Oral history interview with Ray Trussell, 1983

Biographical Note

Dr. Ray Trussell was born in Toledo, Iowa in 1914. He studied at the University of Iowa, entering its College of Medicine in 1934 and received his M.D. After a stint in the Army as an epidemiologist during World War II, during which he was awarded a Bronze Star, he earned a master's degree in Public Health at Johns Hopkins. During the 1950s he worked as an epidemiologist, professor, and administrator in New York and New Jersey and authored two books on rural health care. In 1961 New York City Mayor Robert Wagner appointed Trussell to the post of Commissioner of Hospitals for the city. During his tenure, he addressed issues relating to the quality of care in municipal hospitals, ambulance and psychiatric services, birth control, and suicide prevention. From 1968 until his retirement in 1979, he served as director of the Beth Israel Medical Center, transforming it into a nationally renowned research institution known for its pioneering methadone program. Ray Trussell was interviewed for the project that led to the book Addicts Who Survived

Scope and Contents

This interview focuses on Dr. Ray Trussell's work as a health care administrator addressing heroin addiction in New York City in the 1960s and 1970s. It begins with discussion of Trussell's earlier medical career in Iowa, where addiction was virtually unknown, up to his arrival in New York City in 1955 to become dean of the School of Public Health at Columbia University. He describes a study he helped to conduct that year that concluded that heroin addiction was a serious chronic disease in need of more research, and the establishment in 1961 of a small heroin withdrawal research unit at the deteriorating Riverside Hospital. He discusses the attitudes he encountered towards addicts among health professionals as Commissioner of Hospitals, the funding by the Health Research Council of addiction treatment research, and his work with Dr. Vincent Dole and Dr. Marie Nyswander on the first protocol studies using methadone at Manhattan General Hospital, later the Bernstein Institute. The interview tracks the expansion of the project into a large-scale treatment and research program drawing on anti-poverty and mental health funds, headquartered at Columbia University, producing detailed data and helping to shift professional attitudes towards addiction. Trussell concludes with descriptions of his advocacy work promoting methadone treatment and his assessment of its efficacy and impact on public health

Subjects

• Columbia University. School of Public Health.
• Dole, Vincent P. (Vincent Paul) 1913-2006.
• Drug addicts--Rehabilitation--United States.
• Drug addicts--United States.
• Heroin abuse--United States--History--20th century.
• Interviews.
• Joseph, Herman, 1931- interviewer.
• Methadone maintenance--United States--History--20th century.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Robinson, Marie Nyswander, 1919-1986.
• Trussell, Ray Elbert, 1914---Interviews.

Access Conditions

Copyright by David Courtwright