Hugh Cabot. Courtesy of the Clendening History of Medicine Library, University of Kansas Medical Center.
Article
Kimberly A. Hall
Cabot, Hugh (11 August 1872–14 August 1945), surgeon, educator, and medical reformer, was born in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, the son of James Elliot Cabot, an architect, naturalist, and graduate of Harvard Law School, and Elizabeth Dwight. The youngest of seven boys, Cabot was an active child, exposed to music, the Unitarian religion, the challenge of the outdoors, and his parents’ philanthropic ideals. His privileged yet altruistic upbringing underlay his future productive life....
Article
Christopher Crenner
Codman, Ernest Amory (30 December 1869–23 November 1930), or Amory Codman, orthopedic surgeon and medical reformer, was born in Boston, the son of Elizabeth Hurd Codman and William Coombs Codman, a wealthy businessman. Codman spent his life in Boston as the talented son of one of the city's elite families. He received his early education at a private boarding school and entered high school at the scientifically oriented St. Marks's School, where in his senior year he won the prestigious Founder's Medal. Upon graduation in June 1887 Codman entered Harvard College, graduating with honors in June 1891 and moving on to Harvard Medical School. In medical school, Codman met ...
Article
Richard W. Schwarz
Kellogg, John Harvey (26 February 1852–14 December 1943), physician, surgeon, and health reformer, was born in rural Livingston County, Michigan, the son of John Preston Kellogg and Anne Stanley, farmers. In 1852 Kellogg’s parents accepted the religious teachings that led to the organization of the Seventh-day Adventist church in 1863. This decision had a marked influence on their son’s life. By 1856 the family had resettled in Battle Creek, Michigan. Part of the proceeds from the sale of their farm was used to relocate the infant Adventist publishing plant from Rochester, New York, to Battle Creek, where Kellogg’s father now operated a small store and broom shop....
Article
Kathleen Shanahan
Levine, Lena (17 May 1903–09 January 1965), gynecologist, psychiatrist, and pioneer of the birth control movement, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Morris H. Levine, a clothing manufacturer, and Sophie Levine. Her parents, Jewish émigrés from Russia, had come to the United States in the 1890s. Her father’s business did well enough that the family lived relatively comfortably compared to their neighbors. Levine received a bachelor’s degree from Hunter College in 1923, and then went on to earn her M.D. from University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1927. Two years later she married Louis Ferber, another medical student, but decided to retain her maiden name. They both did their residencies at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital....
Article
Morris, John McLean (01 September 1914–08 April 1993), reproductive biologist and physician, was born in Kuling, China, the son of DuBois Morris, a Presbyterian missionary and pastor of Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, and Alice Buell. The suffering and cruelty Morris witnessed in China as a child had a lasting influence on his life. He later spoke of seeing people stepping over the bodies of the dead and dying in the streets. His interest in women’s health and reproductive issues stemmed from the widespread infanticide of baby girls he saw in China....
Article
John Wilds
Ochsner, Alton (04 May 1896–24 September 1981), surgeon, medical educator, and early crusader against cigarettes, was born Edward William Alton Ochsner in Kimball, South Dakota, the son of Edward Philip Ochsner, a retail merchant, and Clara Leda Shontz. The protégé of a distant cousin, Albert John Ochsner, Alton completed the two-year medical course offered by the University of South Dakota in 1918 and received his doctor of medicine degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1920. He served his internship and a year of internal medicine residency at the Barnes Hospital in St. Louis before entering his residency in surgery under the tutelage of his cousin, chief surgeon at the Augustana Hospital in Chicago, the first Ochsner to establish an international reputation in medical circles. His mentor arranged for Alton to have a year of training at the Kantonsspital, University of Zurich, Switzerland, and another year at the Staedtisches Krankenhaus, University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. While in Switzerland Ochsner married Isabel Kathryn Lockwood of Chicago in 1923. He entered private practice at Chicago on 1 January 1925....
