PRESERVING AND ORGANIZING THE W. HORSLEY GANTT PAPERS-W. Horsely Gantt (1893-1980) was one of the only Americans to have studied with Pavlov for an extended time in his Petrograd laboratories (1924-1929). Returning to the U.S. in 1929 to found and direct the Pavlovian Laboratory at Johns Hopkins, Gantt is regarded as having pioneered Pavlovian theory and methodology in the U.S. Long Term Ojectives - The basic and overall focus of the project is to preserve and organize the W. H. Gantt papers (264.25 linear feet) so that these will be made available and easily accessible to historical scholars, clinicians and medical scientistis.
Specific Aims - There are 5 specific aims: 1) Paper conservation which includes surface cleaning and placing the paper in low-acid folders and boxes; 2) Organization of the papers at the folder level; 3) Preparation of computerized folder inventories; 4) Publication of a guide to research opportunities in the Gantt papers; 5) Publicizing the project at its completion through announcements and descriptive accounts in professional journals (historical, medical, archival/manuscript). Health Relatedness - There is a wide variety of primary source materials pertaining to concepts of health maintenance and health care. These areas of health relatedness include: 1) Experimental records in physiology and behavioral psychiatry from the laboratories of Pavlov and Gantt; 2) Gantt's early theories and notes regarding geomedicine; 3) Documentary materials from Russia pertaining to the development of modern medicine and public health in the U.S.S.R.; 4) Documentary materials pertaining to major social and political trends in American medicine (1929-1980). These materials constitute a valuable resource for historians as well as clinicians, practitioners of public health and political scientists. Methodology - The Gantt collection will be organized according to conventional standards of personal papers organization. The Preliminary Inventory that has been prepared will serve as the basic organizational scheme for the collection. The papers will be described on folder level and placed in categories that have been designated in the Preliminary Inventory. Folder inventories will be registered on the word processing feature of the Medical School's central computing system (IBM-4341) thus enabling multi-phasic key name and subject indexing of the collection. A narrative guide to research opportunities in the Gantt papers will be published so as to supplement the folder inventories.
