room by room) to make sure that the meeting venue was compliant with the current recommendations for maximal accessibility.

Graduate students are the organization’s lifeblood. As such, it was a priority for us to put together an accessible and enjoyable lunch especially for them. We arranged for the luncheon to be held at a nearby Italian restaurant [End Page 573] (Bella Bacino’s) with a private room. The menu was classic Italian food buffet with drinks. It was imperative to be able to have the event close enough to the hotel to be convenient for the group to return quickly to the conference. We charged the students ten dollars and received $250 from the University of Illinois to defray the cost. The total cost for the lunch was $1,567.

The hotel location and amenities were first rate. The Renaissance was ideally set up for a professional meeting with a large foyer, breakout rooms, and an office that served as “mission control” close to the registration area. The main meeting area was spacious and well lit, with a terrific view of the city and easy accessibility to the elevators. Most important, the hotel staff were instantly accessible (by pager and phone) and were very responsive to all of the conference needs, even so far as preparing special last-minute gluten-free dessert options for those at the Garrison lecture.

Of all of the aspects of running this meeting, raising the funds to underwrite such a large event is the one that gives even the most intrepid LAC member the most angst. Institutions vary tremendously in terms of infrastructure and support, and Chicago had some unique challenges. While there are many colleges, universities, and medical schools in the Chicago area, there is no nationally known History of Medicine program at any of the universities despite scattered faculty at most. We were able to creatively raise modest amounts of money from various departments at the University of Chicago. We also were able to secure a $5,000 contribution from the American Medical Association for the opening reception; the University of Illinois at Chicago donated $250 to partially underwrite the graduate student lunch. Since the AAHM is a tax-exempt charity (501C3) we decided to solicit contributions from a variety of individuals known to LAC members both personally and professionally. As a result of these efforts, we raised $14,000 from individual donations. We found it more effective to raise smaller amounts of money ($2,500–$5,000) from a larger group of donors than hope to find one source that could make a sizable donation.

Making sure that CME credit was available at the meeting was a high priority. The University of Chicago has a standard charge of $2,500 to offer CME. Each participant was therefore charged an additional $50 fee as part of the meeting registration to cover CME expenses. $2,500 was provided by the Office of the Dean of Medical Students, Dr. Holly Humphrey, at the University of Chicago.

In previous years, CME had been offered variously by the local institution or at times from another independent organization. Cost has always been the driver. We believe that it is critically important to the health and [End Page 574] growth of the organization to attract practicing physicians and to offer CME. We hope to continue to encourage practicing physicians to become or remain active members. At this year’s meeting, twenty-five individuals applied for CME credit. It is our hope that there will be many more participants applying for CME credit when the Osler meeting returns to meet at the same time as the AAHM. Fortunately, our CME office did not require each individual speaker to fill out a conflict of interest form, as the nature of the material did not lend itself to such scrutiny.

Finally, we benefitted tremendously from reviewing the previous CME applications from recent meetings. This year’s meeting offered 17.25 CME category 1 hours; when compared to other medical meetings, the cost for these credits was extremely low. The CME office developed an online form that was simple to use but caused several participants to need to fill out the form twice. All CME certificates were emailed and this allowed for easy tracking and simple followup.

The Book Exhibit remains an important part of the meeting for a variety of reasons. This year we made $5,675 from advertising and the book exhibit. In preparation for the 2014 meeting, the professional event planner, Joyce Feuer, had attended the AAHM 2013 meeting in Atlanta and had met with the book exhibitors individually. She received specific feedback about potential improvements for future meetings. Fortunately, this year, the book exhibit was held on the main floor of the hotel and was easily accessible at all times.

Our first contact with the book exhibitors began in December 2013. Letters of invitation were taken from previous templates from prior year AAHM meetings—primarily from the 2011 Philadelphia meeting—where David Barnes was LAC and David Caruso was in charge of the book exhibit.

