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Frederick E. Kredel Papers open for research

The Frederick E. Kredel Papers have been cataloged and are available for study at the Waring Historical Library.
 
Dr. Frederick E. Kredel (1903-1961) was the first full-time professor of surgery at MUSC. A skilled surgeon respected by his colleagues, Kredel served as head of MUSC's Department of Surgery as well as surgeon-in-chief of Roper Hospital. His interest in the sciences was not limited to the practice of surgery, however.
 
In 1925, while serving as a graduate assistant in the Zoology Department of the University of Pittsburgh, Kredel was second in command of a research expedition to Kartabo, Guyana (at the time known as British Guiana). Entomologist Samuel H. Williams led the expedition.
 
Among the materials discovered during the processing of his collection is a scrapbook kept by Kredel which documents his experiences in Kartabo with photographs and handwritten notes. Among the fauna featured in the scrapbook are giant armadillos, boa constrictors, and piranhas. Kredel had a particular interest in the three-toed sloths native to Guyana, and his affection for them is evident in his notes. His research on them led to his article “Note on the Temperature of the Sloth,” published in the Journal of Mammology in 1928. Photographs of gardens, plantation homes, and the indigenous people are also included and provide a sense of time and place of scientific exploration at an early 20th century British Colonial outpost.
 
The Kredel Papers have been cataloged as part of the Preserving and Accessing South Carolina's Medical History Collections grant made possible with funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
 
For information about this collection and others, visit the Waring Historical Library or http://waring.musc.edu.
   

Friday, Jan. 19, 2007
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