Bullitt Lecture on Early Black Physicians

The next joint meeting of UNC’s Bullitt History of Medicine Club and Duke’s Trent History of Medicine Society will be Tuesday, February 10, 2009 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us at 5:30pm for light refreshments followed by the lecture at 6pm. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Todd Savitt, Professor of Medical Humanities at East Carolina University, will be presenting a lecture entitled, "Entering a 'White' Profession: Black Physicians in 19th- and 20th-Century America."

Dr. Savitt is an historian of medicine. He received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University (1965), attended the University of Rochester School of Medicine (1965-1968), and earned his M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1975) in history from the University of Virginia. After teaching history of medicine and medical humanities at the University of Florida College of Medicine from 1976 to 1982 he joined the faculty of the Department of Medical Humanities at East Carolina University School of Medicine, where he presently teaches history of medicine, literature and medicine, social and cultural issues in medical practice, and medical ethics.

Dr. Savitt's primary research interests are African-American medical history and medical history of the American South and West. He has written or edited six books (Medicine and Slavery: The Diseases and Health Care of Blacks in Antebellum Virginia; The Dictionary of American Medical Biography; Science and Medicine in the Old South; Disease and Distinctiveness in the American South; Medical Readers’ Theater: A Guide and Scripts; and Race and Medicine in Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth Century America) and a number of articles on such topics as the relationship of the AMA towards black physicians, history of sickle-cell anemia, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), use of African Americans for medical experimentation, the entry of black physicians into the American medical profession, and early African-American medical schools and medical journals.

For directions to the UNC Health Sciences Library, visit the HSL website. The Robertson Scholars Express Bus travels non-stop between UNC (Morehead Planetarium) and Duke (Chapel Circle).

For more information on the Bullitt Club and a schedule of meetings for spring 2009, please visit the Bullitt website. Bullitt lectures for 2008-9 are now available as mp3 downloads.