Lloyd Grenfell Stevenson

Stevenson, a director of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Institute of the History of Medicine, was born in London, Ontario. He received his B.A. in 1940 and his M.D. in 1944, both from the University of Western Ontario. Following an internship at Ottawa General Hospital, Stevenson served as a captain in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps.

In 1946, he was appointed as a lecturer in the history of medicine at the University of Western Ontario, but left in 1947 to pursue graduate study under Owsei Temkin at the Institute of the History of Medicine. Stevenson received his Ph.D. in 1949 with a dissertation, A History of Lead Poisoning, before returning to the University of Western Ontario in 1950 as an assistant professor in history of medicine.

In 1954, Stevenson moved to McGill University and was promoted to professor of history of medicine in 1956 as well as dean of the faculty of medicine. In 1963, Stevenson was recruited to Yale University as professor and chairman of the department of history and science.

In 1968, he returned to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to become Director of the Institute of the History of Medicine and the William H. Welch Professor, retiring in 1983.

Stevenson edited and published six books including A Celebration of Medical History, to celebrate the Institute of the History of Medicine’s and Welch Medical Library’s fiftieth anniversary, as well as fifty-nine papers regarding the history of medicine. He was editor of the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences from 1964 to 1968 and the editor of the Bulletin of the History of Medicine from 1968 until 1983.