James Bryant Mason, MD, FACS

Assistant Director of the ACS and Leader of Department Professional Services and Accreditation, 1954–1963

Brigadier General James B. Mason, MD, FACS, had a distinguished medical and military career, including his leadership role as Assistant Director of the American College of Surgeons; overseeing the Department of Professional Services and Accreditation from 1954 to 1963. Dr. Mason earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1925 and then spent four years as a fellow in surgery at the Mayo Clinic. He went on to become a graduate school instructor at the University of Pennsylvania and Associate to Assistant Professor in Clinical Surgery at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Mason served as a reserve medical officer in the United States Army and was called into active duty in 1940. Under General Paul Hawley in the European theater of operations, Dr. Mason was Chief of Operations and later was in the Veterans Administration and Reserve Officers’ section of the Surgeon General’s office until 1954. Until 1963 he headed the medical consultants to the Surgeon General. By the time he retired, he was brigadier general and had been awarded the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star the Army Commendation and the Belgian Military Cross. He was cited for “exceptional patriotic service to the United States Army”.

As mentioned, Dr. Mason served as the leader of the ACS Department of Professional Services and Accreditation from 1954 to 1963, an important time for the Committee on Cancer, when the Committee was calling for more centralization and standardization. The 1956 ACS Board of Regents reports that “…This Cancer End Results Committee stated the need for uniformity in the reporting of all registries and is interested in collaring all aspects of results in the treatment of cancer by all methods, not just chemotherapy alone…”. Further, the report promotes cooperative research and “…the Committee on Cancer, therefore, instructed its Subcommittee on Registries and Central Registries to…draw up mutually satisfactory minimum standards for central registries…”. The 1958 ACS Board of Regents describes discussions focused on establishing a Joint Committee for Cancer Staging and End-Results Reporting. By the end of the 1950s the list of Cancer Programs approved by the ACS included 834 Cancer Programs and 52 cancer registries.

Although little is known now about the surgical career and/or personal life of Dr. Mason, his obituary brings to light that he had artistic talent and that one of his paintings was hanging in the ACS headquarters.

Written by Heidi Nelson, MD, FACS

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