Duke Medical Center Archives Blog Category: Collection Spotlight

“It was interesting. It was 1969 when I first got here, and the hospital had sort of desegregated. And I say “sort of.” It's not a very exact term. On paper, it was, but in point of fact, it was not because there were private diagnostic clinic patients, and there were “staff patients.” In order to be a private patient, you would have to have money or insurance. Most of the African Americans and some poor whites did not have [those things]. So, they were in staff clinics, and you’ve probably seen some pictures of the clinics. They typically had two appointment times: 8 and 1. People would come very early hoping to get in line first. Some people would obviously sit there for hours waiting to be seen. There was a way of getting care and specialty care, but it was also really, really… MORE

Category: Collection Spotlight

“As I said before, we only had maybe three or four faculty at Duke at the time, who were black. Dr. Moore was the only black attending an OB-GYN. There was Dr. Johnson who was in internal medicine, Dr. Jacquelyne Jackson, who was there in sociology, and one other black physician in psychiatry. So once he saw me and some of the other black medical students, he invited us over to his home to meet his family. And just to kind of give us some semblance of being with someone that we could understand where we were, and kind of what we're trying to do. And he certainly gave us a lot of encouragement, in terms of being able to survive in any kind of environment. And, you know, he would constantly tell us that excellence will always prevail. So it didn't matter whether you're black, white,… MORE

Category: Collection Spotlight

“Every year we had registration, she would have a team of med students and doctors to give these kids physicals. [There] might be about 10 in the room, giving these kids physicals. She would ask for volunteers, but almost demand volunteers. They would be out there giving these kids free physicals, and that was done by her. And she kept a record on each kid, the whole thing. She kept and monitored that stuff, and tracked it all the way through the season, [making sure] that everything got better, even though they didn’t have real, real high blood pressure. But all that stuff got better as the season went along, and she kept a record of this. And then, if the kids had any kind of illness, or asthma, anything, she knew about it. [If] they needed medication, she would have medication.”  … MORE

Category: Collection Spotlight

The Duke University Medical Center Archives is happy to announce that the Robert L. Blake Papers have been reprocessed and are open for research. Bob Blake, as he was known to many, was a medical illustrator at Duke from 1943 to 1983 and served as Coordinator of the Department of Medical Illustration in the Duke University School of Medicine. The collection contains Blake’s professional papers and original artwork, including pen and ink drawings, pencil sketches, carbon dust drawings, scratchboard engravings, pen trials, watercolors, reprographic materials, photographs, negatives, scrapbooks, and commercially published works. Materials range in date from 1943 to 2005.

Category: Collection Spotlight

Duke University was established in 1924 when James B. Duke, through the Indenture of Trust, designated a gift that transformed Trinity College into a comprehensive research university. The entire university is celebrating Duke’s centennial throughout the entire year of 2024. As part of the centennial celebrations, Duke is spotlighting important individuals from the past 100 years. This is the third and final post of our series rounding up the Duke Health individuals featured. You can find Part 1 and Part 2 here.

Onyekwere E. Akwari  
… MORE

Category: Collection Spotlight

Every October, the Society of North Carolina Archivists celebrates Archives Month! This year’s theme, What Puts You on the Map?, brings to mind Duke University Medical Center’s SEDO system, a wayfinding system rolled out in 1971 that left its mark on the hospital. 

On March 5, 1971, a special issue of Intercom, the hospital’s weekly bulletin, devoted three of its four pages to the implementation of the new System of Environmental Direction and Orientation, or SEDO. SEDO was a mid-century modern wayfinding system based on eight color zones and hanging lighted signs, “similar to the… MORE

Category: Collection Spotlight

This is the third blog post in a three-part series exploring the life and career of Dr. O. Michael Colvin (1936-2013), renowned oncologist and educator, who served as Director of the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center from 1995 to 2002. This blog post highlights Colvin’s dedication to his patients at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The first blog post introduces Colvin and his work.

The second blog post discusses the impact of the National Cancer Act of 1971 on the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center and on Colvin’s career.

