Biographies of Key Leaders

Jay Morris Arena was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia on March 3, 1909 to Anthony M. and Rose Sandy Arena. He received degrees from West Virginia University (B.A., 1930) and Duke University (M.D., 1932). Arena interned at Strong Memorial Hospital, Rochester, New York (1932) and later Johns Hopkins Hospital (1932-1933).

Arena joined Duke University in 1933 as a resident at Duke Hospital. Following his residency at Duke, he worked at Vanderbilt University as an instructor in pediatrics, but soon returned to Duke University School of Medicine in 1936 to become an assistant, associate, and finally full professor of pediatrics. Arena was the secretary-treasurer of the Duke Medical Alumni Association. In 1970, Arena was also appointed professor of community health sciences.

He was a preeminent physician in the field of pediatrics and toxicology and has been credited with beginning the first poison control movement in the country. In 1953, Arena founded the Duke Poison Control Center. The center, later directed by Shirley K. Osterhout, provided information to individuals and businesses about the product safety and chronic and acute management of poisoning through referrals, correspondence, and educational speakers.

Later in the 1950s, Arena went beyond the center to persuade drug companies to develop the childproof safety cap for medicine bottles. Many companies were not interested in changing their product for fear of low sales or reputation of not producing a safe drug. But Arena persisted, and with support from Duke University, convinced a number of drug companies to begin using child-proof safety caps. A major success was in the safety closure for children's aspirin: he helped bring about a reduction in the strength of aspirin as well as in the number of tablets per bottle. As a result, the incidence of aspirin poisoning in children during the early 1980s was reduced from 25 percent to less than 5 percent of all poisoning cases.

Arena's interest in poison prevention was due in part to the influence of Dr. Wilburt C. Davison, long-time School of Medicine dean. During the 1930s, the two men had treated children suffering from the unfortunately common and caustic effects of lye poisoning. They kept a reference file on other types of poisoning. The file eventually led to an inventory of treatments for poisoning and helped to develop the Duke Poison Control Center and more than 600 poison control centers across the United States. Arena shared his expertise in poison control throughout the United States by founding and presiding over the American Association of Poison Control Centers, an association to share information between health care centers which provided poison control information.

He was the chair, vice president and president of many divisions of the American Academy of Pediatrics and president of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He also served on the advisory board of the Council on Family Health and as a member of that group's delegation to the People's Republic of China. During his trips around China, Arena worked with other medical professionals to access the quality of care and evaluate the effectiveness of some traditional treatments as well as implementation of more modern techniques.

Between 1935 and 1979, Arena published approximately 300 articles and pamphlets on poisoning and a variety of pediatric subjects. He was the author, co-author or editor of many books : Poisoning: Toxicology, Symptoms, Treatment (1970, 1974, 1979, 1986), Child Safety is No Accident: A Parents’ Handbook of Emergencies (1978), Dangers to Children and Youth: Accidents, Poison, Prevention (1971), Duke's Mixture: Davison's Saga (1968), The Peril in Plants (1970), Poisoning: Chemistry, Symptoms, Treatment (1963), The Treatment of Poisoning (1966), Davison of Duke: His Reminiscences (1980), Human Poisoning from Native and Cultivated Plants (1969, 1974), Pediatric Therapy (1964, 1975, 1980), and Principles and Practice of Emergency Medicine (1978). He also served on the editorial board of Clinical Pediatrics, Emergency Medicine, Family Practice News, Highlights for Children, Journal of American College of Emergency Physicians, Nutrition Today, Pediatric Annals, and Pediatric News.

Arena was appointed to serve with various government agencies. He worked with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare with the Poison Control Branch of the Bureau of Medicine in the Division of Hazardous Substances and as an advisor on the Committee on Safety for Children. Arena served as an advisor and member of the United States Product Safety Commission and a chair of the Standards Committee of the National Standards Institute. As an advisory expert on the Accidents and Poison Panel of the International Pediatric Association, Arena was frequently called upon to give expert witness testimony in cases of accidental poisoning, prescription medication problems and corporate responsibility in poisoning cases. He was a member of the National Advisory Committee on Consumer Product Safety. Fraternal organizations memberships included Sigma Xi, Phi Beta Kappa, and Alpha Omega Alpha.

