Correspondence: Beeson, Paul, Folder 2, 1973-1981

The McDermott Collection is made up of four separate series: office and personal files (Boxes 1-16), memo books and calendars (Boxes 17 and 18), awards and memorabilia (Boxes 19 and 20) and correspondence files (Boxes 21-49). The material within each series represents a wide variance of dates, some of the items going back to the Thirties and Forties, most of them pertaining to events of the late Sixties and Seventies, up to the time of Dr. McDermott's death in 1981. The papers only briefly reflect Dr. McDermott's work in medicine and research, his investigation into the early use of antibiotics and the discovery of isoniazid, his introduction to the field of public health which later became his specialty, and his career at Cornell University Medical College. His interest in the Navajo people (Boxes 10 and 11) is well documented, as is the work done from 1955 onward with the establishment of the Cornell-Many Farms experiment in Arizona on malnutrition and its related diseases.

The bulk of the material concerns the work done by Dr. McDermott at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation from 1972-1981 while he was advisor to President of the Foundation, Dr. David Rogers. The files document programs dealing with public health, consideration of candidates for grants, setting up of new divisions, inter-office communications and correspondence, and other Foundation-related matters.

The office and personal files of the Collection contain information about McDermott's interest in the health-impaired elderly, infant and child day-care, research on the use of Interferon, and the continuing search for anti-microbial cures. Many of his research papers are here, some of them accompanied by his original notes and source materials. This series also contains many of Dr. McDermott's speeches, as well as a number of his lectures to medical school students over a period of years (Boxes 7-9). The awards and acceptance speeches are also found in this series.

The field of public health and its many aspects was of primary importance to Dr. McDermott and articles and clippings relating to this occupy a substantial place in the Collection, as do files on the trips he made at the behest of various governments, our own included, to many of the disadvantaged countries of the world (Box 16). His last, unpublished work, "Ramifications", is included with McDermott's Papers; many of its chapters practically complete (Box 15). The book represents Dr. McDermott's philosophy and is remarkable evidence of his knowledge, his culture, and the broadness of his intellectual outlook. Among the published manuscripts found here, there is correspondence regarding two of his collaborations. One of these was the Cecil Loeb Textbook of Medicine, 12th Edition, which he co-edited with Dr. Paul Beeson. The other was a family medical guide which he edited for the Readers Digest Corporation.

Information about the pre-Foundation days may be gleaned from some of the memo books and calendars in the Collection (Boxes 17 and 18). Unfortunately, there are several gaps in the years of these books and calendars, as well as incomplete entries in some.

The correspondence files of the collection are comprised, in large part, of letters of recommendation from Dr. McDermott to other members of the profession as well as to outstanding organizations on behalf of friends who solicited his help. His willingness to serve on committees and boards which represented causes arousing his interest and concern are also reflected here, as are other matters of a personal and professional nature (Boxes 21-49).

Non-Manuscript Material

This collection contained a group of photographs of Dr. McDermott. Some were pictures of him accepting degrees and awards, attending important functions, and a few were taken by students and colleagues as mementos of certain occasions. These photographs are housed in the Photographs-Personal Collections. Boxes 19 and 20 contain plaques, citations, rosettes, etc. as well as some memorabilia that Dr. McDermott collected over a period of years. A group of slides on the use of sulfonamides were discarded per the advice of the Archivist.