All book exhibitors were given free registration in return for purchasing a table in the book exhibit at the meeting. The exhibitors were given the Thursday block of 5 - 11 PM to allow them to set up their tables. As in the past, the exhibit was locked at night and we had hired 24-hour security. We ran the book exhibit from 8 AM to 5 PM on Friday and Saturday with a conclusion before the Saturday evening banquet. Book exhibit participants included: the National Library of Medicine, Karger Press, seven academic presses, as well as four antiquarian booksellers.

Registration and the website were put together entirely by the AAHM and supported by the Bulletin for the History of Medicine. This was a great convenience and saved many headaches for this year’s local arrangements committee.

In response to previous recommendations, we assembled both a traditional (large size) printed abstract book and a pocket-size quick program guide. The large abstract book contained all relevant meeting information [End Page 575] including participant list, CME information, acknowledgments, AAHM officers, information and accommodations for persons with disabilities, maps of the city and the hotel floor plan. The pocket-size program guide was a big hit and allowed for easy access to the location of the various sessions. The book was designed and laid out by Michael Rossi, a talented historian at the University of Chicago. Michael had experience in magazine publishing and graphic design. His layout and artistic design made for a unique and memorable program. We were fortunate to have the printing costs paid for by the Office of the University of Chicago Hospital President, Sharon O’Keefe. Using previous year’s costs, we estimated the printing costs at $4,500—the program came in under cost and we completed the program printing and additional signage for only $4,100. We were grateful that we could both save the printing costs and use on-site resources that saved time and were very accessible.

Unfortunately, three days before the meeting we were asked to make a large-size program for a visually impaired participant but our copy center was unable to put this together on such short notice. In the future, we need to make sure that any special needs for printing are accompanied by extra time to accomplish this.

We were fortunate to have a professional event planner to help us navigate the complex process of planning for a four-day conference for 450 individuals. Largely due to the union rules at Chicago hotels, we were unable to contract with outside vendors audio video (AV) services. The AV costs were extraordinary and not negotiable at $32,000. We had made a conscious effort to make sure that all rooms had the setup of high boys, tables, computers, cables and on-site AV support. We felt that the disruptions of non-working equipment would have both sabotaged and distracted the finely tuned program. We hope that the Chicago meeting will be an outlier in terms of AV cost and this is something that should be looked at carefully in the future.

Finally, we had difficulty in accurately assessing the number of registrants who would attend the opening reception and Garrison lecture, since these are open to all attendees. In this case, working with a professional event planner led us to making lavish receptions (which may have bordered on excessive), although the Renaissance hotel is known for its excellent cuisine and the catering was delicious and memorable. In the future, local arrangements chairs can be comforted knowing that the quality and location of the meeting are mainly the result of the program and the intellectual excitement that comes from the event. In the future, catering costs can be easily scaled back with little effect on the overall success of the event. [End Page 576]

One of the many additional details that our event planner helped with was finding tote bags that were made of recycled material. As in most previous meetings, we partnered with the University of Chicago to co-sponsor the bags—at a cost of $6.40 per bag. Given that most of us already have many tote bags, we were gratified to purchase these bags that were made of 85% recycled plastic bottles. We ordered 450 bags and gave away 438. The total cost of $3,263 (which included shipping and handling) was covered by yhe University of Chicago Hospital’s marketing department. We co-branded the bags with AAHM and the University of Chicago logos.

One of the hidden costs at hotels that adds up quickly is that of bottled water. Hotels however, will offer free pitchers of water in each room, but each bottle of water can cost as much as three dollars. We ordered the polystyrene water bottles both to be a memento of the meeting as well as to be used to substitute for the plastic bottled water and to defray part of that cost. The total cost of the water bottles was $1,423 for 450 bottles.

We did not seriously consider hiring photographers until shortly before the meeting. As a result, we needed to hire two different individuals to cover all of the meeting events. We felt that to have pictures both for the website and for future printed materials would be money well spent. We used photographers at the opening session, the Garrison lecture, and the banquet. The cost was only $775 but the final quality was excellent. We anticipate continued use of professional photographers in the future.

