SAMUEL X RADBILL COLLECTION
 1842 (1907-1987) 1988

Historical Collections of the Library of
the College of Physicians of Philadelphia
1990


MSS 2/0037-01			Acc. 1989-105-01

RADBILL, SAMUEL X
(1901-1987)

Papers,			  
1842	(1907-1987) 1988


Biographical

Samuel X Radbill was born in Philadelphia in 1901.  He spent 
his childhood in Eastwick, and graduated from South Philadelphia 
High School.  He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania 
School of Medicine in 1924.  He interned at the Lancaster General Hospital 
in Lancaster in 1924, and in 1925 became a resident at Children's 
Hospital of Philadelphia.  He married Frances Hoffman, a South 
Philadelphia schoolteacher, on December 27, 1925, and opened 
practice in their first home in January 1926.  By 1930 Frances 
had given up teaching to work as his nurse, which she did until 
his retirement in June 1982.

Radbill began his medical career as a general practitioner. 
While the bulk of his practice was with children from the beginning, 
he did not officially become a pediatrician until 1938, when 
he was certified by the American Board of Pediatrics. He became 
a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and joined the 
pediatrics staff at Philadelphia General Hospital as well.

During the early 1930s Radbill helped found and run three 
free local pediatric clinics in Philadelphia (located at Patterson School, 
Wolfe School, and the McKean Carey School) in addition to his 
regular practice.  He maintained evening office hours at least three 
days a week until his retirement.

In World War II he served as an examiner for the local draft board 
until enlisting for active duty in 1942.  When he was called 
up in January 1943 as a Captain, his assignments included service 
as Chief of the Communicable Disease Section at Ashburn General 
Hospital in McKinney, Texas. He also served as Chief of Medical 
Service  and Venereal Disease Control Officer at Fort Crockett, 
Galveston, Texas.  He also conducted a civilian pediatric clinic 
at the fort.

Radbill's professional activities were extensive, including membership 
in both major medical associations and several historical associations, 
and service on numerous committees related to these groups. 
 In medicine his memberships included the American Medical Association, 
the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Medical Society of the 
State of Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia County Medical Society. 
 He was particularly active in the Philadelphia County Medical 
Society, serving at different times on the Board of Directors, 
as Vice President, and as 

Chairman of the Library Committee.  He helped organize PCMS's
Education and Scientific Trust, and served on the Executive Committee 
of that Trust, which coordinated the Greater Philadelphia Health 
Fair, in 1964-65.  Radbill also acted as a Philadelphia County 
Medical Society delegate to the Pennsylvania Medical Society 
for a number of years in the late 1960s, and served as Chairman 
of the Philadelphia County Medical Society's Bicentennial Committee 
in 1975.  

Radbill was perhaps better known as a medical historian and collector 
of bookplates and old and rare medical texts than as a pediatrician. 
 He described his fascination with books as beginning while 
he was in college and credits the old medical texts he began 
to collect with prompting him to take up the study of the history 
of medicine.  He believed that the study of medicine's past 
was useful to its practice in the present and encouraged many 
of his professional colleagues to examine the history of their 
specialties. Sometimes he was able to combine these concerns, 
helping to organize the American Academy of Pediatrics' Pediatric 
History Club, organizing several exhibits on the history of 
medicine and of pediatrics at meetings of the American Medical 
Association and the American Association for the History of 
Medicine, and participating enthusiastically in all activities 
of the Section on Medical History of the College of Physicians 
of Philadelphia.  Radbill acted as an expert on medical history 
and the history of pediatrics, particularly in the context of 
institutional care, at both medical meetings and at meetings 
of associations such as AAHM.  He lectured on medical history 
and on pediatrics both past and present at the University of 
Pennsylvania School of Medicine and at Philadelphia General 
Hospital and published numerous articles on medical history 
in both medical journals and historical publications.  Topics 
included the history of child abuse, teething, measles, institutional 
care of children in Philadelphia from the eighteenth century 
onwards, the practice of pediatrics in ancient Mesopotamia and 
medieval Europe and the lives of medical luminaries such as 
Benjamin Rush and Robley Dunglison.  Radbill had contacts with 
many of the most prominent historians of medicine as well as 
with other doctors interested in medical history. 

