The Ruth Lilly Medical Library is pleased to announce a new addition to the History of Medicine Collection that is now open for research. The Robert Harrold Flinn Papers document the education, military service, and public health career of Hoosier, Indiana University alumnus, and physician Robert Harrold Flinn (1906-1989) and include correspondence, research materials, industrial health reports and other official government publications, diplomas, certificates, commencement programs, newspaper clippings, photographs, and other materials dating to between 1908 and 1989. The majority of the materials in the collection pertain to Flinn's occupational health research on respiratory diseases and other health conditions among miners, potters, hatters, military personnel, and other industrial workers, as well as an extensive study of the effects of the atomic bomb on health and medical services in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan following the end of World War II.

Robert Harrold Flinn was born in 1906  in Marion, Indiana. He graduated from Marion High School, attended Culver Military Academy, graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Indiana University Bloomington (1928) and a Doctor of Medicine degree from the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis (1930), and completed a one-year residency at Indianapolis City Hospital. Flinn spent his entire 30+ year professional career as an officer in the U.S. Public Health Service, specializing in industrial and workplace health. From 1931 to 1934, he worked as an assistant surgeon at the U.S. Marine Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio and served the next two years a chief medical officer at the U.S. Penitentiary Annex in Leavenworth, Kansas. From 1936 to 1942, Flinn worked for the Division of Industrial Hygiene at the National Institutes of Health, where he led investigations into silicosis, lead poisoning, mercury and manganese poisoning, and worker fatigue.

During World War II, he served with the Department of the Army Service Forces War Department (1942-1945) and studied industrial medical and toxicological hazards at U.S. Army munitions factories. After the war, Flinn was part of a team that conducted research and prepared an official government report for the industrial health hygiene section of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey of Japan from 1945 to 1946 and then served as acting director of the Chicago-Cook County health survey between 1946 and 1947.

In 1955, Flinn was appointed chief of the Division of Health for the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Washington, DC and later served as assistant chief of the Occupational Medicine Section for the Public Health Service's Occupational Health Research and Training Facility until his retirement from public service in 1963. In 1964, Flinn moved to Santa Barbara, California and worked part time for the state of California's Rehabilitation Department for about ten years, and then settled in the Portland, Oregon area in 1986. Robert Harrold Flinn died in 1989 in Hillsboro, Oregon and is buried at Willamette National Cemetery in Portland.

A detailed descriptive finding aid and inventory for the collection can be viewed in IU Archives Online: https://archives.iu.edu/catalog/VAE3048

About the History of Medicine Collection

The Ruth Lilly Medical Library’s History of Medicine Collection  supports the research, learning, and educational success of Indiana University students, faculty, and community members by collecting, preserving, interpreting, and providing access to unique materials documenting the history of medicine; medical education, training, research, and practice; and health and disease treatment and prevention in the state of Indiana and beyond within the global context of the Western medical tradition.

The History of Medicine Collection is located on the third floor of the Ruth Lilly Medical Library (Room 307) and is open by appointment (Monday-Friday, 10:00am-4:00pm). Research appointments and classes can be scheduled by contacting medlref@iu.edu.