Arena retired from Duke University in 1979. The Jay Arena Fund in Pediatric Pharmacology and Toxicology was established in his honor. He was married to Pauline (Polly) Elizabeth Monteith. Together they had seven children. Arena died in 1996.

Shirley K. Osterhout was born on May 2, 1932 to Thomas and Harriette Kirkman in High Point, North Carolina. She received her MD from Duke University in 1957. Following graduation she continued to work in the Department of Pediatrics at Duke during her residency, working closely with Dr. Jay Arena on poison control issues. Osterhout worked at the Duke Poison Control Center as assistant director (1960-1970), clinical director (1970-1985), and medical director (1985-1995). She also served as assistant dean of medical education of Duke University Medical Center from 1971 to 1987. Osterhout retired from Duke University in 1995.

Osterhout married Duke physician Suydam Osterhout in 1960. She died on September 23, 2013.

Wilburt Cornell Davison, was born on April 28, 1892, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to William L. Davison, D.D., and Mattie E. Cornell Davison. Davison grew up on Long Island, New York. He received an AB degree from Princeton University in 1913, a BA degree from Oxford University in 1915, a BS degree from Oxford University in 1916, a MD degree from John Hopkins University in 1917, and a MA from Oxford University in 1919. Davison attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar from 1913 to 1916, and he was a senior instructor in Magdalen College from 1915 to 1917. From 1914 to 1919, Davison served with the American Red Cross in France and Serbia and as captain in the A.E.F. Medical Corps.

Following graduate training, Davison served from 1919 to 1927 as an instructor, associate professor, acting head of the pediatrics department and assistant dean of the Johns Hopkins Medical School. In 1926, Duke University president William Preston Few recruited Davison away from Johns Hopkins University. Davison's charge was to plan, organize, build, and direct the new Duke University School of Medicine and Medical Center. Davison brought with him a new approach to health care and health education; he founded the medical school and medical center with young, unproven faculty and flexible educational policies. Being a generalist, Davison believed in nurturing a small department of versatile pediatricians, sending them into the community to practice, and using them to teach the medical students. President Few had at one time told Davison to make your own policies and when you get in trouble, let me know and I shall help you. The confidence between Few and Davison contributed to the vitality of the medical school-university relationship. Davison was so effective in both education and clinical management that within five years of its founding, Duke University was considered to be in the top ten percent of medical centers in the United States.

As a result of Davison's extensive administrative experience, he concluded that there was a need for more efficient management in hospitals. In 1933, he inaugurated a formal program for the training of efficient hospital administrators. In this he anticipated the community hospital development programs being launched by the Duke Endowment in North Carolina and South Carolina and by the Hill Burton program throughout the United States–both programs required trained administrators with a comprehensive understanding of hospital and health field operations. One of Davison's lasting marks on the process of health care treatment is the concept of prepayment for services. Sensitive to the public and hospital problem of financing hospital care, he advocated for methods of prepayment as early as 1928. Unfortunately, due to the stock market crash of 1929, his early efforts were not successful. Had early efforts been successful, the Durham Hospital Association would have been the first prepaid voluntary hospital service plan in the United States. Nevertheless, as a result of his efforts, two of the earliest Blue Cross plans in the nation were established in North Carolina; one in 1932 and one in 1935.

This pioneering work of Davison's contributed to the beginnings of the national Blue Cross program. Davison authored “Pediatric Notes” (1925), “Enzymes” (1926), and “The Compleat Pediatrician” (eight editions from 1934 to 1961 and a Japanese translation in 1951). He was a member of the editorial board of many journals including “New Physician,” “Quarterly Review of Pediatrics,” “Pediatrics Board of Health,” and “Child Family Digest,” as well as writing over 250 articles for scientific journals.

Davison received honorary degrees from Wake Forest University (DSc, 1932) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Ll.D., 1944).

He married Atala Thayer Scudder, also a physician, in 1917. They had three children. Davison died of leukemia on June 26, 1972.