Radbill's collecting interests did not confine themselves 
to the United States. He collected bookplates and traded in 
stamps, documents, coins, and medical texts with scholars and 
collectors from throughout Europe as well as Japan and China. 
 His main collecting interests were bookplates and medical texts, 
and he formed close friendships with a number of other collectors 
on other continents, supplemented with several trips to Europe. 
 He and other American collectors aided those in Europe with 
mailings of food, coffee, and luxuries such as stockings in 
the postwar period as well as swapping collectibles.  Radbill 
concerned himself with the needy in Philadelphia as well, combining 
a fondness for his old neighborhood of Eastwick with a concern 
for the development of health care for the city's needy in his 
chairmanship of the Philadelphia District, West Area Health 
and Welfare Council Subcommittee on Health Services for Eastwick 
in 1958-59, as part of the Eastwick redevelopment project. 

He also involved himself deeply in the affairs of the College 
of Physicians of Philadelphia, to which he was elected a fellow 
in 1943.  In addition to his participation in the College's 
Section on Medical History, for which he served at different 
times as both clerk and chairman, he was a member of the Council 
and the Bicentennial Committee and was a longtime member of 
the Library Committee. He was concerned with shaping the direction 
of the development of the library as well as with specific administrative matters.

Radbill's contributions to both his vocation and his avocation were 
recalled by both other physicians and Fellows of the College and 
by other medical historians at a memorial gathering at the College 
shortly after his death in November 1987.  


Scope and Contents              

The collection is organized into three series as follows: 
I. Correspondence, 1887 (1907-1987); II. Subject Files, 1842 
(19231988); III. Pictorial Materials, 1884-1988.  While the 
collection offers extensive material on Radbill's professional 
activities, particularly his connections with the Philadelphia 
County Medical Society and the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 
it is perhaps of most interest in documenting Radbill's pursuit 
of medical history and related collectibles and of bookplates. 
 In addition to a number of offprints of articles by himself 
and others on a variety of subjects in medical history, the 
collection contains extensive notes made by Radbill on topics 
of interest to him and a quantity of rough drafts for articles, 
papers for presentation, and informal speeches. 

Series 1, Dr. Radbill's correspondence, is divided into two subseries: 
A. Personal correspondence and B. Subject and Organization Correspondence 
and Related Material.  Correspondence with colleagues and with 
fellow collectors is contained in subseries A; primary subjects 
addressed in the correspondence are professional and personal 
concerns and the exchange of information about medical history, 
medical and historical texts, and artifacts and their exchange. 
Radbill's correspondence with Dr. Robert Rosenthal is of special 
interest in terms of medical history, as they conducted animated 
discussions on their researches and on medical history in general 
for a period of over forty years; these discussions were supplemented 
with copious references and editorial comments.  Individuals 
with whom Radbill had extremely little correspondence on bookplates 
or book collecting are also represented in the subject correspondence 
files in subseries B.  The correspondence and article related material on 
bookplates reveals a great deal about a community of collectors in the 
United States and Europe with whom Radbill had regular contact and provides 
fairly extensive discussion on bookplate production and bookplates 
as symbols and as art.  The correspondence from European collectors 
is particularly interesting in the discussions provided of the 
mechanics of daily life in postwar Europe. This correspondence 
contains a considerable amount of information on bookplates 
themselves in terms of design and printing, and several examples 
of bookplates are present as enclosures.   

Both subseries A and B contain drafts and finished pieces 
by Radbill and some enclosures of reprints from colleagues. 
 These papers reveal little about Radbill's inner life, but 
are valuable records of the man's efforts to contribute something 
of value to his city, his profession, and the development of 
the activities in which he was interested.
  	
Subseries B contains in large part correspondence conducted 
by Radbill with reference to specific subjects, usually concerned with 
either research he was conducting or an article he was writing; 
the correspondence usually has to do with searching for sources, 
verifying information and exchanging information  or reprints 
with other scholars interested in the same subject, or the mechanics 
of publication.  Most of the subjects are physicians, a number 
of whom were the subject of articles by Radbill for  the Dictionary 
of Scientific Biography.  Also present are files of correspondence 
created in the course of Radbill's membership in and interactions 
with state and local historical societies, professional organizations 
such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Philadelphia 
County Medical Society, and with institutions such as the College 
of Physicians of Philadelphia.  These files are particularly 
rich in information concerning Radbill's connections with the 
College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the Medical Society of 
the State of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia County Medical Society, 
and the Health and Welfare Council (Philadelphia District, West 
Area). This subseries is most informative as to Radbill's professional 
memberships, particularly his service on numerous medical and 
civic committees. The files on organizations include minutes, 
mailings, meeting notices, personal and professional data on 
other members, and society publications in addition to correspondence.

