Randolph Lee Clark, MD. Interviewed by Don Macon. Dr. Clark was the son of educators and long-time president of MD Anderson Hospital. Dr. Clark discusses his personal and family history in the Texas towns of Hereford, Midland, and Wichita Falls. He talked about the founding of Add-Ran College, now known as Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, named after his great uncles Addison and Randolph Clark. Dr. Clark related his early interest in sports and activities at the summer resort of the College of the YMCA at Blue Ridge, South Carolina, where he worked for two seasons. He revealed the impact on his professional years of the 18 months he directed research for DuPont at their Newark, New Jersey Plant, after his graduation from the Universality of South Carolina with degrees in Chemical Engineering, English and Pre-Med, and before receiving his MD from the Medical College of Virginia in 1932. He talks about his fascinating career, his professional associations at home and abroad, his pioneering work in surgery and his long association with and love for the Anderson. The interview ends when he receives a phone call from the University of Texas. 11/30/1973, Color-sound. Produced for Texas Medical Center Historical Resources Project.

This 3/4” U-Matic tape contains a lecture titled "The Pioneering Spirit in American Medicine" by Dr. Virginia Allen of the Office of Scientific Publications in the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. The lecture took place April 16, 1980, and it was a part of the series “Conversations with the Past: History of Health Sciences.” The recording runs 42:36, with about 41 minutes of lecture content. According to the credits, it was a Medical Community Television System Production. The recording is a duplication, in color.
(0:01) Video starts with blank screen, color bars, and countdown.
(0:29) Program begins with TMC Librarian Beth White at a podium introducing medical historian Dr. Virginia Allen.
(1:14) Dr. Allen begins her talk, “Pioneering Spirit in American Medicine.”
(3:36) Dr. John Potts, early Physician General to the Virginia Colony.
(4:08) Preacher physicians.
(4:45) Cotton Mather of Boston, a preacher and—according to Dr. Allen—the first significant figure in American medicine.
(9:10) Mather’s chief medical accomplishment: promoting smallpox inoculation. In an early instance of applying statistical analysis in medicine, he tracked mortality for those inoculated compared to the general population.
(13:05) Mather wrote the first general treatise on medicine in the United States, The Angel of Bethesda, 1724. However, it was not published.
(16:22) Dr. Ephraim McDowell, raised in Kentucky and practiced there, and was educated in Edinburgh, Scotland.
(20:28) McDowell diagnosed and removed an ovarian tumor in Jane Crawford. It was the first time such an operation had been performed and the patient lived.
(28:17) Dr. William Beaumont of Connecticut, licensed in 1812, became an Army surgeon and in 1820 was stationed at Fort Mackinac.
(32:23) In 1822, seventeen-year-old Alexis St. Martin, an employee of the American Fur Company, was accidentally shot. Beaumont cared for him, eventually moving him into his home. There remained a hole in St. Martin’s stomach; Beaumont did experiments and discovered the basics of digestion. He published his Observations in 1832.
(40:30) Dr. Allen notes she is out of time but had wanted to speak about Elizabeth Blackwell and Daniel Drake. She concludes by reflecting on the pioneering spirit at work in the Texas Medical Center.