The History of the Saranac Laboratory, 1885–1958 (1959)

A 20-page typed history of the Saranac Laboratory at Saranac Lake, New York, from Dr. Edward L. Trudeau's tuberculosis work in 1885 to 1958, with a list of references. It describes Leroy Gardner's dust research and the Saranac symposia on silicosis, the industry and insurance money that paid for it, his death in 1946, the directorship of Arthur J. Vorwald from 1947 to 1953, and the cuts of July 1958. It is unsigned and undated, but mentions a program begun on January 1, 1959.

What it shows

The history says that in the early 1930s, with suits "for many millions" pending, pneumoconiosis "was becoming a most unpleasant by-word with many business executives," and Gardner was consulted by compensation boards, insurers and industries. Invitations for him to testify as an expert "were refused" to keep the laboratory's name for "impartial scientific knowledge." It lists the Air Hygiene Foundation and its successor, the Industrial Hygiene Foundation, among the laboratory's main supporters, and says that under Vorwald the studies included pulmonary cancer. A history of the laboratory also appears in Trudeau Foundation and Saranac Laboratory Publication Lists, with a History of the Saranac Laboratory (1958).