The American Medical Association, located right across the Chicago River at 330 N. Wabash, offered a special tour of the AMA archives for AAHM attendees. Those who registered for the event were given a tour of the organization’s headquarters and a mini-tour of the AMA archives. The focus of the archival tour was the famous AMA’s Historical Health Fraud and Alternative Medicine Collection (courtesy of the 1961 Chicago patron of the AAHM, Morris Fishbein).

Finally, we arranged for a special visit and tour of the University of Chicago campus. The tour included a visit to the University of Chicago Regenstein Library Special Collection Research Center and the new Mansueto Library (Helmut Jahn’s library of the future). The tour culminated with a lecture by the hospital architect about the design and the building of the Center for Care and Discovery, the University of Chicago’s newest hospital and one that boasts one of the most extraordinary views of the city. Cost for buses to campus were donated by one of the faculty, Dr. Mark Siegler. In honor of the AAHM, an interdisciplinary collaboration between the arts and sciences ran from March through June 2014, culminating in a variety of events as well as an exhibit entitled “Imaging and Imagining: The Human Body, in Anatomic Representation.” This [End Page 577] exhibition was presented in sub-themes across three venues: Regenstein Special Collections (The Body as Text), the Smart Museum (The Body as Art), and the Crerar Library (The Body as Data).

In many ways the AAHM Chicago meeting was a huge success. The meeting and the organization clearly seemed recharged. From Nancy Tomes’ terrific keynote lecture on “What Ever Happened to Good Old Doc?” to Barron Lerner’s talk on the Good Physician, the program was stimulating, engaging, interesting, innovative, and inclusive. Under the leadership of Jeremy Greene and Shigehisa Kuriyama, the program committee brought together the best of outstanding traditional scholarship along with many innovations in terms of both content and format. The service at the hotel as well as the food and drink were extraordinary. The location and the off-site field trips to the University of Chicago campus as well to the AMA archives were a highlight for those who were able to attend. Unfortunately, due to high hotel costs, expensive and non-negotiable AV fees, and the high costs for food service, we went over budget.

The members of this organization are not in the habit of running national meetings and planning these meetings is beyond our normal skill set. It is important to remember that conference centers and major hotels all offer a variety of services that are subject to additional fees, service charges, and gratuities. In addition, some locales (like the state of Illinois) have additional state taxes on hotels and their services. Payments to the Renaissance were made through the University of Chicago, the cosponsor of the meeting and a tax-exempt institution in Illinois. Future LAC chairs may need to seek tax-exempt status in the states where they holds the annual meetings to avoid unnecessary additional taxes. This is time sensitive and needs to be done in the three to six months prior to the meeting to avoid last minute problems.

We are pleased to see that the AAHM has a request for proposal for a professional event planner that can help with the details that are part of running the national meeting. Having enough people on the LAC and making sure that there are individuals specifically designated to keep a budget and financial issues will be a great boon. Finally, despite the fact that the meeting was not profitable, in many ways, this year’s program should be a model for future years with special focus on innovative and non-traditional sessions and attraction of faculty and scholars with new and unique skill sets. We look forward to the meeting in New Haven and the 90th birthday party of the organization. Submitted by Mindy A. Schwartz (chair) for the Local Arrangements Committee consisting of Michael Rossi, Sarah Rodriguez, and Joyce Feuer & Danny Taylor from Joyce’s Events - Professional Event Planners. [End Page 578]

Program Committee Report

This year’s conference in New Haven continues AAHM’s strong tradition and reputation as the leading international venue for our field. Speakers hail from over twenty countries across almost all the inhabited continents. We strove to ensure geographic breadth, chronological width, and thematic depth for this year’s program, including several roundtables and traditional panels that explore recent medical concerns in historical context while investigating the influence of past history on future trends in medical care. We could not have accomplished this breadth and diversity without the excellent work of all the members of the 2015 Program Committee—Nicole Barnes, Glen Cooper, Pablo Gomez, Christopher Hamlin, and Mary Lindemann. For their energy, good will, hard work, and thoughtful application of their assorted areas of expertise, we are grateful.

