Duke Medical Center Archives Blog Category: Collection Spotlight

Photographs are among the most frequently requested items here at the Archives and this week we spotlight one of our collections of images. Most of our prints and negatives are housed in the Photograph Collection, but there are also caches of photos in other collections. One such collection is the Wilburt C. Davison Papers. As the first School of Medicine dean, Davison had a remarkable career that lasted over fifty years and took him across the globe. The photos and negatives in his papers range in date from the late 1800s to the 1970s and capture the many things he did, the places he travelled, and the people he knew.

Among the earliest photos are ones of Davison in school at Oxford and with the American Red Cross during World War I. Davison… MORE

Category: Collection Spotlight

In this “Collections Spotlight” post we’re featuring the papers of Dr. Eleanor Easley, an innovator in women’s health.

Easley is known for several “firsts”: She was the first woman to graduate from Duke medical school’s four-year program, the first female resident at Duke Hospital, and the first female president of the North Carolina Obstetrics and Gynecology Society. Yet she didn’t originally plan to go into medicine. Born in Bellevue, Ohio, in 1907, Eleanor Easley received a BA from the University of Idaho in 1928 and an MA from the University of Iowa in 1929. While working on a graduate degree psychology, she enrolled in an anatomy course after her advisor suggested that she minor in physiology. She became fascinated by the subject, and decided to pursue a career in medicine.… MORE

Category: Collection Spotlight

With this post we’re starting a new feature, "Collection Spotlight," which will focus on a particular collection at the DUMC Archives. For our first in this series, we're excited to highlight the papers of Russell Dicks, a pioneer in modern pastoral care who worked at Duke during the 1950s.

Born in Oklahoma in 1906, Dicks received his BA from the University of Oklahoma in 1929 and his BD from Union Theological Seminary in 1933. He served as chaplain at Massachusetts General Hospital and multiple hospitals in Chicago before joining Duke in 1948 as a professor of pastoral care, the director of clinical pastoral training, and the chaplain of Duke University Hospital.

Dick’s methods and ideas about pastoral psychology,… MORE

Category: Collection Spotlight