Francis D. Moore (10/27/55):

“The club was founded at an indeterminate time and place sometime in the academic year 1952-1953 on the basis of conversations among several people particularly Dr. Evans, Dr. Randall, Dr. Holden, Dr. Abbott and Dr. Moore.”

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Introduction to “The First Forty Years – An Archive: Notes and Minutes from the Club Book 1953-1994”

This year, 1996, and as we head into the end of this century, marks a kind of a milestone or turning point for the Surgical Biology Club. The Club was founded on the basis of conversations that took place in 1952 and 1953.

The first meeting was held on October 4, 1953, at the University Club of Chicago. Those attending were: William E. Abbott, Edward H. Ellison, Robert Elman, E. I. Evans, David V. Habif, James D. Hardy, William D. Holden, John M. Howard, David M. Hume, Walter Maddock, Francis D. Moore, Henry T. Randall, Robert Zollinger. Especially active in starting the Club had been the three of us, David Habif, Tom Randall, and myself.

The purpose of the Club when it was first founded was just to get together and tell about our work and have some good arguments, and then have a big dinner with all of our associated and wives, and a few drinks, with a member of the Club giving an evening entertainment based on his non-surgical hobbies. But then as we went along, we decided to solemnize the purposes of the Club in our “motto."

At first, the meetings tended to concentrate on metabolism and supportive care. But soon the meetings came to involve many of the movers, shakers, and doers in the opening fields of cardiac surgery, cancer chemotherapy, organ transplantation, and many other matters that came to dominate the advances of surgery in this century.

At a symposium in Providence, Rhode Island, in honor of Tom Randall, held in December 1994, we presented a little vignette about the Surgical Biology Club, mentioning Tom’s role in it, and suddenly realized that this was probably the first time that the Club or any of its proceedings had been mentioned in any sort of public connection. This included a few lantern slides based on pictures from our early book. This aroused a great deal of interest.
This therefore seemed to be a good time to publish some of the archives for the membership of the Club.

We are indebted to Susan Lang Cramer, my secretary at the Countway Library, for helping us to get this all together, to Glenn Steele, for making the books available, to all the Secretaries of the Club over the years for their wonderful minutes, to Mrs. H.T. Randall for this idea, to Courtney Townsend for his support, and to the generosity of an anonymous donor who has helped pay for this project. All the available materials are either in possession of the secretary or stored right here in the Countway Library. We have made a few extra copies for members that might be elected in the next few years. I have not been able to attend the meetings recently. I am confident that the Club will continue to fulfill the objectives of the founders as summarized in our Club Motto, shown above.

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Francis D. Moore
July 1996

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(Edited for brevity)