Register of the William Elmer Carter Papers, 1956-1963
Processed by Special Collections staff; machine-readable finding aid created by
James Ryan
UCSF Library & CKM
© 1997
Archives and Special Collections
530 Parnassus Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94143-0840
Phone: (415) 476-8112
Fax: (415) 476-4653
Email: http://www.library.ucsf.edu/collections/archives/contact
URL: http://www.library.ucsf.edu/collections/archives
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Note
History --History, California
--General
Biological and
Medical Sciences --General
Register of the William Elmer Carter Papers, 1956-1963
Collection number: MSS 63-1
UCSF Library & CKMArchives and Special Collections
University of California, San Francisco
- UCSF Library & CKM
- Archives and Special Collections
- 530 Parnassus Ave.
- San Francisco, CA 94143-0840
- Phone: (415) 476-8112
- Fax: (415) 476-4653
- Email: http://www.library.ucsf.edu/collections/archives/contact
- URL: http://www.library.ucsf.edu/collections/archives
- Processed by:
- Special Collections staff
- Date Completed:
- 8/90
- Encoded by:
- James Ryan
© 1997. The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Title: William Elmer Carter Papers,
Date (inclusive): 1956-1963
Collection number: MSS 63-1
Creator: Link, Vernon B. and Carter, William E., 1882-1965
Extent: 2 boxes (11 folders)
Repository:
University of California, San Francisco. Library. Archives and Special Collections.
San Francisco, California 94143-0840
Shelf location: For current information on the location of these
materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.
Language:
English.
Restricted: "Sole property of Dr. Link; not to be opened or utilized without the express,
written consent of the authors, their assigns or heirs, or the University Librarian,
UCSF."
[Identification of item], William Elmer Carter Papers, MSS 63-1, Archives & Special
Collections, UCSF Library & CKM
Wiliam E. Carter was born in Hatfield, Missouri on Novermber 13, 1882. He received his
M.D. from the University of Southern California in 1908, following which he was on the
staffs of the Los Angeles County and Children's Hospitals. Coming to the University of
California School of Medicine in 1920, he became the first medical director of the
outpatient department in 1929; he held the position until his retirement in 1950. He
collaborated with Langley Porter in writing the book Management of the Sick Infant and
Child, first published in 1922 In 1953 Dr. Carter became a special counselor to the UC
medical school faculty and alumni association, and was awarded an honorary doctor of law
degree from the university in 1964. He was a member of the San Francisco Medical Society,
and built a large collection of manuscripts, photographs and other memorabilia of the
history of the UC Medical School. Dr. Carter died on February 14, 1965.
Around the time of his retirement, Dr. Carter conceived the idea of a biography of Karl
F. Meyer, the eminent epidemiologist and director of the Hooper Foundation for Medical
Research located at the University of California School of Medicine. Dr. Carter had been
accumulating and organizing data on his subject's life and times for a few years when Dr.
Meyer introduced him to Dr. Vernon Link of the Public Health Service, who simultaneously
had been assembling his own biography of Dr. Meyer. Carter and Link decided to pool their
efforts. Over the next several years, they conducted numerous interviews with Dr. Meyer
and his associates and created a first draft of their projected biography. Around the end
of 1958, a number of difficulties arose that convinced Dr. Carter --then in his seventies
--that the project probably would not come to fruition in his lifetime. Perceiving the
project as no longer viable under his direction, Dr. Carter deposited his manuscript
files on the Meyer biography in the UCSF library's Special Collections. By 1963 Dr.
Carter had ceded all rights of ownership in the work to his collaborator Dr. Link; it is
believed that no further work was completed on the project after this date.
Includes typescript, illustrations, correspondence, transcriptions of tape-recorded
interviews, and other materials related to this project.