This year’s call for submissions produced the largest number of submissions on record, even larger than last year’s number of submissions in Chicago (almost a 100% increase over the 2009 level and almost 50% higher than in 2013; see Figure 1). Owing to space restrictions in New Haven, however, the AAHM Council was unable to expand the number of concurrent sessions to six for the conference (as they’d been able to do in Chicago), and consequently we had a rejection rate of almost 60 percent. While that was disappointing, it does suggest that the panels at this year’s conference will be particularly high quality, and it continues to remind us that this modest sign of continued growth indicates the ongoing health of our organization. This year we maintained the option for nontraditional panels pioneered at last year’s program. We had a large number of nontraditional panel proposals this year, which created some challenges in terms of grading and acceptance rubrics, but we believe that the roundtables, exploratory sessions, and multi-speaker interactive presentations represent an exciting new set of options for our program for the years to come. We also had a number of high-quality traditional three-paper panels, and believe that we have achieved an optimal mix of traditional, nontraditional, and adhoc panels for this year’s program.

We would like to highlight several portions from this year’s program that we believe deserve mention. We are very excited about the Special Session on Thursday evening, co-sponsored by the Sigerist Circle, entitled “Reproductive Rights after Griswold: A Fifty-Year Retrospective” and featuring Barbara Sicherman, Rosemary Stevens, Stanley I. Sheerr, Heather Munro Prescott, Linda Greenhouse, Reva Siegel, and Judy Tabar. This will be followed by a very prescient documentary (and associated panel later on) on Ebola, entitled “In the Shadow of Ebola” and moderated by the film’s director, Gregg Mitman. Led by AAHM President Margaret Humphreys [End Page 579] we will celebrate AAHM’s 90th birthday party on Saturday night, May 2. The Opening Plenary session will involve a jointly themed presentation by Warwick Anderson and Gabriela Soto Laveaga, moderated by Jeremy Greene, entitled “Re-situating Biomedical Research.” David Rosner will deliver the Garrison Lecture, “Trying Times: Reflections on History, the Courts and Defining Disease” in Yale’s Battell Chapel on Friday, May 1, 2015, followed by a reception in Sterling Memorial Library. Weather permitting, we hope to have the reception outdoors on the terrace overlooking the river. We are holding this year’s graduate student luncheon on Friday at noon at BAR (254 Crown St., New Haven), just down the street from the annual meeting.

We had some thoughts on this year’s process. Last year’s committee recommended adapting the terms of AAHM’s engagement with Oxford Abstracts conference planning service so that the interface would be more functional for a variety of program functions. We echo this request, noting that we encountered several challenges using the Oxford Abstract system this year. Consequently we will present to the board and next year’s program committee a guide for strategies to address and overcome some of those challenges for the year to come, should the platform not be fixed. We also recommend that the council take up the issue of higher-than normal abstract rejection rates this year. Certainly the larger number of entries signals health in the field and in our organization, but it may also suggest the potential for a chilling effect on future attendance and participation that a higher-than-normal rejection rate may portend, particularly among younger scholars and physician-scholars. Our committee does not have a settled opinion on the solution, or even whether this issue necessarily represents a problem, but we wanted to bring it to the council’s attention.

We conclude by noting that we had a lot of help beyond merely the Program Committee. We would like to thank Jodi Koste for her help, guidance, and many contributions, along with her expertise in the process and tradition of program design. Margaret Humphreys and John Warner provided tremendously valuable insight, guidance, and advice in the formation of this year’s program. We thank you for the privilege of serving the association and our fellow scholars in this endeavor.

