Wilbur A. Sawyer papers, 1899-1952.

ArchivalResource

Sawyer, Wilbur A. (Wilbur Augustus), 1879-1951. Wilbur A. Sawyer papers, 1899-1952.

Wilbur A. Sawyer papers, 1899-1952.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/14311752

Correspondence, diaries, photographs, motion picture films, financial records, and ephemera (1899-1952; 4.2 linear feet) document the professional life of Wilbur A. Sawyer and primarily his yellow fever research for the Rockefeller Foundation's International Health Board and International Health Division. Roughly between 1925 and 1937, Sawyer traveled to some of the most remote regions of the world where few Westerners had ever been--places such as Australia, Java, Ceylon, India, South Africa, French Equatorial Africa, Belgian Congo, Palestine, Egypt, Brazil, Ecuador, and Panama. Sawyer's public health work establishing yellow fever laboratories, eliminating hookworm disease, constructing drainage canals to eradicate malaria, providing sewers and systems to provide for good sanitation and fresh water, and erecting the infrastructure needed to protect native populations against typhus is documented in these dairies. There are no materials regarding Sawyer's laboratory or administrative work at the Yellow Fever Lab or other RF duties. Researchers should contact the RF Center Archives for these materials. Series V: Photograph Albums and Motion Pictures contains a vast image collection of the places, people, and activities in which he engaged. This series is perhaps the most intellectually significant portion of collection. The photograph albums contain a mixture of personal and professional activities showing Sawyer, his family, professional colleagues, and local people and are chronologically arranged for the most part. Images of personal travel as well as professional field activities are intermixed. Incredibly though, each photograph bears detailed identifying notes written by Sawyer with places, dates, and people named. Two of the earliest albums date from 1920-1923 and document Sawyer's time in Australia where he organized a campaign to eliminate the spread of hookworm disease. This group of photographs also documents his travels to Java, Ceylon, India, and other Pacific, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries. Many of the photographs can be described as richly panoramic, showing the broader landscapes and towns he visited with colleagues and their fieldwork, rather than clinical pictures of laboratories. There are no pictures, and few other materials, which document Sawyer's work with the U.S. military during World War II. Sawyer's work during the 1930s developing a vaccine for yellow fever took place primarily in the western African countries collectively referred to as the Gold Coast.

4.2 linear ft. (14 boxes)

National Library of Medicine