For today’s doctors whose work is wedded to technology, the fear is that scientific advances can overshadow medical practice focused on the patient’s humanity.

One way to maintain perspective is the study of medical history, where the past is prologue and doctors can pay homage to their medical ancestors while looking at the issues they faced as really being nothing new.

Helping to maintain that perspective was one of the chief reasons Charles S. Bryan and Frederick L. Greene began the USC Medical History Club in 1981.

Twenty-four years and 93 medical history papers later, the club continues to meet in Columbia several times a year to provide the University community and others with a forum to look back at medicine in an atmosphere of relaxed collegiality.

“This is not a working group,” said Bryan, the Heyward Gibbes Distinguished Professor of Internal Medicine at the USC School of Medicine who has served as the organization’s secretary since he started the group with Greene, then a Columbia surgeon and now chair of surgery at the Carolinas Medical School in Charlotte. “We like to view it more as genteel entertainment and a forum for discussion by people interested in medical history locally.”

A mix of professional historians, prominent physicians, medical educators, and lay members of the community have presented papers given at the club’s meetings, which are always accompanied by sherry and sometimes a meal. Over time, said Bryan, “some very distinguished people have presented their work.”

Among historians who have been speakers at the club have been Edward H. Beardsley, an emeritus professor of history at USC who spoke on health care of African-Americans and mill workers in the South in the early 20th century; Todd L. Savitt of East Carolina University in North Carolina, who delivered a paper on medicine and slavery in the ante-bellum South; Peter McCandless of the College of Charleston discussing the founding of the S.C. Lunatic Asylum; and Peter H. Wood of Duke University talking about epidemic disease and history among the Southern Indians.

Medical educators and physicians appearing as speakers have included Victor A. McKusick of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, known as the father of modern clinical genetics;

Kenneth M. Ludmerer of the Washington University School of Medicine, the author of two definitive books about medical education in the 20th century, including the recent Time to Heal, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; and T. Jock Murray of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia discussing a history of multiple sclerosis, among others.

Bryan, who is editor of the S.C. Medical Association’s journal and is secretary-treasurer of the American Osler Society, an international organization devoted to promoting humanism and the humanities in medical practice, also has been a frequent contributor at the club’s meetings.

He has spoken on such topics as James Woods Babcock, a pioneering psychiatrist who helped solve the problem of pellagra in the early 20th century; Theodore Brevard Hayne, the last investigator-victim of yellow fever; and William Osler, a 19th century Canadian-born physician who stood for a reconciliation of the emerging new science of medicine with the old humanities.

Since the purpose of the club is to provide a forum for whatever speakers happen to be interested in, topics aren’t selected so much as they are invited from presenters who volunteer to talk on subjects in which they are interested or have published, Bryan said.

Among some of the topics reported on over the years have been an 18th century smallpox vaccination controversy in Charleston; ancient medical history, including Greek and Hippocratic medicine; and Moses Maimonides, a renowned Jewish physician of the medieval period.

The presentations aren’t necessarily an attempt to preserve history that might otherwise be lost, said Bryan, noting that other more formal organizations like the American Association for the History of Medicine, from which Bryan won the William Osler Medal for a paper he wrote as a medical student at Johns Hopkins, function in that capacity.

The purpose of the USC Medical History Club, he said, is to provide a forum for people to gather and discuss medical history and concerns on a local level in an inclusive environment open to anybody who wants to join in the discussions.

Apart from annual dues of $20, Bryan has said in jest that the only requirement for membership is that individuals be able to sit relatively still for 50 minutes to hear the programs.

For information or to join the organization, call Sanchia Mitchell at 540-1000.

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