AAHM Travel Grant Committee (ad hoc)

Members included Carla Bittel (chair), Paula Michaels, and Karen Kruse Thomas. We received 32 applications, of which 30 were on the program, and therefore, eligible [End Page 580] and offered awards. Of the 30 awardees, 22 were students (19 graduate students, two medical students, and one identifying as graduate/medical). Three were independent scholars and five were international scholars.

Following the prior committee’s practice, we have decided to divide the applicants into broad groups based on region and distance to New Haven. For simplicity, we established and agreed upon five tiers.

We therefore disbursed the $10,000 as follows:

Tier 1=Northeast: 8 x $200 = $1,600

Tier 2=Southeast, Midwest, 1 Canada: 13 x $300 = $3,900

Tier 3=California: 1 x $400 = $400

Tier 4=Europe and the UK: 7 x 500=$3,500

Tier 5=Asia 1 x $600 = $600

Total = $10,000

The committee suggests amendments to the application for next year. We suggest the application ask for the rank of international scholars and if the applicant is receiving other sources of funding for travel to the conference.

Clio Initiative Report

At our last AAHM meeting in Chicago, we had several active conversations in the Clio Initiative about what to do with the interest and energy in making the case for medical history in medical education. We gathered volunteers for five different projects: writing (led by Jeremy Greene and David Jones), networking with credentialing bodies (led by Chris Crenner and Jennifer Gunn), working with archives and libraries (led by Michaela Sullivan-Fowler), cataloguing medical history teaching methods (led by Mindy Schwartz and Karen Ross), and networking with other professional organizations (led by Scott Podolsky and Jeremy Greene).

On the writing front, David, Jeremy, Jackie Duffin, and John Warner published an outstanding article in the Journal of the History of Medicine & Allied Sciences this past year. A number of historians were also published or quoted on the newly relevant topic of infectious disease (in the context of Ebola). There are many more opportunities in this area.

Chris and Jennifer had some contacts at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), though we still lack a coherent message to give to the organization from the AAHM. There is a report of the AAMC on behavioral and social science in medical education that discusses anthropology but not history. On a specialty level, Justin Barr was able to convince the American College of Surgeons to include medical history in its pre-intern surgery boot camp. He and a group of AAHM colleagues are working on the content. [End Page 581]

In terms of networking with other professional organizations, Scott and Jennifer have discussed with the Osler society having a joint program during a day of annual meeting overlap (the Sunday) at the Minneapolis meeting next year. No content or format has been decided.

This year we will continue the Clio conversations at the AAHM annual meeting in New Haven at the Clinician-Historian breakfast and a Sunday lunch after the official meeting is over.

Our biggest area of opportunity for the coming year may be to work on teaching materials. It might be worthwhile to combine the archivist/ librarian group with the teaching materials group. It is crucial that we identify a mechanism or repository for curriculum exchange. Many of us are being challenged in our home institutions to come up with pieces of curriculum that can be plugged in (and to which students can be literally plugged in!). In the era of small group discussion, flipped classrooms, and online learning, there is little space (or even tolerance) for large lectures or traditional courses in medical curricula. Medical schools may be looking for us to educate while being entertaining. We have many smart, articulate, creative historians who can exchange ideas in this area, but we need a platform in which to deposit materials and exchange ideas.

American Council of Learned Societies

(Caroline Hannaway) The 2014 Annual Meeting took place at the Sheraton Society Hill Hotel in Philadelphia, PA, on May 8–10, 2014. In attendance were members of the ACLS Board of Directors, delegates of the constituent societies, members of the Conference of Administrative Officers, and other representatives. The AAHM delegate was not able to attend as the ACLS meeting coincided with the annual meeting of the AAHM. Information in this report was provided by the ACLS website.

There was an informal session on Thursday evening focused on the efforts of ACLS and a special committee of society executive directors to launch a comprehensive census on the health of learned societies.

