Richard Sherman Lyman

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  • Lyman received his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (1921). He worked in Leningrad with Ivan P. Pavlov in the Department of Physiology at the Institute of Experimental Medicine (1930-1931). His appointments include associate professor of psychiatry at the National Medical School in Shanghai (1931-1937), professor at Peiping Union Medical College (1932-1937), professor of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (1938-1941), professor of neuropsychiatry at Duke University (1941-1951) and Meharry Medical College (Nashville, T.N.) (1951-1953). He also taught courses at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. Lyman's recruitment efforts led to the hiring of faculty who represented diverse cultural backgrounds and therapeutic interests. He was particularly interested in training and recruiting psychiatric staff from available labor pools and doing away with the reputation of orderlies as mere "bouncers." To this end, he trained conscientious objectors to be psychiatric orderlies during World War II. Lyman was also a prominent figure in the evolution of treatment of non-white psychiatric patients. He arranged for many such patients to be admitted to Lincoln Hospital during the early 1940s, at a time when Duke Hospital's psychiatric ward, Meyer Ward, had no beds available for black patients. During the 1940s, Lyman and selected other members of Duke University School of Medicine faculty worked as members of the staff at Highland Hospital (Asheville, N.C.). Duke University assumed directorship of HIghland Hospital in 1944 from its founder, Dr. Robert S. Carroll.
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  • per00037
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  • Photograph & Negative Collection
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