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G. D. Hsiung papers

 Collection
Call Number: Ms Coll 48

Scope and Contents

The papers contain Hsiung's curriculum vitae; materials related to her awards; correspondence; materials on her courses at Yale and the VA; and documentation of her intensive special workshops on diagnostic virology, including the workshops she gave in Taiwan; the establishment and work of the Virology Reference Laboratory at the VA; scrapbooks mainly from professional meetings and workshops; published articles; manuscript articles; experimental notebooks from her Laboratory at the VA; data and notes on research projects; additional photographs from meetings and workshops; and hundreds of photographs, diagrams, slides, and electromicrographs from her research.

Dates

  • 1950-2006

Creator

Language of Materials

Mostly in English, occasional Chinese.

Conditions Governing Access

The materials are generally open for research, but occasional material on patients is subject to review by the Librarian for Medical History.

Conditions Governing Use

Yale does not own copyright to most of these materials.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

From the estate of G. D. Hsiung, donated by her grand-niece, Zhe Zhao, Troy, Michigan, through the intermediary of Dr. Hsiung's former student, Dr. John Booss, 2014.

Arrangement

Organized into 11 series: 1. Appointments and General Professional. 2. Correspondence. 3. Yale School of Medicine, Department of Laboratory Medicine. 4. Veterans Administration Medical Center, West Haven. 5. Virology Reference Laboratory. 6. Abstracts, Presentations, and Workshops. 7. Conferences/Meetings. 8. Published Articles/Reprints. 9. Manuscripts. 10. Miscellaneous. 11. Research Materials.

Extent

56 boxes

Catalog Record

A record for this collection is available in Orbis, the Yale University Library catalog

Persistent URL

https://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/med.ms.0048

Additional Description

Abstract

G. D. (Edith) Hsiung was head of the Virology Laboratory at the Veterans Administration Medical Center, founder and director of the national Viral Reference Laboratory for the VA, and professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine at Yale. The collection includes correspondence, descriptions of her courses and special workshops, presentations, scrapbooks, photographs, reprints of articles, laboratory notebooks, and research manuscripts.

Biographical / Historical

Gueh Djen (Edith) Hsiung was a pioneer in establishing the field of diagnostic virology. She spent almost her entire career at Yale and the affiliated Veterans Medical Center in West Haven. Born in Hubei, China, Dr. Hsiung graduated from Ginling College in Chengdu, China. World War II intervened in her plan to attend medical school. After the war, she moved to the United States where she obtained her Ph.D. in microbiology at Michigan State University. She came to Yale in 1953, initially as a postdoctoral student working with Dr. Joseph Melnick on poliovirus and related enteroviruses. In 1960, she was appointed the first director of the Virology Laboratory at Grace-New Haven Hospital. The first of four editions of her textbook, Diagnostic Virology, appeared in 1964. In 1967, she became chief of the Virology Research Laboratory at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in West Haven and a professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine at Yale. As a result of her initiatives, the national Virology Reference Laboratory of the Veterans Administration was founded in 1985 at the VA Medical Center in West Haven and she became its first director. Through her intensive diagnostic virology courses and workshops in the United States and in Taiwan, she trained generations of researchers. She developed new laboratory methods of cell culture in order to find, identify, and study the behavior of viruses. She also developed animal models, especially the guinea pig, to study viral pathogenesis and test treatments by antivirals. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she worked on antivirals for HIV. Dr. Hsiung received many awards, among them the Becton-Dickinson Award from the American Society for Microbiology in 1983. She published a scientific autobiography, Mysteries and Miracles, in 1995.

Custodial History

Most of these materials were from G. D. Hsiung's office in the Veterans Administration Medical Center, West Haven, Connecticut.

Subjects

Finding Aid & Administrative Information

Title
G. D. Hsiung papers
Status
Completed
Author
Ariel Pomputius and Toby A. Appel with the assistance of Dr. John Booss
Date
2016
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description note
Finding aid written in English.

Repository Details

Part of the Medical Historical Library, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library Repository

http://historical.medicine.yale.edu/
Contact:
Yale University
333 Cedar St.
New Haven CT 06520-8014 US
203-737-1192
203-785-5636 (Fax)

Opening Hours

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