Article
Charles W. Carey Jr.
Putnam, Helen Cordelia (14 September 1857–03 February 1951), physician and public health reformer, was born in Stockton, Minnesota, the daughter of Herbert Asa Putnam, a general store owner, and Celintha T. Gates. She received her A.B. from Vassar College in 1878 and then enrolled in Harvard University’s Sargent School of Physical Training. In 1883, having completed that school’s course of study, she returned to Vassar as director of physical education. Shortly thereafter she became active in the affairs of the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education and served as its vice president from 1885 to 1888. She also enrolled in the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, where she specialized in obstetrics and the diseases of women and received her M.D. in 1889. In 1890 she left Vassar to become an intern at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston. Two years later she moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where she practiced gynecology for the next forty-three years....
Article
Seaman, Valentine (02 April 1773– July 1817), physician, surgeon, and public health advocate, was born at North Hempstead, Long Island, New York, the son of Willet Seaman, a merchant, and Martha Valentine. Seaman studied medicine with Nicholas Romayne in New York City, after which he worked in the city almshouse as a resident physician to gain further training. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with the M.D. degree in 1792. Upon graduation his inaugural dissertation, on the uses and clinical effects of opium, was published. It was dedicated to Adam Kuhn, professor of the practice of physic, and ...
Article
Souchon, Edmond (01 December 1841–05 August 1924), anatomist, surgeon, and public health educator, was born in Opelousas, St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, the son of Eugene Souchon, a surgeon-dentist, and Caroline Pettit, both natives of France. His early education was acquired in private schools in St. Martinville, Louisiana, Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans, except for a brief period when he attended a public school in New Orleans because of his father’s ill health. Souchon later took pride in relating how he had to sell newspapers during this period to help the family finances....
Article
Storer, Horatio Robinson (27 February 1830–18 September 1922), pioneer gynecologist and anti-abortion crusader, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of David Humphreys Storer, a prominent naturalist and medical professor, and Abby Jane Brewer. His father had written on the fishes of Massachusetts and North America, helped establish the Tremont Street Medical School in Boston, and eventually taught obstetrics and medical jurisprudence at Harvard Medical School. Storer followed remarkably similar professional interests....
Article
Warbasse, James Peter (22 November 1866–22 February 1957), economic reformer and surgeon, was born in Newton, New Jersey, the son of Joseph Warbasse and Harriet Delphine Northrup. After graduating from Newton Collegiate Institute in 1885, followed by a year studying at home, he entered the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, from which he received an M.D. in 1889. Warbasse completed a two-year internship at Methodist Episcopal Hospital in Brooklyn, did postgraduate study at the Universities of Göttingen and Vienna, and then returned to New York City, where he served in the outpatient departments of the Chambers Street and Roosevelt Hospitals. In 1892 he returned to Methodist Episcopal, starting as assistant attending surgeon and progressing to attending surgeon three years later. Soon after his initial appointment, Warbasse set up a laboratory of surgical pathology and bacteriology at the hospital; it is credited with being the nation’s first such facility. When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Warbasse volunteered. He served in Florida and Cuba, first as a medical officer with the 7th Army Corps and then as surgeon to the 13th Artillery Regiment of New York State. Having seen the cruelties of war at firsthand, he became a pacifist....
Article
Robert C. Hayden
Wright, Louis Tompkins (22 July 1891–08 October 1952), surgeon, hospital administrator, and civil rights leader, was born in La Grange, Georgia, the son of Ceah Ketcham Wright, a physician and clergyman, and Lula Tompkins. After his father’s death in 1895, his mother married William Fletcher Penn, a physician who was the first African American to graduate from Yale University Medical School. Raised and educated in Atlanta, Wright received his elementary, secondary, and college education at Clark University in Atlanta, graduating in 1911 as valedictorian of his class. His stepfather was one of the guiding influences that led to his choice of medicine as a career....
