The Davenport Hooker Faculty Papers were originally stored at the Falk Library of the Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. Information about how and when these papers were originally accessioned by the Falk Library is unknown. To ensure their maintenance and accessibility, the curator of the Falk Library sent the papers to the University Archives in April 1997.
Davenport Hooker (May 13, 1887-June 1965) was head of the University of Pittsburgh Anatomy Department from 1919 until his retirement from teaching in 1956. He remained at the University an additional year as research faculty. His areas of expertise were spinal cord regeneration and fetal development.
While head of the Anatomy Department, Dr. Hooker was the editor and distributor of The Pitt Anatomy Snooze. The mission of The Pitt Anatomy Snooze was to maintain contact with the many medical school graduates who served in the armed forces medical units during WWII. The newsletter informed alumni about their fellow graduates and provided a humorous and nostalgic account of the Pitt campus during the war, as well as the antics of the Anatomy Department. The Snooze was in circulation from May 1943 to June 1949. It originally started as a one-page v-mail letter, which was microfilmed and then later reprinted in order to save space in military mailbags. The War Department notified Dr. Hooker that newsletters were not permitted v-mail venues; thereafter, it existed in paper form from issue two until its final, fifty-ninth issue. The Snooze averaged a circulation of approximately 175 alumni per issue and was sent throughout the United Sates and overseas to Europe and the Pacific theaters. The Snooze was a success primarily because of the participation of the medical school graduates who sent news about their involvement in the armed services to Dr. Hooker and the staff of the Anatomy Department.
The largest portion of this collection consists of letters by University of Pittsburgh Medical School alumni serving in the armed forces during World War II and the immediate post war era. These letters date between 1943 and 1952, the bulk of which fall between 1943 and 1949. Their news from stateside army bases and overseas hospitals helped to fill the pages of The Pitt Anatomy Snooze.
Over 760 items were collected and saved by Hooker. These include letters; v-mail; newspaper clippings about the graduate's achievements, deaths, and marriages; Christmas cards; birth announcements; and notices about the openings of medical practices. Over 270 alumni are represented in these materials, and in many cases individual careers can be traced from service in the war, to providing health care to natives of occupied countries after the war, to peacetime appointments in U.S. hospitals, and finally to professional practices.
Many of the letters from the graduates are first-hand accounts of medical service provided during the war. These men were instrumental in setting up hospitals and treating the soldiers' medical needs under harsh conditions. They write about instructing army doctors, setting up medical compounds, and treating epidemics among the service men and locals. Discussion of symptoms and treatment of malaria, amebic dysentery, venereal disease, tuberculosis, typhus, and wartime psychiatric cases are common throughout the written accounts of these Pitt Medical School graduates. Also apparent in the letters is their perception of wartime ideology and propaganda. Racial slurs about the Japanese during the war are replaced by a more respectful observance of Japanese culture by those who remained to serve in the Pacific after the war.
Examples of other notable accounts in these letters include discussion of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (Tessmer), witness to the volatile state of Korea in the post-war era (Whong), and the resourcefulness of these doctors who sometimes made makeshift medical equipment in the jungle (Wightman).
Correspondence and news of the graduates that were collected by Hooker are now arranged alphabetically by the graduates' last names; and numerous graduates are represented in each file folder. A few additional folders contain other local and medical wartime newsletters; Hooker's drafts of the newsletters; and newspaper clippings related to Pittsburgh's involvement in the war.
Davenport Hooker Papers, 1943-1952, UA.90.F56, University Archives, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh.
Davenport Hooker Papers, 1943-1952, UA.90.F56, University Archives, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System
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The Pitt Anatomy Snooze is maintained separately as a university journal and can be viewed at documenting.pitt.edu.
The University of Pittsburgh holds the property rights to the material in this collection, but the copyright may still be held by the original creator/author. Researchers are therefore advised to follow the regulations set forth in the U.S. Copyright Code when publishing, quoting, or reproducing material from this collection without the consent of the creator/author or that go beyond what is allowed by fair use.
This collection was processed by Anna Maria Mihalega in February 2000. The finding aid was created by Kallie Sheets in July 2017.
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