Fielding Hudson Garrison once remarked that because his birthday fell on 5 November, Guy Fawkes Day, he was “fated to suffer from in-ward hell-fire and brimstone all [his] life”. Though said in jest, Garrison was a vulnerable, melancholic and self-confessed lonely man who found solace in the papers, periodicals and books of the Army Medical Library — today's National Library of Medicine. Over the course of approximately 25 years, and often while working in his spare time, Garrison went from a clerk in the world's largest medical library to America's pioneering and, arguably, most prolific medical historian, past or present.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Letter, GarrisonF H to MenckenH L, 28 July 1926. Alan Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
2.
KaganS. Life and Letters of Fielding H. Garrison.Boston, MA: Medico-Historical Press, 1938.
3.
Letter, GarrisonF H to MenckenH L, 5 November 1925. Alan Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
4.
Letter, GarrisonF H to WelchW H, 3 August 1920. Alan Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
5.
Johns Hopkins Yearbook 1890. Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
6.
KaganS. Fielding H Garrison: A Biography. Boston, MA: Medico-Historical Press, 1948.
7.
Garrison'sF H transcripts of grades, 1890. Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
8.
HumeEEGarrison and the Army Medical Library. Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine1937;5 (April).
9.
The previous Army Medical Library was located in Ford's Theater, which had the dubious distinction of being the site of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865. Today the library is known as the National Library of Medicine, and is located just outside Washington, DC, in Berhesda, Maryland.
10.
FieldingHGarrison's Army Record Book, MS C 166, Box 7. National Library of Medicine.
11.
WyndhamDMA History of the National Library of Medicine, NIH publication no. 82–1904. Bethesda, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services, 1982: pp. 122–3.
12.
Letter, GarrisonF H to MenckenH L, 2 November 1925. Alan Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
13.
GarrisonFHThe uses of medical bibliography and medical history in the medical curriculum,. Journal of the American Medical Association1916;66:323.
14.
ConnorJ. Guardians of Medical Knowledge. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001.
15.
GarrisonFHJohn Shaw Billings: A Memoir. New York: G P Putnam and Sons, 1915.
16.
GarrisonFHAn Introduction to the History of Medicine: With Medical Chronology, Bibliographic Data, and Test Questions (1st edn). Philadelphia: W B Saunders, 1913.
17.
SigeristHEMedical history in the United States, past-present-future. Bulletin of the History of Medicine1948;22:47–64.
18.
BlissM. William Osler: A Life in Medicine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
19.
GarrisonFHA sketch of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office. Medical Library and Historical Journal1906.
20.
CushingH. The Life of Sir William Osler. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940.
21.
Book review. An Introduction to the History of Medicine. Journal of the American Medical Association1922;78:457.
22.
BriegerGHFielding H. Garrison: The man and his book. The Samuel X. Radbill Lecture. Transactions and Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia1981;3:1.
23.
SartonG. Book review. An Introduction to the History of Medicine. Isis1922;4:554.
24.
Letter, GarrisonF H to SartonG, 21 December 1929. Alan Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
25.
MayerCFThe literary activity of Fielding H. Garrison, M.D.Bulletin of the History of Medicine1937;5 (November).
26.
Letter GarrisonF H to CushingH, 21 May 1922, MS C 166. National Library of Medicine.
27.
Letter, GarrisonF H to OlserW, 3 March 1918. Alan Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
28.
Letter, GarrisonF H to WelchW, 4 August 1920. Alan Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
29.
Letter, GarrisonF H to MenckenH L, 13 April 1922. Alan Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
30.
Letter, GarrisonF H to MenckenH L, 12 May 1924, MS C 166. National Library of Medicine.
31.
Letter, GarrisonF H to KlebsA C, 1 September 1926, MS C 166. National Library of Medicine.
32.
Van IngenP. The New York Academy of Medicine: Its First Hundred Years. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949.
33.
GarrisonFHContributions to the History of Medicine. London: Hafner, 1966.
34.
GarrisonFHLife as an occupational disease. In: Contributions to the History of Medicine. London: Hafner, 1966.
35.
MenckenH L was a lifelong Baltimorean who, following graduation from high school and a short stint as salesman for his father's cigar factory, began his career as a journalist, covering the police beat for the Baltimore Morning Herald. Within a year he had his own weekly column and by age 23 he was the paper's city editor. Armed with a public forum, Mencken quickly established himself as an acerbic critic of politicians (Republicans and Democrats alike), college professors (whom he called “gogues”, as in pedagogues), the American South (“a vast reservoir of morons”), Puritanism (the haunting fear that someone somewhere is having fun) and religion (“Sunday School is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents”). Mencken's influence as a literary critic reached its peak during the 1920s, when he backed the works of F Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, James Brach Cabell and Theodore Drieser, among others. Mencken's career faded during and immediately following the Great Depression in 1929, only to be resurrected in the 1940s when he published his memories in a trilogy known as the “Days” books. He died in the middle of the night from a massive stroke in January 1956. Additional biographical information can be found at www.mencken.org.
36.
Letter, MenckenH L to McCullochC C, 9 August 1918, MS C 166, Box 1, 1918. National Library of Medicine.
37.
GarrisonFHHistory of pediatrics. In: Abt's Pediatrics. Philadelphia: W B Saunders, 1923.
38.
MarkelHOskiF. The H L Mencken Baby Book. Philadelphia: Hanley and Belfus, 1990.
39.
Letter, F H Garrison to H L Mencken, 9 September 1919. Alan Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
40.
Letter, F H Garrison to H L Mencken, 19 September 1919. Alan Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
41.
MenckenHLMy Life as Author and Editor (YardleyJ, ed.). New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
42.
Letter, F H Garrison to H L Mencken, 1 December 1923. Alan Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
43.
de KruifPaulPhD (1890–1971), was a noted bacteriologist and writer who is best known for two books: Arrowsmith, a novel he co-authored with Sinclair Lewis, which won the Pulitzer Prize (although Lewis was convinced to turn down the prize by H L Mencken); and The Microbe Hunters, a collection of full-figured biographical sketches of some of the world's greatest scientists, including Leeuwenhoek, Pasteur and Koch.
44.
FishbeinMorrisMD (1889–1976), was a prolific author and editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association from 1924 to 1949. In 1926, after lengthy and at times acrimonious negotiation, Garrison and Fishbein agreed to combine the Army Medical Library's Index Medicus with the American Medical Association's Quarterly Cumulative Index to form the Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus. Garrison was associate editor of the latter from 1927 to 1929.
45.
Letter, GarrisonF H to MenckenH L, 28 September 1925. Alan Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
46.
The William H Welch Medical Library of Johns Hopkins University. Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital1930;1 (January).
47.
FlexnerSFlexnerT. William Henry Welch and the Heroic Age of American Medicine. New York: Viking Press, 1941.
48.
FeeEBrownTM, eds. Making Medical History: The Life and Times of Henry E. Sigerist.Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
49.
Letter, GarrisonF H to KlebsA C, 1 January 1935, MS C 166, Box 4. National Library of Medicine.
50.
Telegram to ChesneyA C, 18 April 1935. Alan Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
51.
Letter, TietschF to MenckenH L, 27 August 1938. Alan Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
52.
GarrisonFHAn Introduction to the History of Medicine: With Medical Chronology, Bibliographic Data and Bibliographic Data (4th edn). Philadelphia: W B Saunders, 1929.