The ACLS annual meeting proper opened Friday morning with a presentation by three current ACLS fellows in a session entitled “Emerging Themes and Methods of Humanities Research.” The speakers included: Stephen Berry, professor of history at the University of Georgia and a 2013 ACLS Digital Innovation Fellow; Laura Turner Igoe, doctoral candidate in art history at Temple University and a 2013 Henry Luce Foundation/ ACLS Dissertation Fellow in American Art; and Lori Khatchadourian, assistant professor of archaeology at Cornell University and a 2013 ACLS Fellow. Berry’s research project, “CSI Dixie: Race, the Body Politic, and the View from the South’s County Coroners’ Offices, 1840–1880,” which [End Page 582] explores coroners’ reports in four South Carolina counties to document the medical and health histories of its population, is of interest to members of the AAHM.

In her report to the council, President Pauline Yu commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the Report of the Commission on the Humanities of 1964 sponsored by the ACLS, the Council of Graduate Schools, and the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa. She noted that many of the arguments of the Commission’s report, which helped convince Congress to establish the National Endowment for the Humanities, still frame the agenda for ACLS. The council meeting followed.

Earl Lewis, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, spoke at the luncheon on balancing continuity and change. The foundation, he noted, is approaching its 50th anniversary in 2019 and is currently undergoing a reassessment of its program work. While the foundation will continue to support the humanities and the arts and to encourage diversity, it will also broaden its international programs to include other world areas. Another question under consideration is the transformation in the way students learn and how graduate programs prepare Ph.Ds for teaching in this changing environment.

The Friday afternoon session was a panel discussion on the “Public Face of the Humanities.”

Bruno Nettl, professor emeritus of music and anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, delivered the 2014 Haskins Prize Lecture on Friday evening (available online at the ACLS website).

The 2015 ACLS Annual Meeting will be held in Philadelphia on May 7–9. The AAHM delegate will be attending.

International Society for the History of Medicine

(Andrew T. Nadell) I am pleased to report to the AAHM Council about the International Society for the History of Medicine. Since 2010, I have been granted the honor of serving as the national delegate of the United States, by appointment of the AAHM president and council.

The ISHM was founded in 1921, incorporated with permanent headquarters in Paris. The AAHM was a founding member. English was made an official language, equal to French, in 1984. Scholarly papers have been delivered in English from the very beginning, but now constitute the overwhelming majority. The formal documents of the society are issued in both French and English. English is the lingua franca.

I have previously reported about Congresses and Meetings, in alternating years, beginning with the Forty-Second Congress of the ISHM in Cairo in October 2010, and then in Barcelona, Padua, and Mérida. [End Page 583]

The Forty-Fourth World Congress was held in Tbilisi, Georgia, from September 10 to 14, 2014. It was organized by Dr. Ramaz Shengelia of the faculty of the Tbilisi State Medical University. We were about 150 delegates, from 28 nations. As expected, there were larger than usual contingents from nearby countries, including Turkey, Russia, Romania, Israel, and, of course, Georgia.

Unfortunately, there were smaller numbers from North America and western Europe. The éminence grise of the ISHM from AAHM, Professor Gary Ferngren, attended, with about ten of us from the United States. Dr. Ferngren is my predecessor as national delegate, and a member of the ISHM Council.

This changing distribution of attendees has long been noticed by the ISHM Administrative Council. It is seen as an inevitable consequence of convening in widely different parts of the world, diluting the sense of professional “family” experienced by AAHM and other organizations. The benefit is, however, that historians and physicians are attracted from nations that formerly had few or no members. In this way, the Society seeks to meet its original mandate of promoting the study of the history of medicine internationally.

Beginning this year, 2015, the journal of the Society, Vesalius, will be available only in digital form, with open access.

The ISHM has a dues reduction program, for the years 2015 and 2016, a two-year fee of $60 or 50 euros.

