J.F. McClendon papers

Collection

Identifier: MSS 2/120

Scope and Contents

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This small collection of J. F. McClendon's papers, 19121953, contains research correspondence, records of his work with the American Public Health Association's Study Committee on Endemic Goitre, and typescripts of his published articles and lectures. The bulk of the material concerns McClendon's work on goiter and iodine.

Series 1 contains a chronological file of correspondence, 1925-1944, concerning biochemistry; product samples and information; the effect of iodine on goiter; a few items relating to McClendon's research with Paul A. Clifford ofjthe Food and Drug Administration on fluorine in food; and research into the function of histamine in blood. This series also contains correspondence, 1920-1946, concerning McClendon's research in goiter in countries around the world. The series is divided by subject country and contains a great deal of correspondence describing the frequency and incidence of goiter as well as occasional reprints and typescript copies or translations of relevant articles. There are many replies to a questionnaire on goiter which was issued by McClendon n 1934. This material was the basis for his published work, Iodine and the incidence of goiter (1939).

McClendon's work with the Study Committee on Endemic Goitre of the American Public Health Association, 1941-1945, is documented in Series 2. The series contains some correspondence, minutes of the committee's initial meeting in Michigan on 14-15 June 1941, and its report. McClendon was a Consultant to the committee.

Series 3 contains typescripts of several of McClendon's published articles concerning goiter or fluorine, 1912-1940, as well as a few lectures and one radio broadcast, 19341953.

Dates

Creation: 1912 - 1953

Creator

McClendon, J.F. (Jesse Francis) (Person)

Biographical / Historical

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Jesse Francis McClendon, physiological chemist, was born in Lavette, Alabama, on 21 December 1880. He married in 1911 and had two children and married a second time, in 1936, to Maren Peterson. McClendon died in Harleysville, Pennsylvania, on 22 November 1976.

McClendon attended the University of Texas, receiving a B.S.in 1903 and an M.S. in 1904. He then received a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1906.

After receiving his Ph.D., McClendon taught biology at Randolph Macon College, then zoology at the University of Missouri. From 1909 to 1914, he taught histology, anatomy, and physiology at the medical college of Cornell University. In 1914, McClendon joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota's medical school and was Professor of Physiological Chemistry from 1920 to 1939. From 1939 to 1949, he was Resident Professor of Physiology at Hahnemann Medical College. From 1950 to 1962, he worked as a biochemist at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia.

McClendon wrote many monographs and articles, including Physical chemistry in biology and medicine (1917) and Iodine and incidence of goitre (1939). He was a member of many scientific organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Physiological Society, the American Thyroid Society, the Chemical Society, the Endocrine Society, the Society of Biological Chemists, and the Society of Experimental Biologists.

Full Extent

2 boxes

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Custodial History

The J. F. McClendon Papers were donated to the Historical Collections of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia by Robert H. Hamilton, Jr., of Temple University's School of Medicine, in 1973; Dr. Hamilton had worked with McClendon on iodine research at the University of Minnesota. On 15 January 1980, the collection was reviewed by Robert Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania. Following his recommendations, the manuscripts and correspondence were isolated from the collection and reprints and student papers were discarded. A preliminary sort of the collection was made by Timothy H. Bratton, circa 1983.

The collection was processed and catalogued in 1990.