The Society for the History of Navy Medicine

The Naval Academy History Department’s biennial McMullen Naval History Symposium is reputedly the largest and most influential event of its kind in the US, if not in the world. This year, confronted by the vagaries and realities of the COVID-19 / Delta variant pandemic, Symposium organizers Doctor Virginia Lunsford, Associate Professor, and CDR Stan Fisher, PhD, Assistant Professor, will mount a hybrid Symposium on Thursday and Friday, 23 and 24 September 2021. That is, attendees and presenters can attend either in-person, or remotely.

The Society’s 3-paper panel is scheduled for the late afternoon session on Friday the 24th. All presenters will be remote, but the panel Chair, RADM Fred Sanford, MC, USN (Ret) hopes to be our in-person presence.

Symposium registration is free, here on the McMullen webpage. Just scroll down and follow the prompts. Be sure to peruse the wide range of panels available, unfortunately not all at one time! It promises to be an amazing event.

The Society is pleased to announce that it will mount a 3-paper panel at the 2021 McMullen Naval History Symposium, to be held 23 – 24 September. Symposium organizers await the Naval Academy Superintendent’s decision as to whether the Symposium will be virtual, or held in-person, in Annapolis, Maryland.

The papers and their authors are:

The Historical Toll of Scurvy and the Impediments to Implementation of a Cure in Affecting British Royal Naval Operations Through the Nineteenth Century, by
Gerald Stulc, MD, FACS, FICS, MFA, Captain, Medical Corps, U.S. Navy, Retired

Early Innovations in Maritime Telemedical Services: The Seamen’s Church Institute of New York’s KDKF Radio Medico Station, by Johnathan Thayer, PhD, MLS, and Stefan Dreisbach-Williams

Slave Ship Surgeons – An Unrecognized Factor in the Abolition of Slavery, by Irving Rosen, MD, FRCS(C)

Symposium details to follow as they emerge.

The Society for the History of Navy Medicine invites proposals for papers to be presented at the 2021 McMullen Naval History Symposium on any topics related to maritime medicine. Proposals should include a one page vita and an abstract of no more than 250 words which summarizes the research and its contribution to historical knowledge, collated in a single Microsoft Word file. A Paper Selection Board will select three or four papers for presentation at the Society’s panel at the McMullen, which may be a virtual event. Proposal deadline: 01 February 2021. Email proposals to historyofnavymedicine@gmail.com by midnight. In the event of a physical symposium in Annapolis, the Society will provide travel grants of up to $850 for graduate students whose papers are accepted for presentation. The USNA History Department will announce the conference format by May 2021 and will promulgate a draft program by mid-June.

We are sad to note that historian Harold D Langley, an early instigator of the notion of a society to support scholarly work in the history of maritime medicine and a mentor, Board member, and the namesake of our Harold D Langley Book Prize for Excellence in the History of Maritime Medicine, has passed away at age 95.

Here is his obituary. It details a rich and accomplished life:

The Society for the History of Navy Medicine takes great pleasure in announcing that the 2019 Harold D Langley Book Prize for Excellence in the History of Maritime Medicine will be awarded to Thomas Helling, MD for his book, Desperate Surgery in the Pacific War: Doctors and Damage Control for American Wounded, 1941-1945, McFarland, 2017.

Professor Barry Gough, president of our Book Selection Committee describes the work thus:

A work of extensive scholarship and lucid prose, this is history on a grand and

descriptive scale. The account is told with commitment to recreate the past,

weaving the history of war, afloat and ashore, through various circumstances

of the Pacific war – jungles, atolls and islands. Caring for the wounded posed

serious challenges on the frontline, and the stabilizing of patients until they

could be evacuated prevented many deaths. This account of the efforts and

innovations of medical personnel forms an important chapter of the logistics

of waging war in a distant war zone.

Dr Helling is Professor of Surgery and Chief of the Division of General Surgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, MS.

Sincere thanks to Professor Gough (retired, of Wilfrid Laurier University) and his book prize selection committee colleagues (and Society members) Andre’ Sobocinski (historian at the Navy Bureau Of Medicine and Surgery) and Bob Bramson, MD (retired director of pediatric radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and retired associate professor at Harvard Medical School).

Harold D Langley, in honor of whom the award is named, is an emeritus professor of history (Catholic University Of America) and retired curator of naval history at the Smithsonian Institution. He is a founding member of the Society and a revered mentor. His book, A History of Medicine in the Early U.S. Navy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), is a pioneering work in our field of interest.

(C)2019 The Society for the History of Navy Medicine

In conclusion, I ask you – no, I task you:
–every day, to try to memorialize – perhaps by putting on a special pin or necklace, or by saying, out loud, the name or names of someone who died in our nation’s service – our nation’s fallen ones.
–when you do that, give a thought to those who still suffer the ravages of war time experience, and seek advice – the VFW would be a good source – about how you can support their care. Be sure our legislators know that you favor generous medical and psychological benefits for veterans, especially including the homeless and addicted men and women who’ve served.
–finally, hold in your thoughts those who now face danger on our behalf.