The Tbilisi congress was unique for the ISHM. Most airplanes from western Europe arrive and leave in the early hours of the morning, drawing huge numbers of people into the relatively small Tbilisi airport at 3:00 am. The appointed hotel, the Holiday Inn, had the superior amenities of the Intercontinental Hotel chain. The meetings were held at Expo Georgia, a convention center set among old trees just outside the city. Georgian food, experienced most memorably during a journey of congress delegates to a private estate, is based on fresh produce, justifying its reputation as the place people from Russia go for different and delicious cuisine. The ancient parts of the city of Tbilisi were explored, prior to a closing dinner held at a large restaurant complex with splendid views from high above the glittering city.

The Eighth ISHM Meeting will be held in Sydney, Australia, from June 30 to July 4, 2015, in conjunction with the 14th Biennial Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine. It will be held on the campus of the Australian Catholic University, and organized by the Australian National Delegate to ISHM, Dr. Brian Reid. In addition to a full scholarly program, there will be visits to the State Library of New [End Page 584]

South Wales and historical sites of the Colonial Medical Service. There is an optional organized five-day post-conference medical history tour to the outback, the Red Centre, and far north of Australia.

The website for the Conference is http://www.dcconferences.com.au/hom2015/home.

The Forty-Fifth World Congress will be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from September 5 to 9, 2016, organized by Dr. Ana María Rosso, a vice-president of the ISHM.

The website for the Congress is: http://www.fmv-uba.org.ar/sihm/General_Information.html. I encourage AAHM members to join ISHM and attend its meetings. Please feel free to contact me for additional information.

President Margaret Humphreys thanked the outgoing council class of 2015: David Cowen, Jeremy Greene, John Swann, and Jacqueline Wolf.

Motion to adjourn at 4:30 p.m.
Submitted by Jodi L. Coste, Secretary [End Page 585]

Note 1: Nature of Activities and Summary of Significant Accounting Policies

Note 2: Funds Due From Others

As of December 31, 2014, the Johns Hopkins University Press owed the association $313 for excess billing amount for its processing fees. There were no funds due from others as of December 31, 2013.

Note 3: Investments

The association invests in mutual funds. Fair values for investments are determined by reference to quoted market prices and other information generated by market transactions (all Level 1 measurements).

Fair value measurements for investments reported at fair value on a recurring basis were determined based on:

Note 4: Annual Meeting Receipts and Disbursements

The association holds an annual meeting, which is handled by the Local Arrangements Committee (LAC). The committee receives revenue and pays most expenses, and remits the excess of revenues over expenses to the association. The association then pays some expenses, and sometimes receives reimbursement. The 2014 meeting was held at the Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, and the University of Chicago helped the LAC manage the meeting.

2014 and 2013 income is summarized below:

[End Page 589]

Note 5: Dues

The association received $95,837 total dues in 2014 and $67,351 in 2013. The association sends out renewals for the next calendar year during the current year. Therefore, total dues collected are approximated below:

Note 6: Functional Expenses

The association had $252,187 in functional expenses in 2014 of which $168,396 were annual meeting expenses. Of the total amount of functional expenses $234,134, or 93%, was for program services and $18,053, or 7%, was for management and general expenses. There were no fundraising expenses in 2014. In 2013, the association had $238,115 in functional expenses of which $171,084 were annual meeting expenses. Of the total amount of functional expenses $221,904, or 93%, was for program services and $16,211, or 7%, was for management and general expenses. There were no fundraising expenses in 2013.

Note 7: Funds Due to Others

As of December 31, 2014, the association owed the History of Medicine Foundation $3,000 for contributions paid by the members. As of December 31, 2013, the association owed the History of Medicine Foundation $225 for contributions paid by the members and owed $1,412 for expenses from the 2013 annual meeting held by the Local Arrangements Committee. [End Page 590]

Note 8: Subsequent Events

Management has evaluated subsequent events through February 9, 2015, the date on which the financial statements were available to be issued.

[End Page 591]