The history of Medicine Division, national library of Medicine (NLM) announces the public release of documents from John b. Calhoun (1917-1995), a researcher of behavioral sciences noted at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a component of the National Institutes of Health. From the 1950s through the 1980s, Dr. Calhoun has studied the behavior of mice and rats in conditions of extreme overcrowding. He, along with other social scientists, politicians and pundits, readily extrapolated his work to comment on Human crowding in urban environments, just as the country was undergoing a massive redevelopment of its urban structures. His conclusions have found a ready audience among those who saw the world's overpopulation as not only a problem of resources, but of social cohesion.
In a statement, Calhoun's work with rats inspired 1971 children's book, Mrs. Frisby and the rats of NIMH by Robert c. O'Brien, which was adapted into an animated film of 1982, the secret of NIMH.
John b. Calhoun was born in Elkton, Tennessee, in 1917. After his undergraduate education at the University of Virginia (B.A., 1939) and postgraduate work in zoology from Northwestern University (PhD, 1943), post-graduate work and Professor at Emory University, Ohio State University and the Johns Hopkins University School of hygiene and public health, studying sociology and ecology of Norway rats. After further work at the Jackson Memorial Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine and the army Graduate School at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in 1954 he joined the section on perception in psychology laboratory at NIMH. He spent the rest of his career.
Study rats in conditions of overcrowding, Calhoun observed what he termed the "behavioural sink". This aberrant behavior as indicated hyperaggression, inability to reproduce normally, infant cannibalism, increased mortality and aberrant sexual models in such situations of overcrowding. His general conclusion was that "the space itself is a necessity". In the 1960s, his research switched in the field of evolution and behavior, which informs the current field of evolutionary psychology. In 1963 he formed and was the first Director of the NIMH for behavioral systems research (URBS) in the laboratory of brain evolution and behavior (LBEB). There he observed the effects of crowding on a community of mice that have been permitted to overpopulate, seeing a complete end to play, with the entire population died. Calhoun coined the term "Autism" to describe the behavior of the Group at that point finale, how I became incapable of social interaction is essential for survival. In the mid-1970s, his research moved to turn to cultural ways that rats acquired to counteract the effects of overcrowding.
Calhoun retired from NIMH in 1984, but continued to work on his research results until his death on September 7, 1995.
The collection, "MS C 586," comprises 196 linear metres of records mostly material from 1954 to 1986. It was donated in 1997, as a gift from Edith Calhoun, his widow. In addition to laboratory notebooks and drafts of articles, the collection is particularly noteworthy for the film, video cassettes and spools audiocassettes that Dr. Calhoun used to document his experiments.
Calhoun cards form one of the collections of research described almost 600 of modern manuscripts of the library program. I am one of a vast number of human development and behavioral sciences; others include the papers of Bertram Brown, Wayne Dennis, Lawrence k. Frank, Paul MacLean, Lois Meek, Lois b. Murphy and Herbert Rowell Stolz, as well as the records of the Society for Research in Child Development and Child Guidance Clinic and child psychiatry movement interview collection.
Calhoun materials can be found in the history of Medicine Division reading room, National Library of Medicine, open Monday to Friday, from 17: 8:30 to 0, except for Federal holidays on the first floor of the building on 38 NIH campus, Bethesda, Maryland. No appointment is necessary. Finding aid for the collection can be found at http://oculus.nlm.nih.gov/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=nlmfindaid;idno=calhoun586.
The National Library of Medicine, the largest medical library in the world, is a component of the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. John b. Calhoun points to two injured mice tail on her arm from Universe 17, 102. November 1969.
A view of the universe mouse 33, showing four group cells 01 week 162 of an experiment, study possibly 133. C. 1975.
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