“While some may believe that humans are frail creatures who give up… MORE

Category: Collection Spotlight

This is the second blog post in a three-part series exploring the life and career of Dr. O. Michael Colvin (1936-2013), renowned oncologist and educator, who served as Director of the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center from 1995 to 2002. This blog post discusses the impact of the National Cancer Act of 1971 on the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center and on Colvin’s career.

The first blog post introduces Colvin and his work.

The third blog post highlights Colvin’s dedication to his patients at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center.

While Colvin served as a physician and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, cancer research across the nation became a national priority. Scientists in the… MORE

Category: Collection Spotlight

This is the first blog post in a three-part series about the life and career of Dr. O. Michael Colvin (1936-2013), a renowned oncologist and educator who served as Director of the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center from 1995 to 2002. His papers, donated to the Duke University Medical Center Archives, represent his roles as a Johns Hopkins and Duke administrator, researcher, and professor. The purpose of this first blog post is to introduce Colvin to our readers. 

The second blog post discusses the impact of the National Cancer Act of 1971 on the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center and on Colvin’s career.

The… MORE

Category: Collection Spotlight

This is Part 4 of a multi part series on the Duke Center for Hyperbaric Medicine & Environmental Physiology (CHMEP) and the records held documenting the CHMEP at the Medical Center Archives. In this blog post, we spotlight the filming of Brainstorm, a science fiction film, at the CHMEP. This blog post concludes on our series on the Duke Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Environmental Physiology and it’s archival collection.

Part 1 “Duke Center for Hyperbaric Medicine & Environmental Physiology”, gives a brief history of the Duke CHMEP.

Part 2 “… MORE

Category: Collection Spotlight

Agents of Change: Portraits of Activism in the History of Duke Health is an oral history project documenting the work of activists and "change agents" throughout Duke Health’s history. This year-long project team was organized as part of the Bass Connections program and one of four teams connected to the Duke Centennial. Our team was led by Dr. Jeff Baker, Director of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics and History and Rebecca Williams, Archives Librarian. Jonathan Pyka, Sara Spicer, and Lucy Zheng were the graduate team members. Gemma Holland, Ava… MORE

Category: News, Collection Spotlight

Agents of Change: Portraits of Activism in the History of Duke Health is an oral history project documenting the work of activists and "change agents" throughout Duke Health’s history. This year-long project team was organized as part of the Bass Connections program and one of four teams connected to the Duke Centennial. Our team was led by Dr. Jeff Baker, Director of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics and History and Rebecca Williams, Archives Librarian. Jonathan Pyka, Sara Spicer, and Lucy Zheng were the graduate team members. Gemma Holland, Ava… MORE

Category: News, Collection Spotlight

Duke University was established in 1924 when James B. Duke, through the Indenture of Trust, designated a gift that transformed Trinity College into a comprehensive research university. The entire university is celebrating Duke’s centennial throughout the entire year of 2024. As part of the centennial celebrations, Duke is spotlighting important individuals from the past 100 years. This is Part 2 of our series rounding up the Duke Health individuals featured. You can find Part 1 here and Part 3 here. 

J. Deryl Hart    
First Chair of the… MORE

Category: Collection Spotlight

In honor of Duke’s Centennial Celebration, the Medical Center Archives is highlighting the records of the student groups it has in its holdings.

Duke Chapter of the American Medical Women's Association Records 
The American Medical Women's Association (AMWA), founded in 1915, is an organization which functions at the local, national, and international level to advocate for the advancement of women in medicine and for the improvement of women's health. Contains records pertaining to the operations of the Duke Chapter of the AMWA. Materials date from 2019 to 2020

Duke Chapter of the American Association for Men in Nursing Records … MORE

Category: Collection Spotlight

The Duke University Medical Center Archives is happy to announce that the North Carolina Licensed Practical Nurses Association (NCLPNA) Records are processed and open for research. The collection contains administrative records related to the day-to-day operations of the NCLPNA, such as meeting minutes, reports, correspondence, education and conference materials, publications, financial and membership records, photographs, publications, and ephemera. Major topics covered in this collection include licensed practical nursing, nursing education standards in North Carolina, African American women in medicine, North Carolina hospital systems, and healthcare advocacy.

The NCLPNA Records were donated in March 2022 by… MORE

Category: Collection Spotlight