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University of Michigan microbiologist; correspondence, student notebooks, San Francisco Plague Commission records, research files and laboratory notebooks, visual materials

The Frederick G. Novy collection documents the career and research interests of this noted bacteriologist, including information from the period of time when he was a member of the San Francisco Plague Commission (1901).

The collection has been divided into the following series:

1. Biographical/Personal
2. Correspondence
3. University of Michigan Student Notebooks
4. University of Michigan Medical School
5. San Francisco Plague Commission
6. Research Files/Laboratory Notebooks
7. Reprints and Writings
8. Miscellaneous; and Visual Materials.

George Dock was a professor in the University of Michigan Medical School from 1891 to 1922. Dock employed a stenographer to record, verbatim, his biweekly diagnostic clinic sessions with fourth-year medical students from 1899 through 1908. The resulting 6,800 pages of transcripts provide a detailed picture of medical instruction at the turn of the twentieth century. This collection contains those notebooks as well as a scrapbook of news clippings and a few photographs.

The bulk of this collection is comprised of sixteen volumes of transcriptions taken from Dr. George Dock’s Diagnostics Clinic, which were made by a stenographer twice a week while class was in session from 1899 through 1908. The transcriptions capture, verbatim, Dock’s teaching and his exchanges with students and patients in a clinical instructional setting. Processing staff sought identifying information about the stenographer(s) responsible for the transcriptions but found none. The collection also contains a scrapbook Dock kept containing news clippings and a folder of miscellaneous photographs including portraits and a photograph of a sculpture of Dock commissioned in 1935.

The Reuben Leon Kahn collection consists of the personal and professional papers of the developer of the Kahn precipitation test for syphilis. Kahn taught bacteriology and serology at the University of Michigan from 1928 until his retirement in 1956.

The Reuben L. Kahn papers contain materials relevant to Kahn's personal and professional life. The collection is divided into five series; Biographical Materials, Correspondence, Topical Files, Publications and Photographs.