Access is granted in accordance with the
Protocols for the University Archives and Records Center.
PROVENANCE
Gift of Dr. Stevens, January 22, 1992 and August, 1995.
ARRANGEMENT
The Rosemary A. W. Stevens papers consist mainly of research files
and manuscripts.
The collection is divided into the following series:
1. The study of specialization and national medicine in England, 1949-1966
2. The study of specialization in the United States, 1959-1968
3. Health service in Tanganyika and other African countries, 1952-1963
4. Other academic works, 1968-1991
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Rosemary Stevens, a native of England, attended Oxford University
as an undergraduate majoring in English literature. She pursued graduate
studies in epidemiology and public health at Yale University receiving
her Ph.D. in 1968. Upon graduation, she taught at Yale for eight years,
followed by a two-year appointment at Tulane University. Her teaching
career at the University of Pennsylvania began in 1979. She served
as chair of the Department of History and Sociology from 1980 to 1983,
and again, from 1986 to 1991, when she was appointed first woman dean
of Penn's School of Arts and Sciences.
In the early sixties, as a research associate at the medical school
of Yale, Stevens started a major research project on a comparative study
of specialization in medicine in the United Kingdom and the United States.
The research project developed into three separate studies, one on the
United Kingdom, mainly England and Wales, one dealing with the United
States, and the third on comparative aspects of health care organization
in the two countries. Her research resulted in two publications: Medical
Practice in Modern England: the Impact of Specialization and State Medicine
(1966) and American Medicine and the Public Interest (1971).
The comparative study did not proceed as anticipated. Although Dr. Stevens
continued to follow closely the development of health service in both
countries, she spent increasingly more time on studying the American
efforts. In 1974, in conjunction with Robert B. Stevens, she published
Welfare Medicine in America: a Case Study of Medicaid.
This was followed by In Sickness and in Wealth: American Hospitals
in the Twentieth Century (1989), her third major publication
on American medicine. Her ongoing research on English medicine resulted
in National Health Service in England in 1980: Notes on Comparisons
and Stresses in 1981, her second publication on this subject.
Related research includes the studies of alien doctors and foreign
medical graduates in the United States. In 1972, she published Foreign
Trained Physicians and American Medicine with Joan Vermeulen
and The Alien Doctors, Foreign Medical Graduates in American Hospitals
appeared in 1978.
Her interest in health care, however, goes beyond the United States
and the United Kingdom. She has made several trips to Africa to survey
health services in Tanganyika, one of the former British colonies.
Besides numerous teaching, research, and administrative positions,
Stevens has been on the boards of the Educational Commission for Foreign
Medical Graduates and the Milbank Memorial Fund. She is member of the
Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science, History of
Science Society, American Association for History of Medicine, College
of Physicians of Philadelphia, and the Cosmopolitan Club.
Rosemary Stevens was naturalized in 1968 as a United States citizen.
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SCOPE AND CONTENT
The collection of research files and manuscripts comprises four series.
Papers pertaining to the study of specialization and national medicine
in England and Wales include material generated in every stage of the
research project--from informational material gathered, notes of interviews
held with dozens of doctors and administrators in England, notes and
clippings on various subjects, rough manuscript drafts, working papers,
to the typescript form of the manuscript "Specialization in Medicine".
Also included in this collection are the typescripts of table of contents
and preface, which were apparently prepared on the occasion of the publication
of the work in a book form.
The study of specialization in the United States consists of the research
and reference file of a study project on group practice and the manuscripts
under the title of "Specialization in Medicine" prepared in
1968.
The project on health service in Tanganyika primarily contains informational
material, research notes and data gathered, and drafts and manuscripts.
The drafts and manuscripts include writings on birth control and health
services, and a draft report.
Other academic works include records of three proposals for researches
in the eighties on health care in the Delaware Valley and in the state
of Pennsylvania, and for a study of the development of American hospitals
in the century; an article on the career patterns of foreign medical
graduates done by Stevens with two other authors; course syllabuses
and reference material for courses taught by Dr. Stevens in 1968-1970;
and a thesis on politics of social welfare done with help from Stevens.
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