The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will celebrate the first annual NIH History Day on Monday, September 22, 2003 on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. Events will include tours of the Stetten Museum of Medical Research and a lecture by Professor Alan Kraut of American University. In addition, the Office of NIH History will be recording personal accounts from NIH staff and gathering historical papers and artifacts at several collection stations around the NIH campus.

"We want to make people aware of NIH history," says NIH Director, Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. "NIH scientists and staff are making history every day through their research efforts and contributions to the public health."

"History is not just facts of events printed in a book," says historian Victoria Harden, Ph.D., the Director of the Office of NIH History and its Stetten Museum of Medical Research. "History is alive and all around us in the form of documents, tools, electronic records, and the personal experiences of the people who work at NIH."

The signature event of the day will be the NIH History Day lecture by Professor Alan Kraut of American University, with opening remarks by NIH Director, Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D.

Professor Kraut will discuss his new book, Goldberger's War: The Life and Work of a Public Health Crusader. A noted infectious disease specialist during the early twentieth century, Dr. Joseph Goldberger dedicated his career to the investigation of the causes and spread of many diseases, including typhoid, yellow fever, and diphtheria. He is best known for his work on the disease pellagra, the "scourge of the south," in which he discovered that the cause of pellagra was a dietary insufficiency, later identified as vitamin B niacin.

Dr. Kraut will tell the story of the years of experiments leading to the pellagra discovery, interweaving public health history with the absorbing personal tale of a doctor who went to extraordinary lengths to
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Contact: Office of NIH History
301-496-6610
NIH/National Institutes of Health
17-Sep-2003

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