Barker, Jeremiah (31 March 1752–04 October 1835), physician, was born in Scituate, Massachusetts, the son of Samuel Barker and Patience Howland, farmers. Barker’s early education under the Reverend Mr. Cutter, a Congregational minister, was followed by his study of medicine under Bela Lincoln of Hingham, Massachusetts, from 1769 to 1771. A graduate of Harvard College who had studied medicine under Ezekiel Hersey and in London hospitals and who had received an M.D. from Kings College, Aberdeen, Lincoln had had an unusually academic medical education for the period, a fact that would have a positive influence on Barker’s own medical training....
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Barker, Jeremiah (1752-1835), physician
Richard J. Kahn
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Bass, Mary Elizabeth (1876-1956), physician, medical educator, and historian
Elizabeth D. Schafer
Bass, Mary Elizabeth (05 April 1876–26 January 1956), physician, medical educator, and historian, was born in Carley, Mississippi, the daughter of Isaac Esau Bass and Mary Eliza Wilkes. She grew up in Marion County, where her father operated a gristmill and dry goods store. The 1890s economic depression bankrupted Isaac Bass, and the family moved to Lumberton, Mississippi, to invest in pecan orchards. The Basses were pious Baptists and active in civic concerns....
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Bass, Mary Elizabeth (1876-1956)
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Mary E. Bass. Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine (B02453).
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Flick, Lawrence Francis (1856-1938), physician, historian, and early leader in the campaign against tuberculosis
Barbara Bates
Flick, Lawrence Francis (10 August 1856–07 July 1938), physician, historian, and early leader in the campaign against tuberculosis, was born in Carroll Township, Cambria County, Pennsylvania, the son of John Flick, a mill owner and farmer, and Elizabeth Schabacher (changed to Sharbaugh). Flick grew up on the family farm, but poor health excused him from the usual chores. A bookish boy and a devout Roman Catholic, he first attended local schools. For most of his teenage years, he studied at St. Vincent’s, a Benedictine college in Beatty (now Latrobe), Pennsylvania, but symptoms suggesting tuberculosis cut short his classwork, and he returned home. After a period of indecision and various jobs, he entered Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and graduated in 1879. He then completed an internship at Philadelphia Hospital and opened an office for the practice of medicine. His persisting illness, however, was finally diagnosed as tuberculosis and, following his physicians’ advice, he traveled to the West for his health. By 1883, improvement allowed him to resume his practice, which soon included increasing numbers of patients with tuberculosis. “When I recovered from tuberculosis as a young man,” he wrote, “I consecrated my life to the welfare of those afflicted with the disease and to the protection of those who had not yet contracted it” ( ...
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Handerson, Henry Ebenezer (1837-1918), physician and medical historian
Genevieve Miller
Handerson, Henry Ebenezer (21 March 1837–23 April 1918), physician and medical historian, was born near Gates Mills, Ohio, the son of Thomas Handerson and Catherine Potts, farmers. In 1839, after his father’s accidental death, Henry was adopted by his uncle, Lewis Handerson, a respected pharmacist in nearby Cleveland, and his wife, Prudence Punderson. Her brother, the Reverend Ephraim Punderson, was an Episcopal missionary who frequently visited them and greatly influenced the young frail boy. In 1852 the family moved to Beersheba Springs, Tennessee, and two years later, with health improved, Handerson entered Hobart College (Episcopal) in Geneva, New York, graduating in 1858 with an A.B. in the classics. The following year he was a private tutor on a cotton plantation near Alexandria, Louisiana, and then began to study medicine in the Medical Department of the University of Louisiana (now Tulane) in New Orleans....
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Major, Ralph Hermon (1884-1970), physician and historian of medicine
Jacalyn Duffin
Major, Ralph Hermon (29 August 1884–15 October 1970), physician and historian of medicine, was born in Clay County, Missouri, the son of John Sleet Major, a banker, and Virginia Anderson. After completing his A.B. degree at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, in 1902, he traveled in Europe for three years. There he became proficient in German, French, Italian, and Spanish, adding to his knowledge of Greek and Latin. Back in America, he studied medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, obtaining his M.D. degree in 1910. He remained at Johns Hopkins for two years of postgraduate training in internal medicine before returning to Europe to spend 1912–1913 at the clinic of Friedrich Müller in Munich, Germany....
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Major, Ralph Hermon (1884-1970)
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Ralph Hermon Major. Left, with Douglas Guthrie. Courtesy of the Clendening History of Medicine Library, University of Kansas Medical Center.
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Nixon, Pat Ireland (1883-1965), physician and historian
Chester Burns
Nixon, Pat Ireland (29 November 1883–18 November 1965), physician and historian, was born at Old Nixon in Guadalupe County, Texas, the son of Robert Thomas, a farmer and stockman, and Frances Amanda Andrews. Nixon received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas in 1905 and a medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1909....
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Osler, Sir William (1849-1919), physician, educator, and historian
Charles G. Roland
Osler, Sir William (12 July 1849–29 December 1919), physician, educator, and historian, was born in Bond Head, Ontario, Canada, the son of Featherstone Lake Osler, an Anglican priest, and Ellen Free Pickton, both of Cornwall, England. William’s father left Britain’s Royal Navy for an evangelical calling in the backwoods of early nineteenth-century Ontario. In 1837 the Oslers came to their new home in Bond Head, forty miles north of Toronto. The young Osler was a proficient scholar, caught in the common mid-nineteenth-century dichotomy between science and church. Ultimately, another Anglican priest, the Reverend W. A. Johnson, settled the matter by nourishing Osler’s interest in natural science. Microscopy replaced the ministry. As early as 1869, Osler’s first published work analyzed microscopic forms in a pond near his home....
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Osler, Sir William (1849-1919)
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Sir William Osler. Courtesy of the Clendening History of Medicine Library, University of Kansas Medical Center.
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Packard, Francis Randolph (1870-1950), physician and medical historian
Genevieve Miller
Packard, Francis Randolph (23 March 1870–18 April 1950), physician and medical historian, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of John Hooker Packard, a distinguished surgeon, and Elisabeth Wood. After attending Rugby Academy in Philadelphia, Packard was a pre-medical student in the biological department of the University of Pennsylvania from 1887 to 1889 and obtained an M.D. in 1892 from the university’s Department of Medicine. Unable to obtain a residency immediately at the Pennsylvania Hospital, he was invited to the new Johns Hopkins Hospital by the eminent internist ...
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Williams, Stephen West (1790-1855), physician, naturalist, and medical historian
Whitfield J. Bell
Williams, Stephen West (27 March 1790–07 July 1855), physician, naturalist, and medical historian, was born in Deerfield, Massachusetts, the son of William Stoddard, a physician, and Mary Hoyt. Williams attended the local academy and at age eighteen began to study medicine with his father. While still a student, he sent Dr. ...