The subseries also includes a small amount of clinical material: birth 
and death certificates filled out by Radbill (spanning less than 
ten years) and correspondence between Radbill and other Philadelphia 
physicians to whom he referred patients with particular difficulties 
or who were referred to him by other doctors.  The bulk of this 
clinical material is the correspondence, which contains a body 
of detail on symptoms and treatments for a number of ailments 
in the late 1930s mid 1940s in particular.

The subject files in Series 2 contain material related to particular 
subjects not necessarily related to Radbill's participation 
in any particular organization.  Much of the material is historical 
in nature; this includes Radbill's notes and drafts of works 
on a variety of historical topics related primarily to pediatrics, 
including child abuse, the development of children's hospitals, 
and measles, in addition to material on specific doctors whom 
he researched or for whom he wrote memoirs.  Material on individual 
doctors includes information about them in the form of articles, 
notes, and sometimes correspondence, and drafts of several of 
the memoirs.  The series includes several early medical papers 
of Radbill's, and correspondence and articles related to his 
chapter on the history of child abuse in a textbook on child 
abuse, The Battered Child, of which there are several drafts 
present here.

Series 2 contains very little correspondence; it is of primary value 
in documenting Radbill's wide range of activity in the history 
of medicine.  The material on child abuse might be of interest 
in illustrating the development of discussion on the subject 
within the medical community, especially in regard to detection 
and punishment, as it includes a number of offprints from medical 
journals, as well as editorials, letters to the editor, and 
newspaper clippings which span nearly twenty years.

The series also contains a quantity of material relating to Philadelphia 
General Hospital, one of the hospitals at which Radbill served 
on the pediatric staff. These folders include some correspondence 
of William Bradley, Ernest Noone, and others; it is unclear 
why Radbill had copies.  Also present are lists of staff, notices 
of staff assignments and staff meetings, actions of municipal 
committees affecting hospital activity, and material concerning 
staff evaluations, lectures, and rules of behavior for staff. 
 This material could contribute to documentation of the administrative 
development and functions of the institution.   

Pictorial materials are contained in Series 3.  This series includes: 
photographs of friends, colleagues, and exhibits of interest 
to Radbill; slides and negatives related to trips taken by Radbill; 
lantern slides connected with pediatric lectures and exhibits; 
several plaques; and some nineteenth century images.  The bulk 
of the photographs were taken by Radbill, but those of awards 
and presentations were almost certainly taken by professional 
photographers.  Within the divisions indicated below, the material 
is arranged alphabetically by title or subject.  Where meetings 
could not be identified, group photographs were interfiled with 
photographs of colleagues.  When photographs contained more 
than one identified individual, photographs were filed under 
the name of the person first in the alphabet, with the names 
of the other individual(s) in the photograph listed under the 
first person's name.  Photographs of the Pediatric History 

Club exhibits should be used judiciously, as those for years 
1966 and 1968 are difficult to distinguish from one another, 
and it is possible that they are actually of the same exhibit 
with some having been misdated.  The nineteenth century material 
is a series of photographs of English and German men who are 
usually described as physicians.  The bulk of the personal photographs 
and those of colleagues are labeled, though some with surnames 
only.  

Series 3 provides some documentation of Radbill's personal 
life, but is primarily useful in illustrating his professional 
contacts and extensive professional activities, particularly 
those on the behalf of the history of medicine.  The photographs 
of colleagues contain photographs of early twentieth century 
staff members from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Philadelphia 
General Hospital which are of particular interest as some of 
the photographs of PGH exteriors have a quantity of relevant historical 
information on their backs.


Provenance

The bulk of this collection of Radbill Papers was donated 
to the Historical Collections of the Library of the College 
of Physicians by Samuel X Radbill, circa April 1984.  Dr. Radbill 
continued to make small additions to the collection until his 
death in 1987; several small subsequent additions were donated 
by Dr. Radbill's wife, Frances.   

In conjunction with this gift of his personal papers, Dr. 
Radbill also donated several books, manuscripts, and archival 
collections.  (For details on this gift, refer to Christine 
A. Ruggere's acknowledgement of the Radbill gift on 21 May 1984.)

In April 1984, the Francis C. Wood Institute for the History 
of Medicine awarded Eric von der Luft a small stipend to organize 
the Radbill Papers, and, with Dr. Radbill's assistance, a preliminary sort 
of the collection was made.  The personal papers of Samuel X Radbill 
were processed and catalogued by Monique Bourque in 1989.  This 
project was funded by two anonymous gifts to the Historical Collections.


1842 (1907-1987) 1988
68 boxes

1/16/1990
mb/jde