Listen to 1966 Senate hearings on LSD chaired by Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY)
In 1966, several Senate committees held hearings about LSD, driven by fears of abuse on college campuses in particular. A subcommittee led by Robert Kennedy compelled testimony from representatives of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Mental Health, and other U.S. government agencies to explore the role of the government in regulating the drug and overseeing research. Kennedy was in favor of more research, especially in the area of mental health.
Excerpts from Hearings of the Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization of the Senate Committee on Government Operations concerning federal drug research and regulation of LSD, May 24, 1966 [NLM Historical Audiovisuals accession #2001-02]
ᴙesearch data, audio and video tapes and film, photographs and negatives, charts and graphs, and reprints document Dr. Calhoun’s research activity at NIMH’s Section on Behavioral Systems. Users will also find much information about NIH internal and external politics. Calhoun was often on the cutting-edge of behavioral research during a time of dramatic scientific organizational change at NIH. He arranged the entire corpus of his research documentation within a series entitled the Historical Flow Chart (HFC).In addition to this, Calhoun employed several other organizational schemes, such as numbered Section on Behavioral Systems (SOBS), Unit for Research of Behavioral Systems (URBS), Internal Research Query (IRQ), Research Communications (RC), “Review and Synthesis,” and alphanumeric document sets. Users will find these organizational codes throughout the collection. These materials provide exceptional insight into Calhoun’s own mind and thought processes.
Images from the John B. Calhoun Papers at the National Library of Medicine
Located in: Archives and Modern Manuscripts Collection, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD; MS C 586.
Graphic with multiple lines, points, and sides. Graphs, no date. National Library of Medicine, John B. Calhoun papers, 1909-1996. MS C 586. Series VII: Negatives, Photographs, and Slides, 1960-1992, box 143, folder 1.
Study 134, Rat Habitat. no date. National Library of Medicine, John B. Calhoun papers, 1909-1996. MS C 586. Series III: Historical Flow Chart (HFC), 1909-1995, box 143, folder 1.
𝓜ice in Universe 25National Library of Medicine, John B. Calhoun papers, 1909-1996. MS C 586. Series VII: Negatives, Photographs, and Slides, 1960-1992, box 142, folder 21. Image #1633, no date.
Bagley, Hill, and Calhoun look over the mouse enclosure
National Library of Medicine, John B. Calhoun papers, 1909-1996. MS C 586. Series VII: Negatives, Photographs, and Slides, 1960-1992, box 142, folder 28.
𐊏ational Library of Medicine, John B. Calhoun papers, 1909-1996. MS C 586. Series VII: Negatives, Photographs, and Slides, 1960-1992, box 142, folder 50.
Scene #4, 1978.
Scores of mice cluster together, 1970. National Library of Medicine, John B. Calhoun papers, 1909-1996. MS C 586. Series VII: Negatives, Photographs, and Slides, 1960-1992, Box 143, folder 17.
Additional Films at the National Library of Medicine
(Rattus norvegicus):a study conducted by John B. Calhoun from 1947 to 1959 near Towson Maryland
U.S. Government Films
The U.S. Army and the U.S. Public Health Serviceproduced many films in the 1940s and 1950s about the habits of rats, the perils of contamination and disease, how to ratproof homes and buildings, and as necessary, how to poison rats effectively. See links below to two titles from NLM Digital Collections.
In 2008, essay author Dr. Edmund Ramsden visited NLM and delivered a History of Medicine lecture titled “Finding Humanity in Rat City: John B. Calhoun’s Experiments at NIMH”.
In this 1970 piece published in the Western Journal of Medicine, Calhoun writes about the destructive social implications of severe overcrowding. “In the celebrated thesis of Thomas Malthus, vice and misery impose the ultimate natural limit on the growth of populations. Students of the subject have given most of their attention to misery, that is, to predation, disease and food supply….But what of vice? Setting aside the moral burden of this word, what are the effects…of population density on social behavior?”
In a 1973 article published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, Dr. Calhoun describes his experiments and findings. “I shall largely speak of mice, but my thoughts are on man, on healing, on life and its evolution. Threatening life and evolution are the two deaths, death of the spirit and death of the body….”
John B. Calhoun 