Let us be thankful, every day, that we live in this great country, and, let us be especially thankful for the people who defended her then and defend her now. Let us remember them – and thereby preserve them from falling completely out of memory.

(c)2019 Thomas L Snyder

The Society is proud to announce these papers have been selected for our panel on the history of maritime medicine at the Naval Academy McMullen Naval History Symposium at Annapolis, 19 – 20 September 2019.

The name of the Session is The Health of Sailors.

Papers:

“Those Wretched souls…” – The Health and Morale of European and American Seamen in Nineteenth Century British India, by Manikarnika Dutta, PhD Candidate, Welcome Unit in the History of Medicine, University of Oxford

Climate, disease and colonialism: the Massaua port in the Italian studies of tropical medicine (end of XIX Century – mid-XX Century, by Costanza Bonelli, PhD Candidate, University of Rome La Sapienza

Pride and Prejudice: Reforms, and the Rise in Status of British Naval Surgeons During the French Republican and Napoleonic Wars (1793 – 1815), by Gerald Stulc, MD, FACS (ret), CAPT, MC, USNR (RET)

Dynamics of Early 20th Century Measles Outbreaks at the U.S. Naval Academy, by Andrew Bobb, PhD, LCDR, MSC, USN; Mitchell Winkie, MIDN 1/c, USNA; Virginia F Smith, PhD, Department of Chemistry, USNA

Congratulations to the scholars!

The President of our panel will be RADM Frederick Sanford, MC, USN (RET).

Our Commentator will be Annette Finley-Croswhite, PhD, University Professor and Professor of History, Old Dominion University.

Sincere thanks to our Papers Selection Board: Dale C Smith, PhD, Professor of Military Medicine, Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, President; Paul Berman, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Emeritus), University of Massachusetts School of Medicine; Mark F Leep, MA, JD, MBA, Office of Research, Boncours Health Systems, Virginia.

©2019 The Society for the History of Navy Medicine

I sent the letter below to Society members today:

Dear Members and Friends of the Society,

 

Some time ago, I told you I would send out the current Treasurer’s Report so that you can see how efficiently your Society is run, and as a reminder that we are always appreciative of our members’ dues-donation support. I’m pleased to attach the report for fiscal year 2018, just given to the Foundation Board of Directors today. [Editor’s note: I cannot attach the report to this post. If you want to see it, contact me at historyofnavymedicine@gmail.com]

 

Two of our Board members resigned today. Captain Joel Labow, MC, USN (Ret) has served on the Board for several years. He resigns because of health issues. We appreciate his years of service and guidance. Captain Kenneth Hagan, USN (Ret) has been on the Board for two years. He resigned for logistical reasons. We appreciate his service and guidance as well. We are now looking for volunteers to serve on our Board. This is reasonably light work, requiring perhaps 3 or 4 hours of concentrated mental work per year, relating to our annual Board meetings. Contact me by reply, with your CV, if you are interested.

 

I’m pleased to announce that the Board elected Robert T Bramson, MD Treasurer and member of the Board of Directors of the Foundation. Dr Bramson was chief of Pediatric Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, then executive VP of the radiology department at Boston Childrens Hospital. He retired as associate professor from Harvard.

 

Finally, our Book Prize and Papers Selection Boards are hard at work selecting the next winner of Harry J Langley Book Prize and the best papers for our panel at the McMullen Naval History Symposium at Annapolis in September. Announcements of winners are due at the end of April.

 

Thank you for your continued interest in and support of the Society.

The Society is pleased to announce the following members have volunteered to serve in selecting the best papers for presentation at the 2019 McMullen Naval History Symposium. They are:

Dale Smith, PhD. (President of the Board). Dr. Smith is Professor of Military Medicine and History at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences and Chair of that University’s Military and Emergency Medicine Committee on Appointments, Promotion, and Tenure. He is an award winning writer in medical history. His areas of interest are the history of medical education, the history of infectious diseases, the history of surgery, and the problems of patient evacuation in military operations.

Paul Berman, MD. Dr Berman is a retired Internist and a medical historian, with concentration on 19th century American medicine. He is a member of the American Association for the History of Medicine and the American Osler Society.

Mark F Leep, J.D. Mr Leep, a former Marine Corps captain, has a 25 year career in human subjects research protections and other research enterprise regulatory and operational functions as an attorney for industry drug and device sponsors, clinical research organizations, physician researchers, and academic and community health care institutions, and as an Institutional Review Board member and vice chair, consultant, and human research protections operations leader.

Under Dr Smith’s guidance, the Board will select the best of the papers submitted for presentation at the Society’s panel at the McMullen Naval History Symposium in Annapolis in September. The Board plans to announce its selections no later that 15 April.

©2019 The Society for the History of Navy Medicine