Theron G. Randolph papers

Theron G. Randolph, (1906-1995), M.D., 1933, University of Michigan Medical School, was an allergy specialist and one of the founders of clinical ecology.

Theron Grant Randolph was born in 1906 in Jerome, Michigan, to Fred Randolph (1867-1937) and Rena (Kempton) Randolph (1877-1968). He worked on his parents' farm as a child and adolescent. He attended high school in North Adams, Michigan, and enrolled at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, in 1925. He did not make the decision to attend medical school until his senior year and had to undertake extra college-level work to prepare for entrance into the medical school program at the University of Michigan. Randolph originally intended to train as a psychiatrist but changed his mind while in medical school, deciding instead on internal medicine. However, when he was diagnosed with probable pulmonary tuberculosis as the after-effect of a high school chest injury, Randolph chose to pursue the study of allergy. He obtained a fellowship under Francis M. Rackemann at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1937. Randolph entered private practice with Theodore Squier in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1939. During his time in Milwaukee, Randolph founded and ran the Allergy Clinic at Milwaukee Children's Hospital for three years. He returned to the University of Michigan medical school as chief of the allergy clinic in 1942.

In the mid-1940s, Randolph moved his practice to Chicago, obtaining staff privileges at the Northwestern University Medical School and Wesley Memorial Hospital. He taught at Northwestern University's medical school and built a substantial private practice. After moving to Chicago, Randolph continued to focus on allergic medicine, developing techniques which diverged from the current diagnostics and treatment of allergies, including creating diagnostics that differed from the widely used IgE response testing technique. He evaluated patients for reactions to common items such as corn, wheat, milk, and egg which were not generally thought to be causes of allergic reaction. He also considered a wide range of environmental and occupational pollutants, including perfumes, cosmetics, engine exhausts, and gas or paint fumes, as more well-known allergens such as plant pollens, milk, and nuts. He developed a style of history-taking which emphasized detail and completeness as well as the importance of the patient's own self-directed observations, sometimes collecting hundreds of pages of data from a single patient. During the 1950s, Randolph began to use the term "clinical ecology" to describe his field of specialty, moving away from the use of "allergy."

In 1949, Randolph provided expert testimony on allergies at the "Bread Hearings" in Washington DC; these hearings were held by the Food and Drug Administration to decide on labelling standards. (He was later invited to give testimony at the "Peanut Butter Hearings" in 1966.)

Randolph's contract with Northwestern was not renewed in 1950 and he gave up teaching and turned to an entirely private practice. In 1953, Randolph secured a hospital staff appointment at the St. Francis Hospital in Evanston, Illinois. During this period, Randolph also began to work on the design of an environmental isolation unit, a chemically neutral suite in a hospital or clinic which could be used for elimination testing of allergies. The first of these units was opened in 1956 as the St. Francis Hospital; this unit shifted between hospitals several times before finally closing in 1984 due to problems getting insurance coverage.

After his departure from Northwestern and subsequent loss of grant funding, Randolph was partially supported by funds from the Rockwell M. Kempton Medical Research Foundation (renamed the Human Ecology Research Foundation in 1960). Randolph moved from the St. Francis Hospital to the Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago in 1957 and held an additional appointment at the Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois, in 1959, where he established the Lutheran Institute for Human Ecology. The Institute still exists as part of Advocate Health Care in Downers Grove, Illinois. Randolph's appointment at the Lutheran Hospital was terminated in 1967 and he then sought and received staff appointment at Henrotin Hospital in Chicago.

Randolph was a member of numerous professional organizations over the course of his career, including the American College of Allergists, the Chicago Allergy Society, and the American Ophthalmologic and Otolaryngologic Society of Allergy, and was a founding member of the Society for Clinical Ecology in 1965 (now called the American Academy of Environmental Medicine). He was involved in a variety of continuing medical education initiatives for physicians, including the Wyoming Postgraduate Course in Allergy and Immunology which ran between 1956 and 1963. He received the Society for Clinical Ecology's Jonathan Forman award for contributions to the field in 1967 with particular mention of his 1962 publication, Human Ecology and Susceptibility to the Chemical Environment.

Randolph published prolifically throughout his career and was co-author of Food Allergy (1951) with Herbert J. Rinkel and Michael Zeller. In 1987, he published Environmental Medicine--Beginnings and Bibliographies of Clinical Ecology which is partially a history of the field and partially his own autobiography as well as including brief biographical sketches of other prominent allergists including Herbert Rinkel and Arthur F. Coca.

Randolph married Janet Sibley while living in Milwaukee; the couple had three sons, Jonathan, Wardner, and Bruce, and divorced in 1952. Randolph married Janet Mitchell Walker ("Tudy") in 1954 after meeting her as a patient in 1953; the couple had no children. Theron G. Randolph died of pneumonia in Geneva, Illinois, in 1995 at age 89.