The Southern California Society for the History of Medicine is a non-profit organization committed to sustaining the history of medicine in Southern California and supporting the Los Angeles County Medical Association Collections at The Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California.  The Society welcomes anyone interested in histories and cultures of medical practice, research and education.

About

Officers 2022

President: Megan Rosenbloom

Vice President: Lisa Mix

Treasurer: Mario Molina

Secretary: Russell Johnson

Board Member Bios

Megan Rosenbloom (President) is Collection Strategies Librarian at UCLA and President of the Southern California Society for the History of Medicine. She has written a bestselling book on the history of medicine – Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin – and leads a research team called The Anthropodermic Book Project whose focus is on books bound in human skin. She was formerly a medical librarian at the USC Norris Medical Library.

Lisa A. Mix (Vice President) is Director of University Archives & Special Collections at California State University, Fullerton. She has worked in archives and historical collections at several academic medical centers, including Johns Hopkins Medicine, the University of California San Francisco, and NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine. She has published and presented widely on archives and on history of the health sciences, and was the 2020 recipient of the Lisabeth M. Holloway Award from Librarians, Archivists, and Museum Professionals in the History of the Health Sciences.

Dr. J. Mario Molina (Treasurer) is a trustee of the Huntington Library, member of the standing committee of the Osler Library at McGill, and a member of the Grolier and Zamorano clubs.

Russell A. Johnson (Secretary) is Curator for History of Medicine and the Sciences at UCLA Library Special Collections, and website administrator for Librarians, Archivists, and Museum Professionals in the History of the Health Sciences (LAMPHHS) and the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences (ISHN).

Gideon Manning, PhD is Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Co-Director of the Cedars-Sinai Program in the History of Medicine.  With special expertise in the history of early modern medicine and science, he is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and edited volumes, most recently “Circulation and the New Physiology” and Collected Wisdom of the Early Modern Scholar, which he co-edited with Anna Marie Roos.  Prof. Manning’s research has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Association for the History of Medicine, and the History of Science Society.

Patrick A. Mauer, MD received his medical degree from USC in 1969 and practiced internal medicine until 2015.  A longtime member of the board, his affiliation began through his father, Edgar F. Mauer, MD, who was one of the founders of the Friends of the LACMA Library and delivered the Dock Lecture in 1969.  A personal friend of George Dock and his son, William, Edgar Mauer was deeply involved in the transfer of the LACMA historical collection to the Huntington in 1991.  Through his father, Dr. Maurer participated in board meetings and has since maintained his family’s commitment to preserving the history of medicine in Southern California.

William Schubert, MD has been in Family Practice in La Canada Flintridge since 1957. His support of the LACMA library began in the 1960s and he has continued his affiliation with the collection through all of the subsequent groups and support committees for five decades.  An avid student of the history of medicine, Dr. Schubert has long advocated for broad public access to the history of medicine and events that reach a wide audience.

Tamara Venit-Shelton, PhD is Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College. She is the author of two books, including Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace, which won the 2020 Phi Beta Kappa National Book Prize for best subsequent book. Her research interests include the social history of American medicine, environmental health, and immigration with an emphasis on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

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