Description
This collection includes materials dealing with Lilly Sováry's life and medical/health problems (Cushing's and Addison's diseases)
Includes correspondence with physicians, art work, photocopied materials.
Background
Lilly Sováry was born in Hungary and later became a U.S. citizen. She was a victim
of Cushing's Disease (hyperadrenocorticism secondary to excessive pituitary secretion of
of adrenocorticotropic hormone, or ACTH), for which she was first treated at Stanford
University Hospital in 1965-1966. In 1967 she was transferred to the Metabolic Research
Center at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. She rejected
adrenalectomy, then the customary treatment, but underwent experimental pituitary
irradiation treatments at Stanford (in a 1979 interview with Kristine Bertelsen of UCSF's
Medical Anthropology Department, Sováry stated that there were two series of
irradiation treatments -one in 1966, and a second in 1968). In 1971 she was again
admitted to the Metabolic Research Center at UCSF for experimental hormone treatment, but
she became very ill and this treatment was discontinued.
Restrictions
Copyright has not been assigned to the Library & Center for Knowledge Management. All requests for permission to publish
or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Archives & Special Collections. Permission for publication
is given on behalf of the Library & Center for Knowledge Management as the owner of the physical items and is not intended
to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader.
Availability
Collection is open for research.