MUSEUM RECEIVES MEDICAL EQUIPMENT FROM INVENTOR
(Click on a photo to see larger image)

Dr. James B. McCormick, a physician and inventor, donated a collection of his inventions to the museum. McCormick is from the Lincolnwood, Ill. suburb of Chicago, and holds 41 patents for laboratory and clinical science equipment.

His donation includes more than 250 drawings and blueprints of components and devices as well as prototypes, production models, and equipment engineered and manufactured by the company he founded in the early 1960s. A 1978 prototype mixing apparatus and method for blood cell suspensions is on display in the museum.

McCormick's first patent, in 1956, was for a life-sized, plastic, molded anatomical model and method of molding plastic articles. Among the best known of his patents are a microtome cryostat, which allows the immediate preparation of frozen tissue sections for diagnosis in the guidance of surgical procedures; and state-of-the-art tissue processing tools for microtomy and histopathology. His latest patent, in 1999, was for an apparatus and method to prepare small tissue samples.

A board-certified clinical and anatomical pathologist, Mc-Cormick is currently the director of laboratory medicine at Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago. He is also chairman of the board of LifeCenter, an affiliate of the hospital, and vice chairman of the hospital's clinical ethics committee.

The donation includes instruments to test patient's hearing, record test information, gather their history, and measure pulmonary function, as well as a punch card machine, reader, and instruments, mostly from the 1970s.

Some of the devices are a hematocrit reader, a data acquisition device for auto-gathering of a patient's history, hearing test equipment, a water bath slide dryer, and a microtome cryostat.

"I was born into a railroad family, worked as a boy in a large railway machine shop, and looked forward to a career on the railroads," McCormick, now 76, wrote of his early life in the "Quekett Journal of Microscopy" in 2001. "Then I enlisted into the military and was trained as a medical assistant. This was a major force that directed me to a career in medicine."

McCormick graduated from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in 1949. He completed his pre-med requirements in 1947 at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Prior to that, McCormick enlisted in the U.S. Navy after graduation from high school in 1943 and served as a pharmacist mate before entering the U.S. Navy's officer training pre-medical college program.

He completed a general rotating internship and residency in clinical/anatomical pathology in 1953 at Augustana Hospital in Chicago. During this time he participated in clinical and anatomical medical research, publishing papers in the early years of radioisotope therapy and clinical endocrinology. He received the Residents Research Award from the Chicago Medical Society for his work.

In 1953, McCormick participated in the formation of the medical staff at LaGrange Community Memorial Hospital and was chief pathologist until leaving in 1957 to join the medical staff of Swedish Covenant Hospital as director of the laboratory and member of the medical staff executive committee. In 1983 he was recruited by the Swedish Covenant Board of Directors as president/CEO and, after completing his tenure in 1990, served as chairman of the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council.

With a group of fellow physicians and Swedish Covenant Hospital board members, McCormick formed a program to provide funding and staff for a mission hospital in northeastern Zaire that operated from 1969 to 2000, until political unrest interrupted its activities.

Over the years, McCormick has authored a number of publications, including "Atlas and Demonstration Technique of the Central Nervous System" published in 1961 by Charles C. Thomas and "The Microscopic Photographs of J.B. Dancer," a 280-page book published by Science Heritage Ltd. in 1993. He has also presented at many seminars and workshops.

The historical collection at the National Museum of Health and Medicine documents changes in medical technology since the early 17th century and includes objects ranging in size from a suture needle to a two-ton MRI magnet, such as X-ray equipment, microscopes, surgical instruments, numismatics, and anatomical models. The collection is made available for the education of medical professionals, Department of Defense personnel, historians, and the public through exhibits in the museum, loans to other institutions, and individualized study.