Because the World War II surgical casebooks include Confidential Health Information (CHI) as defined by Columbia University policies governing data security and privacy, access is allowed only under the terms of Archives and Special Collections’ Access Policy to Records Containing Confidential Health Information.
Merriam’s medical school notebooks, 1937-1941, and papers relating to his service in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War II.
History and Biography
Ophthalmologist. George R. Merriam, Jr. was born May 22, 1913 in Harrisburg PA, the son of the Rev. George R. Merriam, a Northern Baptist minister. He was educated at Brown (A.B. 1934) and Columbia University (M.D., 1941). His internship at Manhattan’s Lenox Hill Hospital was interrupted by the U.S. entry into World War II during which he served in the U.S. Army’s 12th Evacuation Hospital in the European Theater of Operations.
After the war he completed a residency in ophthalmology at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. He spent his entire career at Columbia-Presbyterian, serving as chief of the department of ophthalmology’s outpatient clinic and director of its surgical service. He became Professor of Clinical Ophthalmology at Columbia University in 1972 and was named a Professor Emeritus at his retirement in 1978. Merriam was a noted expert on the use of radiation in the treatment of diseases of the eye.
Merriam maintained in active practice until 1993. He died in New York City on January 13, 2004.
Organization
Merriam’s medical school notebooks, 1937-1941, and papers relating to his service in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War II. The student notebooks appear to be almost complete. Every discipline is represented except for psychiatry – though there is a section on child psychiatry in his pediatrics notebook.
The bulk of the World War II papers consists of his letters to his wife, Martha Carlson Merriam, 1943-1945 and some of her replies. In addition there is a journal he kept in 1943; a notebook on military medicine lectures; clinical material – including two surgical casebooks – and a folder of U.S. Army correspondence and documents. There is also a folder of printed material and another folder of snapshots, largely pictures of his wife.
See pdf version of the finding aid.
Subject Headings and Related Records
Administrative Information
Gift of the Merriam family via John Merriam, M.D. (son), 2012-2014 (accessions #2012.008, 2012.010, 2013.001, 2014.004).