The Center for the History of Medicine is pleased to announce that the records of the Harvard Medical School Department of Legal Medicine are now open to research!
The Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts was established in 1939, chaired by Alan Moritz. It was the first of its kind in the United States, and was founded to educate medical students in forensic pathology, encourage the medical profession to formally recognize forensic pathology as a specialty, and promote the adoption of the medical examiner model (trained physicians appointed by local government) over the existing coroner model (elected officials with no training requirement).
Teaching of legal medicine at Harvard Medical School began long prior to the department’s establishment, starting in 1818. Between 1907 and 1937, Suffolk County Medical Examiner George Burgess Magrath (1870-1938) taught the subject as a voluntary course. To ensure its continued teaching, Frances Glessner Lee (1878-1962) made multiple donations over the ensuing years, endowing both the George Burgess Magrath Professorship, the George Burgess Magrath Library of Legal Medicine, and the establishment of the department. Lee was deeply interested in legal medicine and forensic pathology, and created the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death as teaching aids (miniature models of fictitious crime scenes informed by real cases).
With funding from both Lee’s endowment and the Rockefeller Foundation, the department was established in 1939, with Alan Moritz as Chair. Later chairs included Richard Ford (1915-1970), George G. Katsas, and Leonard Atkins (1922-2019). The department performed autopsies and specimen analyses for state police and county medical examiners throughout Massachusetts. Access to those cases, in turn, provided the department with teaching material. In addition to teaching medical students, the department conducted research relevant to forensic pathology, hosted post-graduate fellowships in legal medicine, offered training seminars for police officers, and engaged in the professional medical community to professionalize legal medicine and forensic pathology. The department’s activity dwindled from the mid-1950s into the 1960s, until it was formally dissolved in 1967.
The collection consists of records generated by the department during the period of its functioning between 1939 and 1967. The collection also includes records from the period prior to the department’s founding, during which legal medicine and forensic pathology were taught at Harvard Medical School. The collection includes records related to departmental administration, teaching at HMS, research, fellowships, professional engagement and public speaking, police training seminars, and correspondence. The records are arranged in two series: 00517. Executive Administrative Records, 1879-1967 (inclusive), 1935-1967 (bulk); and 00518. External Program Relations Records, 1903-1967 (inclusive), 1935-1967 (bulk).
For more information on the Department of Legal Medicine and its records, please view the collection’s online finding aid. You can also view a previously published exhibit of digitized selections from the collection in the Center’s Onview exhibit space. For more information about accessing the collection, please consult the Center’s website or contact Public Services.