~Post courtesy Stephen Greenberg, Section HEad, Rare Books and Early Manuscripts, History of Medicine Division.
You are cordially invited to the next NLM History of Medicine lecture, to be held Thursday, May 24, from 2 pm to 3:00pm in the NLM Lister Hill Auditorium, Building 38A, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD. This special program will be the second annual NLM Michael E. DeBakey Lecture in the History of Medicine, honors the legacy of Dr. DeBakey as it exists in modern medical practice and in the ongoing public service of the NLM.
This year’s lecture will be delivered by Heidi Morefield, MSc — 2017 NLM Michael E. DeBakey Fellow in the History of Medicine, Doctoral Candidate, Department of the History of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland:
“Transplanting Technology: Dr. Michael DeBakey and Cold War Technology Transfer”
At the height of the Cold War, Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, one of the most prolific American surgeons of the 20th century, made several trips to China and the USSR to survey the medical landscape on the other side of the Iron Curtain. DeBakey became a broker of valuable medical information, teaching new techniques and introducing new machines in the USSR and China, while reporting on the conditions of Chinese and Soviet medical institutions back home to the American public. His diplomatic success was possible in part because of his willingness to take less high-tech medical systems seriously—he praised the barefoot doctors and was “impressed” with Russian medical inventions that were showcased during his visits. With rich diary entries describing his visits, DeBakey understood medical technology as being appropriate only in context. He situated both the Western technology he helped transplant to the East as well as that which he encountered there within the topography of the Soviet and Chinese medical systems. In reflecting upon DeBakey’s Cold War travels, this talk will interrogate how his influence and mobility shaped perceptions of both American and communist-sphere medical technology
The NLM Michael E. DeBakey Lecture in the History of Medicine is supported by a generous gift to the NLM by the Michael E. DeBakey Medical Foundation. This lecture will be live-streamed globally, and subsequently archived, by NIH VideoCasting.
All are welcome.