John Duffy (medical historian)

Duffy died at his home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on June 20, 1996, where he had been living for the last nine years of his life. At the time of his death, Duffy had retained his status as emeritus professor at the University of Maryland and at Tulane University. At the time of his death, he was working on a review of the careers of female physicians in Louisiana.

In 1991 the American Association for the History of Medicine gave Duffy its Lifetime Achievement Award for the History of Medicine.

His best known book was The Healers (1976). The book describes the rise of modern medicine in the United States and the ways in which the rise was influenced by the impact of disease and pestilence, by demographic changes, and by scientific advances. It also describes the accompanying changes in medical education in the United States. This book was substantially revised and the revised version was released in 1993 under the title of From Humors to Medical Science. Reviews of the book shortly after publication stated that Duffy's book was the most comprehensive historical account of medicine in the United States published up to that time.

Subsequently, Duffy wrote and published: The Rudolph Matas History of Medicine in Louisiana (2 volumes, 1958 and 1962), Sword of Pestilence and The New Orleans Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1853 (1966), A History of Public Health in New York City (2 volumes, 1968, 1974), The Tulane University Medical Center: 150 years of medical education (1984) and The Sanitarians, A History of American Public Health (1990).

Subsequently, Duffy's academic career included teaching at Louisiana State University (1953–1960), the University of Pittsburgh (1960–1965), and Tulane University (1965–1972). He finished his career as the Priscilla Alden Burke Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park, having an endowed professorship. Duffy served for a year as the interim editor of the American Historical Review. He retired from academia in 1983 and returned to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he resided for the remainder of his retirement, continuing to write and publish works related to public health history.

Duffy's first book, Epidemics in Colonial America, was published in 1953 with a subsequent edition released in 1972. The book describes the impact of disease as a significant determinant of the colonization of North America, in addition to famine and war. The book provides prospective on the various diseases that afflicted colonists.

Duffy was a University Fellow at UCLA in 1945–1946 and a Ford Fellow at Harvard University in 1951–1952. He was the Distinguished Alumnus of Northwestern State University in 1986. He also served for a time as president of the American Association for the History of Medicine and also the Washington Society for the History of Medicine.

John Duffy (1915–1996) was an American medical historian who wrote books and scholarly journal articles on the history of medical education, public health and epidemics.

Duffy was born on March 27, 1915, in Barrow-in-Furness, England. He immigrated to the United States in 1928, settling at first in Detroit, Michigan, and working for a time in the automobile industry. Duffy became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939. He earned a bachelor's degree at the Louisiana State Normal College (now known as the Northwestern State University) in 1941. Duffy completed his master's degree from Louisiana State University (LSU) in 1943 and his PhD from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1946.