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VOLUME 22, NUMBER 27
JULY 18,1975
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
Sims: More Than a Woman's Surgeon
The following article is being reprinted from an address delivered by Dr. Robert S.
Sparkman, Chief of the Department of General Surgery, Baylor University Medical
Center in 1974.
It is one of a continuing series of articles on the men for whom the wards of Duke
Hospital were named.
The first child of Jack and Mahala
Sims was born on January 25, 1813,
on a farm in Lancaster County, South
Carolina. They named him James
Marion in honor of Carolina’s
revolutionary hero. General Francis
Marion, the Swamp Fox.
Jack Sims had little money and no
forrpal education, but he was
ambitious and enterprising. In 1825,
seeking a better opportunity, he
moved with his family to Lancaster
where he achieved enough success as
a tavern keeper, surveyor, and sheriff
to educate his son.
Marion was an undistinguished
student. After an education of sorts
in rural schools and in the new
Franklin Academy in Lancaster, he
enrolled in 1830 in South Carolina
College at Columbia. He graduated
in 1832 and returned to Lancaster.
As a college graduate he was
expected to enter one of the
professions. His father wanted him to
be a lawyer, while his mother wanted
him to be a minister. He chose
medicine as a career, not because he
liked it, but because the alternatives
of law and the church appealed to
him even less. His choice was a
disappointment to both of his
parents.
He began by reading medicine
with an indifferent preceptor. Dr.
Churchill Jones, in Lancaster. In
1833 he attended a three-month
course of lectures in Charleston at the
new Medical College of South
Carolina. After additional reading in
Lancaster he enrolled in the
Jefferson Medical College in
w
RECEIVES GRANT—Dr. D. Bernard Amos recently accepted a $1,500 grant from North
Carolina ACS Special Projects Chairman Dr. Warren H. Cole. Dr. William W.
Shingleton, right, is director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center here.
Amos Awarded Cancer Grant
For Fall Lectures, Symposium
Three guest lecturers and a
half-day symposium this fall will be
products of a $1,500 American
Cancer Society grant recently
presented to Dr. D. Bernard Amos,
chief of the Division of Immunology.
Amos, whose work in immunology
and genetics won him this year’s
Albion O. Bernstein, M.D., Award
from the Medical S(x;iety of New
York, is involved in research to
discover the way in which the body’s
immune system fights cancer.
“I want to find out what the body’s
defenses against cancer really are,”
Amos said. “ I'he body attacks cancer
cells in two ways — with antil>odies
and with lymph(x;ytes.
“Either can be effective. But if
things go wrong, they can prevent
each other from acting. We need to
know how they work and interact
with each other.”
The upcoming lectures to be
sponsored by the grant will feature
topics on “Herpesvirus and Cancer,”
“Immunology and Timiors” and
“Carcinoembryonic Antigen.”
The symposium will feature three
speakers with topics tentatively
planned to include: “Viral
Susceptibility to (dancer,” “Immune
System Surveillance” and
“Immunotherapy."
rhe programs, designed for a
general medical audience, will also be
open without charge to the lay public.
Philadelphia, where he spent a year.
He graduated in 1835 and returned
to Lancaster to practice.
His experience there was a
disaster. In two months he had only
two patients: both were infants, and
both died of cholera infantum.
In desperation, Sims packed his
belongings and fled westward to
Alabama. During the next five years a
number of things happened to
influence his career profoundly. He
established a successful practice at
Mount Meigs, a few miles east of
Montgomery. Malaria was endemic
there, and before long Sims was
debilitated by recurrent bouts of
fever.
(Continued on page 4)
DR. JAMES MARION SIMS
Appointments, Promotions
Cite Seven Faculty Members
Five appointments and two
promotions at the medical center
have been announced by Dr.
Frederic N. Cleaveland, university
provost.
Dr. Joannes H. Karis has been
named professor of anesthesiology,
and Drs. Robert J. Bache and David
F. Paulson have been promoted to
associate professorships in the
department of medicine and surgery,
respectively.
Those receiving appointments to
assistant professor are Dr. David C.
Deubner in community health
sciences. Dr. Ronald B. Flasley in
medicine. Dr. Markku Linniola in
psychiatry and Dr. Calvin R. Peters in
surgery.
Karis, a native of Schiedam,
Holland, earned an M.D. degree
from the State University of Utrecht
in Holland in 1952 and an Arts
degree from the State University of
Leiden, also in that country, in 1956.
He served a rotating internship at
New York City Hospital from
1952-53 and a residency in
anesthesiology at Kings County
Hospital in Brooklyn, N. Y., from
1957-59.
Between 1960 and the present,
Karis rose from instructor to
associate professor of anesthesiology
at Columbia University in New York
City. Before his appointment at
Duke, he also served as medical
director of the Inhalation Therapy
Department and associate director of
the Surgery Anesthesiology Intensive
Care Unit at New York’s Presbyterian
Hospital.
Bache, who is an associate in
physiology as well as associate
professor of medicine, earned B.A.,
B.S. and M.S. degrees at the
University of North Dakota and then
an M.D. from Harvard University
Medical School in 1964. He
completed a medical residency at
hospitals affiliated with the University
of Minnesota in 1967, and then in the
same year, came to Duke as a U.S.
Public Health Service Officer.
Following several years as fellow in
cardiology at Duke and at the
University of Minnesota, he was
named assistant professor of
medicine here in 1971.
After receiving a Bachelor of Arts
degree and an M.D. from Duke in
1960 and 1964, respectively, Paulson
served an internship and assistant
residency in surgery at Duke
Hospital. From 1966 to 1969, he was
clinical associate at the National
Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md.,
and then he returned to Duke to
complete his residency in urologic
surgery.
Paulson was named to the faculty
here as instructor in 1971. In January
of 1972, he was named assistant
professor of surgery and director of
urologic research at Duke and the
?)urham Veterans Administration
Hospital.
Deubner earned a B.A. degree
from Stanford University in 1966 and
his medical degree from the
University of Rochester School of
Medicine and Dentistry in 1971.
After completing an internship at the
Latter-Day Saints Hospital in Salt
Lake City, Utah, in 1972, he went on
to finish a master’s degree in public
health at the University of North
Carolina and a residency in medicine
at the Center for Disease Control.
Upon receiving a B.S. in chemistry
from Oklahoma Baptist University,
F.asley entered the University of
Oklahoma where he earned the M.S.
(Continued on page 2)