Eugene Opie spent most of his career as a pathologist at the Rockefeller Institute engaged in research on the influenza, tuberculosis, blood diseases, poliomyelitis, and viruses. His work at Washington University, St. Louis, is documented, as are his efforts to alleviate tuberculosis in Jamaica, among Philadelphia schoolchildren, and in New York City. The Opie collection contains correspondence, notebooks, lab notes from his days at Rockefeller, articles, reprints, and photographs. Opie's long interest in China is reflected in material on the American Bureau for Medical Aid to China, the United China Relief, and Chinese medicine in general. There is also significant documentation on the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Henry Phipps Institute of the University of Pennsylvania, the Milbank Memorial Fund, and other institutions. There are also reports of approximately 300 clinical autopsies performed at the Base Hospital, Camp Pike, Ark., of soldiers who died in the flu epidemic of 1918. Also there are notes of Opie's course in pathology at the University of Pennsylvania.

For his pioneering research on the link between viruses and cancer, the pathologist Francis Peyton Rous was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1966. Working primarily at the Rockefeller Institute after 1909, Rous first came to notice for his theoretical construction of the first blood bank for use in France during World War I, a plan ultimately implemented by his assistant, Oswald H. Robertson. Subsequently, he left an important imprint on the development of experimental medicine, partly through his own research on the origins of cancer and his administrative activities at the Rockefeller, but also as editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine from 1921-1970. The Rous Papers include correspondence, lectures, articles, reports, laboratory records, reprints, and photographs that document all aspects of the life and work of Peyton Rous. Reflecting his work at the Institute are letters of colleagues, information on assistants, and reports to the directors (1909-1959). Additional material relates to Rous' diverse organizational interests, including the American Cancer Society, Century Association, Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research (at Yale University), Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Johns Hopkins University, National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, New York Academy of Medicine, Royal Society of Medicine Foundation, and Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research.