Thomas M. Rivers Papers, American Philosophical Society

Table of contents

Abstract

The bacteriologist and virologist Thomas Milton Rivers spent over thirty years at the Rockefeller Institute as a researcher in the Department of Bacteriology and from 1937-1955, as Director. Working on measles and pneumonia, Rivers discovered the parainfluenzae bacillus and cultivated vaccine virus for human use, and during the 1950s, he played an important role in coordinating research on poliomyelitis as head of the National Institute for Infantile Paralysis. During the Second World War, Rivers led the Naval Medical Research Unit in the South Pacific, rising to the rank of Rear Admiral.

The Rivers Papers contains correspondence, laboratory notes, speeches, and photographs documenting Rivers' activities at the Rockefeller Institute, the development of polio vaccine, and Rivers's Navy experience in the Pacific during World War II.

Background note
Scope & content
Administrative information
Additional information
- Related material
- Bibliography
Added entries
Contact information
Collection overview
- Series I. Correspondence, 1909-1963
- Series II. Photographs, 1887-1963
Collection inventory
- Series I. Correspondence, 1941-1963
  - Miscellaneous materials, 1909-1952
- Series II. Photographs, 1887-1963

Background note

Rivers on hospital rounds,
May 29, 1933

After a desultory education in Jonesboro, Georgia, Thomas M. Rivers discovered biology as an undergraduate at Emory College. With the encouragement of a biology professor, he entered medical school at Johns Hopkins in 1909, though a mysterious nervous degeneration (diagnosed as Aran-Duchenne atrophy) forced him to withdraw in the middle of his second year. Rivers made the most of his recovery, taking a position as a laboratory assistant at a hospital in Panama to gain clinical experience, and when his condition vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared, he returned to Hopkins, completing his MD in 1915.

Rivers' internship in pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Hospital was interrupted by military service, an event that induced an unexpected, but important shift in his perspective. Entering the Army medical corps in 1918, Rivers was assigned to For Sam Houston, near San Antonio, Texas, to take part in a commission headed by Rufus Ivory Cole of the Rockefeller Institute, investigating concurrent outbreaks of measles and pneumonia. The experience awakened Rivers' interest in medical research, and when he returned to Hopkins at the end of his military obligations, he transferred into the Department of Bacteriology. In 1922, Cole invited Rivers to join the Institute and pursue research in the still poorly understood field of virology.

Between 1922 and 1955, Rivers molded Rockefeller into the preeminent laboratory for research on viruses, and in over 100 papers published during these years, Rivers addressed a range of topics relating to some of the most devastating viral diseases, including smallpox, Rift Valley Fever, and epidemic encephalitis. More importantly, he helped delineate the disciplinary boundaries of virology as both conceptually and methodologically distinct.

During the Second World War, Rivers again offered his services, serving as commander of the Naval Medical Research Unit in the South Pacific where his attentions were drawn to coordinating the effort to combat malaria and typhus. He eventually retired from the Navy with the rank of Rear Admiral. He returned to the Rockefeller in 1946, remaining for an additional ten years and eventually earning promotion to director of the institute (1953-1955).

Susan and Archie with William Welch, looking at rabbits
being used for poliomyelitis research,
Summer 1887

In the last few years of his life, Rivers served as medical director of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, with which he had been associated since 1938, and as such, played a highly visible role in the development of the polio vaccine. He stepped down in 1958 to become Vice President for medical Affairs, remaining in that position until his death in 1962. Rivers was recognized for his work with election to the American Philosophical Society (1942) and the National Academy of Sciences (1932), and he served as president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (1932), the Society of American Immunologists (1934), and the Society of American Bacteriologists (1936).

Scope and content

Stilted toward the last twenty years of his life, the Rivers Papers document the late career and research of the virologist and medical administrator, Thomas Milton Rivers. The 10 linear feet of correspondence, manuscripts, and photographs are a valuable resource for understanding the institutionalization of medical research in the 1940s and 1950s, particularly at the Rockefeller and the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, and for tracking the course of development of the polio vaccine in the early 1950s. Other than a sparse few research notebooks, there is little to document his research prior to the 1940s.

Rivers' military experience forms a leitmotif running throughout the collection. His service as head of Naval Medical Research Unit II in the South Pacific during the Second World War is documented through a small series of correspondence and other materials, primarily of an administrative nature, including a unit history written by Rivers in December 1945. There are nearly 200 photographs, more than half of which depict the research hospital in Guam and its personnel, and a smaller number of powerful photographs depicting members of the American military in Nagasaki, Japan, ca.1946, that provide graphic testimony to the devastation unleashed by the atomic bombing. Rivers' service with the Army Medical Corps during World War I is documented by a sparse set of official documents comprising a portion of his military record.

Administrative information

Restrictions

None.

Provenance

Gift of the Rivers estate, 1971 (accession number 1971-332ms)

Preferred citation

Cite as: Thomas M. Rivers Papers, American Philosophical Society.

Additional information

Related material

The APS collections include several collections relating to Rivers' colleagues at the Rockefeller Institute, including Rufus Ivory Cole, Peyton Rous, James B. Murphy, and Oswald H. Robertson.

References

Horshall, Frank L., "Thomas M. Rivers," Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 38 (1965), 262-294.

Shope, Richard E., Obituary of Thomas M. Rivers, Journal of Bacteriology 84 (1962), 385-388.

Rivers, Thomas, Tom Rivers, Reflections on a Life in Medicine and Science: An oral History Memoir (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1967). Call no.: B R52b