Paula Michaels is an Associate Professor of History at Monash University (Australia). With a focus on the social history of medicine, her research embeds the USSR in a pan-European and global narrative. She is particularly interested in the ways that politics and economics impinge on clinical practice and patient encounters. Michaels is the author of two prize-winning books, and many articles and book chapters, as well as co-editor of two books. She is currently at work on the history of Soviet medical internationalism during the Cold War, which has received the support of a Boston Medical Library Grant in the History of Medicine, an American Councils Academic Fellowship in Russia, a Gerda Henkel Fellowship and, with Dr Ema Hrešanová (Charles University), a 2024 Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant.
Through its promotion of scientific exchange and cooperation, the American-Soviet Medical Society (ASMS) (1943-48) embodied the highest aspirations of medical internationalism to promote mutual exchange and understanding. It emerged from the interest of progressive US physicians in the USSR’s socialized medical system and grew, amid the amity of wartime alliance, to embrace thousands of members. With the Cold War’s onset coming hard on the heels of the Second World War’s end, the opportunity for cooperation was cut short.
This paper probes the history of the ASMS for the light it sheds on the meaning of medical internationalism for professional networks and their engagement with the public. I focus on the US reception of antireticular cytotoxic serum (ACS), which Ukrainian physiologist and ACS developer O.O. Bohomolets touted as holding the promise of prolonging life to as much as 150 years. Based on a wide variety of Russian and US archival and published sources, this study demonstrates some of the challenges of international research cooperation, and the poignant consequences of the press fuelling public hunger for medical magic bullets.
