Heberden Society: Dale Smith: World War I

Dale C. Smith, Ph.D., Professor of Military Medicine & History, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, will present the next Heberden society lecture on "American Medicine Supports the Great War: Base Hospitals, Staffing and Practice" on Tuesday, April 17, 2018, 5:00 p.m.  The lecture will be held at Weill Cornell Medical College, 1300 York Avenue, Uris Faculty Room (A-126), New York, NY 10065.

Professor Smith will examine the development of medicine, especially hospitals and surgical practice, in the early 20th century and discuss the impact of those civilian changes on the planning for the care of casualties by armies.  He will outline developments in British Imperial Defense planning and war experience and the role of awareness of those developments among American civilian medical leaders and organizations had to professional efforts in military medical preparedness. The second half of the discussion will trace how the planning worked, using the medical reserve personnel and units from New York City and Minnesota as exemplars.  

Dale C. Smith, Ph.D., is Professor of Military Medicine & History in the Department of Military and Emergency Medicine, F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland. In 1979 he received his Ph.D. in the History of Medicine from the University of Minnesota under the direction of Professor Leonard G. Wilson.  

 He is the author of numerous papers and books on medical history. His most recent book is Glimpsing Modernity: Military Medicine in World War One, (2015) edited with Dr. Stephen Craig. Dr. Smith is active within the historical profession, having served as chairman of the program committee (1984) of the American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM), as a member of the NIH Special Study Section on the History of the Life Sciences on two occasions, as a member of the Council of the AAHM, as Associate Editor of the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, on the editorial boards of Pharmacy in History, the Bulletin of the History of Medicine and the Journal of the History of Medicine and as the editor of the AAHM NewsLetter. He also serves on the Senior Editorial Board of the Journal of Anesthesia History.

 In 1987, he received the Laurance D. Redway Award for Excellence in Medical Writing from the Medical Society of the State of New York. He has been honored with the USU University Medal for his commitment to the academic life of the university and by the medical students with the honor of being named the Outstanding Civilian Educator in 2005. From 2006 until 2013 he served as the Senior Vice President of the USU. His professional interests include the history of medical education, the history of infectious diseases, the history of surgery, and the problems of patient evacuation in military operations.

 The Heberden Society, which seeks to promote an interest in the history of medicine, was founded at the medical center in 1975. With funding from the WCMC Office of the Dean, the society sponsors a series of lectures during each academic year.