The collection consists of materials from 1903 to 1973 with the bulk from the 1940s and 1950s. This collection contains reports, speeches, magazine and newspaper articles, and correspondence concerning Daniel E. Wright's travels and sanitation work in the Panama Canal, Greece, Turkey, and the Middle East.

During this period Wright pioneered the use of DDT to control malaria, dysentery, and other endemic diseases afflicting the Greek population. Collection contains materials dealing with the Panama Canal, the public health activities of the Rockefeller Foundation, and the UNRRA and the UNPHS. Also includes extensive correspondence to his family while a colonel on the staff of Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell and later of the U.S. Middle Eastern Command Headquarters in Cairo, and photographs (ca. 250) from his travels.