McKeen Cattell papers

McKeen Cattell, a major figure in pharmacological research in the United States, spent his career in physiology and pharmacology at Cornell University Medical College. After earning the Ph.D. (1920) and M.D. (1924) degrees from Harvard Medical School, he joined the Department of Physiology at Cornell. In 1936, he moved over to the Department of Pharmacology and became its chairman; he remained there until his retirement in 1959. A large part of his research efforts, along with colleague Harry Gold, were devoted to studying the effect of digitalis drugs on contractions of the heart muscle. With Gold, Cattell founded the American College of Clinical Pharmacology in 1963. He was editor of its publication, The Journal of Clinical Pharmacology for many years, and also served as editor of the journal published by the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. As reflected in the collection. Dr. Cattell played several key advisory roles in the National Institutes of Health, the New York Academy of Medicine, and a number of other organizations. Cattell died on 8 February 1983.

This collection of manuscript papers presented to the Countway Library by Dr. Cattell is divided into five sections. The first section (1 box) contains a scattering of personal correspondence and biographical materials, including some family letters and a series of reprints of McKeen Cattell's publications.

The second section (9 boxes) is made up of corporate correspondence, the first part of which focuses on Cattell's years as chairman of the Pharmacology Department at Cornell. Both administrative and research materials can be found here, including (but not restricted to) correspondence with other faculty members, correspondence with foreign fellows in the department, materials regarding departmental research projects, and manuscript materials of departmental publications. The second part of this section contains correspondence with other corporations, including many of the drug companies that sponsored the research projects. It also has extensive correspondence regarding Dr. Cattell's membership in various professional societies--in particular the ACCPC and his involvement in its formation, and the ASPET for which he served as councilor and treasurer. Journals published by these organizations are well represented, including The Journal of New Drugs, the initial publication of the ACCPC, and its later publication The Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, both of which Cattell edited. Letters written while he served as managing editor for the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics may be found under the organization's Board of Publication Trustees.

The third section of the collection (6 boxes) is subject-related and highlights the professional interests of Dr. Cattell on both a national and an international level. The first part concerns his activities in tobacco research, and contains significant correspondence as a result of his membership on the Scientific Advisory Board to the Tobacco Industry Research Committee. The second part covers a number of other topics. There are significant materials regarding Cattell's studies on the digitalis drugs, including a series of lectures on the parasympathomimetic agents and laboratory reports on biological assays. These drugs are listed by specific drug name throughout the section. In addition, there are abundant materials about his participation in marijuana studies in conjunction with the New York Academy of Medicine. Not the least to be found here is a group of materials regarding his trips to Austria and Colombia for the Unitarian Service Committee Medical Mission in the 1940s, and to Japan as a visiting lecturer in the 1950s.

The fourth section (3 boxes) is an alphabetical arrangement of miscellaneous correspondence with individuals; and the fifth section of bulk materials (3 boxes) comprises an assortment of illustrative material, graph readings and other research data.