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Buy Issue for $25 at JHUPIn Memoriam
James Harvey Young, 1915–2006
James Harvey Young (8 September 1915–29 July 2006) pioneered historical scholarship in the field of patent medicines and quackery and the subsequent regulation of food and drugs in the United States. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he was the eldest of the four children of Rev. William Harvey Young and Blanche DeBra Young. During his childhood, the family lived primarily in Indiana and Illinois, and he took his undergraduate degree at Knox College in 1937. In 1938 he received the M.A. degree and in 1941 the Ph.D. degree, both in history from the University of Illinois. He spent his entire career, with the exception of special temporary appointments, at Emory University. He rose from instructor in 1941 to become, upon his retirement in 1984, the Charles Howard Candler Professor of American Social History, Emeritus. From 1958 to 1966 he chaired the Department of History, and he received numerous honors from the university as he guided a record thirty-eight doctoral dissertations.
Harvey's interest in patent medicine advertising began while doing the research for his master's thesis. Persuaded that medical quackery was an important theme in American social and intellectual history because it afforded insight into an antirational approach to a key problem in life, in 1961 he published The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America before Federal Regulation. This was followed by The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America (1967). Harvey firmly believed in the salutary role of governmental regulation of food and drugs. With his book Pure Food: Securing the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906 (1989) he became the acknowledged expert on the early history of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Harvey was active in a number of governmental and professional organizations relating to his field. He served on the Consumer Task Force; the White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health; and the National Food and Drug Advisory Council. He was awarded the Harvey W. Wiley Medal by the FDA and the FDA Commissioner's Special Citation for his contributions. He served as president of the Southern Historical Association and was a member of the Executive Council of the American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM). In 1962 the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy awarded him its Edward Kremers Award, and in 1982 the AAHM awarded him its William H. Welch medal.
Colleagues recall the sparkle in Harvey's eye, his generosity in sharing research materials, and his strong support for female scholars at a time when history was still viewed as primarily a male preserve. Myrna Goode Young, his beloved wife from 1940 until her death in 2000, and a professor [End Page 432] of classics at Agnes Scott College, served as the "first reader and key critic" of Harvey's historical writing. Harvey is survived by two sons, Harvey Galen Young of Doraville, Georgia, and James Walter Young, of Phoenix, Arizona; by two grandchildren; and by a sister, Barbara Young, M.D., of Baltimore, Maryland.
Chester R. Burns, 1937–2006
Chester Ray Burns, M.D., Ph.D., the retired James Wade Rockwell Professor of Medical History at the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, died in New York City on 27 December 2006. He and his wife, Ann, were spending Christmas vacation with their daughter and her family at the time of his death. Chester, my colleague at the Institute for the Medical Humanities at UTMB for many years, will be remembered as a pioneering historian of medical ethics, as the founder of the Institute, and for his commitment to the importance of history within the medical humanities. He will also be remembered for his work on behalf of the history of medicine in Texas, his capacious centennial history of UTMB, Saving Lives, Training Caregivers...
