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).

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).

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.

Provenance

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

Preferred citation

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

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.

Bibliography

Physiology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics Note

Thomas Milton Rivers came to the hospital of the Rockefeller Institute in 1922 with the aim of establishing a research program in the new field of viral diseases. During the following fifteen years Rivers conducted studies on chicken pox and on viruses which cause psittacosis, poliomyelitis, and lymphocytic choriomeningitis, and developed methods for producing a smallpox vaccine for use in children. When Rivers was made director of the Institute's hospital in 1937, he was a world authority on virus research, a field that was then undergoing rapid growth as part of the nascent molecular biology program. During his directorship (1937-1955), Rivers was an active coordinator of medical war projects, and a principal organizer of research programs within the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (N.F.I.P); the N.F.I.P. became a major pursuit after his retiring from the Institute.

Due to his prominence and wide range of administrative activities, Rivers' papers include correspondence with many leading researchers and administrators in the life sciences, especially with those in fields related to microbiology and molecular biology. However, the correspondence with individuals tends to be brief and formal, touching mainly on administrative concerns. Furthermore, because the collection begins in 1940, there is little of substance (apart from early laboratory notes) to document the earlier stage of Rivers' scientific career. However, the Flexner Papers contain records on Rivers' virus research, and on administrative aspects of his department and the hospital.

In spite of their limitations, the Rivers Papers are a valuable source in four areas: 1) the growth of American institutions of the life sciences in the postwar era, 2) biomedical war research and the Navy, 3) the development of virology, and 4) research on poliomyelitis and the development of the Salk vaccine.

Corporate Name(s)

• American Medical Association.
• National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.
• Rockefeller Institute. Hospital

Genre(s)

• Laboratory notes
• Photographs
• Speeches.

Personal Name(s)

• Andrewes, C.H. (Christopher Howard), Sir
• Bayne-Jones, Stanhope, 1888-1970
• Berry, George Packer, 1898-
• Bronk, Detlev W., (Detlev Wulf), 1897-1975
• Cannon, Walter B., (Walter Bradford), 1871-1945
• Chesney, Alan M., (Alan Mason), 1888-1964
• Chinard, Francis P., 1918-
• Cohn, Alfred E., (Alfred Einstein), 1879-1957
• Cole, Rufus Ivory, 1872-1966
• Corner, George Washington, 1889-1981
• Dubos, René J. (René Jules), 1901-
• Flexner, Simon, 1863-1946
• Gasser, Herbert Spencer, 1888-1963
• Hershey, A. D., (Alfred Day), 1908-
• Jackson, Robert H.
• Loeb, Jacques, 1859-1924
• Long, Esmond R., (Esmond Ray), 1890-
• O'Connor, Basil, 1892-1972
• Rivers, Thomas M.(Thomas Milton),1888-1962.
• Rous, Peyton, 1879-1970
• Sabin, Albert B., (Albert Bruce), 1906-
• Salk, Jonas, 1914-1995
• Welch, William Henry, 1850-1934

Subject(s)

• Atomic bomb--Japan--Nagasaki-shi
• Medical administration
• Medical sciences
• Medicine, Military
• Poliomyelitis--Research
• Poliomyelitis--Vaccination
• United States. Navy. Naval Medical Research Unit II
• Virology
• World War, 1914-1918
• World War, 1939-1945