Papers of Richard Clarke Cabot

Richard Clarke Cabot (1868-1939) was a physician and medical educator whose interests included social work, religion and medicine, and medical ethics. He taught at Harvard University, where his courses were in the fields of clinical medicine,philosophy, and social ethics, from 1902 until 1934. He practiced at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1898 until 1921.

Cabot was born on May 21, 1868 in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was the fifth son of James Elliot and Elizabeth (Dwight) Cabot. He attended the Nobel and Greenough School after which he attended Harvard. He received his A.B. degree summa cum laude in 1889 and his M.D. in 1892. On October 26, 1894, Cabot married Ella Lyman (1866-1934).

He started his medical career at Massachusetts General Hospital and continued as a member of the consulting staff there until his death. He was also a consultant to the New England Hospital for Women and Children, the Westboro School for Boys, and the Lancaster School for Girls. He was an army doctor on the hospital ship Bay State in the Spanish-American War and at a base hospital in France during World War I.

He was a maverick in the medical field, favoring socialized medicine and founding a department of medical social work at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1905. He also created the teaching method known as the clinicopathological conference (C.P.C.).

Cabot's teaching career spanned nearly four decades. At Harvard, he was Lecturer on Philosophy (1902-1903), Instructor in Clinical Medicine (1903-1908), Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine (1908-1913), Assistant Professor of Medicine (1913-1918), Professor of Clinical Medicine (1918-1933), and Professor of Social Ethics (1920-1934). From 1935 to 1939, he was professor of natural theology at the Andover-Newton Theological School.

Cabot's earliest writings were on blood, serum, and physical diagnosis. His clinical studies resulted in a series of famous medical books including Physical Diagnosis,Case Histories in Medicine, and Differential Diagnosis. His later writings were on ethics and include What Men Live By, The Meaning of Right and Wrong, and Adventures on the Borderland of Ethics.

He belonged to many professional organizations, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of American Physicians, the American Medical Association, the Massachusetts Medical Society,Sigma Xi, and the National Conference of Social Work, of which he was president in 1930. Cabot received various honors throughout his career, including the gold medal of the National Institute of Social Sciences (1931) and three honorary degrees, an LL.D. (Rochester, 1930), an L.D.H. (Syracuse, 1934) and a D.D. (Colby, 1938).

He died on May 7, 1939 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.