The collection contains Jacques M. May's professional papers while he was director of the
Medical Geography Department at the American Geographical Society, as well as personal
papers from 1948 to 1960. The majority of the collection consists of medical statistics,
preliminary maps, academic studies, correspondence, and bibliographies for the Atlas of Disease. TheAtlas was a
series of plates, published by the American Geographical Society. Seventeen plates were
published, and the collection contains material relating to each of them. Each plate
corresponds to a specific disease or group of diseases. The 17 plates cover the following
diseases:
- Plate 1: World Distribution of Poliomyelitis
- Plate 2: World Distribution of Cholera
- Plate 3: World Distribution of Malaria
- Plate 4: World Distribution of Helminthiases
- Plate 5: World Distribution of Yellow Fever and Dengue
- Plate 6: World Distribution of Plague
- Plate 7: World Distribution of Leprosy
- Plate 8: Study in Human Starvation I (Sources of Selection Food)
- Plate 9: Study in Human Starvation II (Diets and Deficiency Diseases)
- Plate 10: Rickettsial Diseases I (Louse-borne and Flea-borne Typhus)
- Plate 11: Rickettsial Diseases II (Tick-borne and Mite-borne Forms)
- Plate 12: Tick and Mite Vectors
- Plate 13: Arthropod-borne Viral Infections
- Plate 14: World Distribution of Leishmaniases
- Plate 15: World Distribution of Yaws, Pinta, Bejel
- Plate 16: World Distribution of Relapsing Fevers
- Plate 17: World Distribution of Leptospiroses
The collection also contains medical statistics and academic studies done for "Cancer" and "Drug
Addiction", neither of which were published. The collection also contains medical
data gathered and academic studies conducted by May for publication in medical geography.
May wrote many books about medical geography and nutrition. The collection contains incoming
correspondence and information about organizations to which May belonged (e.g., the Council
on Foreign Relations and the League for Emotionally Disturbed Children). Finally the
collection contains professional correspondence, as well as a large amount of correspondence
with Erwin Di Cyan, the director of Di Cyan & Brown, Consulting Chemists. There is also
personal correspondence between May and his family, along with family photographs.
