Cat.No: 253200 [Group of five items by public health activist Walter J. Lear (1923-2010)]. Walter J. Lear.

[Group of five items by public health activist Walter J. Lear (1923-2010)]

[Philadelphia]: the author, 1989-2007. Five staplebound packets, generally very good, by the physician who held an abiding interest in the role of left-wing activism in health care. These papers are mostly texts of speeches reproduced for a limited audience. Lear’s archives are held at Penn; these are duplicates from his papers, obtained from his estate.

Lear came out as gay while serving on Philadelphia’s Health Commission in 1975; he describes this personal experience in “GLPHWC Roots,” one of the packets in this group. He went on to direct the US Health Left History Center in Philadelphia.

The lot contains the following papers:

Der Rote Schmidt: a 19th century model of being both eminent physician and political activist (undated, 30p; a version was published in the Transactions and Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1989).

GLPHWC Roots (1990, 3 pages; on the Gay / Lesbian Public Health Workers Caucus)

Talk at the Physician Forum’s annual dinner (1994, 4 pages).

The unique US health activism history collection of the University of Pennsylvania Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Institute of Social Medicine and Community Health (talk given 2005 in Philadelphia, 4 pages; also included is a pictorial supplement to an earlier version of this talk given in London, 2003).

Social justice – the original foundation of pediatrics and its continuing inspiration (2007 Irving Mauss Lecture, 23 pages).


Cat.No: 253200

Price: $50.00