Papers of Martha May Eliot, 1898-1975

Dr. Martha May Eliot, pediatrician, fourth Chief of the Children's Bureau, national and international child health expert and advocate, was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, on April 7, 1891. After graduation from Radcliffe College (1913) and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (1918), she held internships and/or residencies in Boston, St. Louis, and in New Haven, where she also taught at Yale University School of Medicine (1921-1935). Dr. Eliot was associated with the Children's Bureau, which she joined in 1924, for over 30 years, serving as Chief from 1951 to 1956. She helped found the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO), of which she was Assistant Director-General, 1949-1951. After retiring as Chief of the Children's Bureau, she became Professor of Maternal and Child Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, a post she held until 1960. Active in numerous professional and service organizations, she headed the Massachusetts Committee on Children and Youth (MCCY) for ten years until retiring in 1970.

Of particular importance in this collection are 10 childhood letters and 15 folders of letters from Eliot to her parents (1914-1928), most of them written during her years of medical training.

During the 1920s Dr. Eliot conducted pioneering research on the prevention and control of rickets and wrote a revision of the government's best-selling Infant Care. As head of the Children's Bureau's health and medical services she helped develop the maternal and child health (MCH) and crippled children's programs under the Social Security Act. During World War II she supervised the Emergency Maternity and Infant Care (EMIC) program and worked on nutrition for war-torn countries.

More comprehensive documentation of Dr. Eliot's Children's Bureau career from these years (1924-1945) is in the National Archives. For example, while this collection does include Eliot's articles on rickets, it contains no information on the Sheppard-Towner maternity program of the 1920s. Eliot's role in originating the Social Security Act is not documented; most of the material from the 1930s concerns the Technical Committee on Medical Care and the National Health Conference of 1938. Dr. Eliot's wartime work for nutrition is documented, but there are only three folders--plus several articles and speeches--on Emergency Maternity and Infant Care program. There are some folders on Social Security Act legislation (after 1938) and on Children's Bureau appropriations and reorganization for the 1930s and 1940s. The more detailed Children's Bureau material dates from the 1950s and includes the above categories as well as material about juvenile delinquency.

Eliot served as the official United States representative to various international health conferences. She was the only woman to sign the document creating World Health Organization at the International Health Conference of 1946. She helped develop public health services, and maternal and child health program and other medical programs, in countries requesting World Health Organization assistance, and promoted the cooperative relationship between World Health Organization and UNICEF: she helped set up, and served on, the joint health committee of the two organizations. Her international activities also included several trips during which she surveyed and reported on maternal and child health program conditions in many countries, represented here by lengthy and detailed notes on these trips and by the resultant reportypescript (However, there is little official World Health Organization or UNICEF correspondence.)

Eliot served on the Visiting Committee for the Harvard School of Public Health in the years before she joined the faculty (1957-1960) as one of the few women with full professorial status. Correspondence and lecture notes comprise the bulk of the documentation for this part of her career.

Dr. Eliot brought her national and international experience in maternal and child health program to the state level in her work for the Massachusetts Committee on Children and Youth (1959-1970). Representative of Massachusetts Committee on Children and Youth activities during these years are: a study of the public welfare system of Massachusetts which resulted in new legislation, a study of youth services, and several local studies of maternal and child health program services.

Eliot was affiliated, at various times, with over 35 professional and service organizations, most of them related to medical care. The first woman to be elected president (1947) of the American Public Health Association, she also served on several of its committees and conducted a study on the teaching of maternal and child health program in schools of public health (1961-1962); and she was president of the National Conference of Social Work (later named the National Conference on Social Welfare), 1949-1950. While the collection does not include the official presidential correspondence of the American Public Health Association or National Conference of Social Work, the American Parents Committee is substantially represented, as are the Association for the Aid of Crippled Children, the Child Welfare League of America and many other national, state and local organizations which Eliot served.

Dr. Eliot received 11 honorary degrees and more than 12 other awards and honors, including the Lasker Award (American Public Health Association, 1948) and the Howland Award (American Pediatric Society, 1967). Papers about these awards, and approximately 550 of Eliot's articles and speeches further document the career and influence of this active physician-administrator.