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Not Just Another Pretty Face

History, more often than not, is written about political life, kings, presidents, governors and their ilk, or about war, armies, navies, generals and their battles. Medicine and healthcare as subjects of history are easily overlooked or relegated to something distinctly less important.

In part to redress that imbalance, at least for Memphis, the Memphis Medical Society has sponsored a new look at healthcare in our community, Memphis Medicine, a History of Science and Service. In 344 pages and a handsome format, authors Patricia McFarland and Mary Ellen Pitts, with photo editor Dick Raichelson, cover Memphis medical history from the 1819 founding of the city, continuing through current events.

Among much else, we learn that the Memphis Medical Society (MMS), the professional organization for Memphis physicians and spokesman for important health issues of the day, has a continuing history dating back to 1876. The MMS board has met on the first Tuesday of each month since 1879. The current executive director, Mike Cates, has been the longest serving, taking the helm in 1985.

The authors and photo editor sport impressive academic credentials. McFarland holds a master’s degree in history from the University of Memphis and retired in 2006 as curator of collections in the Memphis and Shelby County Room of the public library. She wrote the first eight chapters, covering up to 1930. Pitts, with a PhD in English from the University of Florida, authored the last seven chapters, 1940 through 2010, and the epilogue. Raichelson holds a PhD in folklore/anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania and curated the photographs. A committee of MMS members assisted the authors – Drs. Nick Gotten, Frank Adams, Webster Riggs, George Cowan, Reed Baskin and Dan Dunaway, chaired by Tom Gettelfinger.

There have been notable predecessors, the 1971 History of Medicine in Memphis, the 1984 From Saddlebags to Science by McFarland, covering 1830 to 1930, and the 1986 and recent 2011 histories of the University of Tennessee Center for Health Sciences (UTCHS), but none in quite this way, comprehensive and in pictorial format. It is part of a family of similar books published by John Compton of Legacy Publishing Company of Birmingham, Alabama. The format is a full history section followed by profiles submitted by practices, clinics, and hospitals.

Organized chronologically, the book follows the currents of medical care over the last 200 years. A professor of epidemiology at Harvard Medical School once espoused that the average encounter of the average patient with the average doctor probably didn’t accrue to the patient’s benefit until 1910 or so. In her chapters, McFarland shows us why this may have been accurate in Memphis as well. The “heroic” medicine of the early 19th century often led to the patient’s detriment. “Botanics”, “eclectics” and other practitioners were often haphazardly trained.

Tennessee didn’t have a state licensing law until 1879. McFarland takes us through the first hospital in the state in Memphis in 1830; the first medical schools in 1846; the military hospital centers during the Civil War; the tragic Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878; the origins and development of the medical center around Forrest Park at Union and Dunlap, once the city’s outskirts, eventually becoming the UTCHS complex; and the Memphis medical contributions in WWI.

Pitts takes us from 1940 until today through WWII, the age of antibiotics, the opening of St. Jude, the development of the three major hospital systems – Baptist, Methodist and Saint Francis – AIDS, heart and liver transplants, managed care and the importance of the medical economy to Memphis. In fact, healthcare is the largest part of the economy in cities like Pittsburg and Cleveland and the health sector contributes an enormous amount to the Memphis economy.

No dry history, there are sidebars scattered through the text: Mark Twain, an astute writer on 19th century medicine and the medical references in Tom Sawyer; the health issues of Andrew Jackson; Beale Street and the history of black physicians; Dr. Barton Etter and Patton’s WWII slapping incident, John “Goat Balls” Brinkley, the most infamous medical charlatan of the 20th century; Drs. Willis Campbell and Eustace Semmes and Francis Murphey and more that bring the story to a refreshing personal level.

As the book makes clear, Memphis would have become a very different city if it weren’t for dramatic health events and the development of its healthcare community. This look back at the foundations of our health institutions is particularly pertinent today with national and local debates on the future of American healthcare with its forward leaps in technology and ever escalating costs.

This is a book for all to read, not just those interested in medical care. One shouldn’t judge any book by its cover, but the jacket for Memphis Medicine has a striking image: St. Jude surgeons Drs. Bhaskar Rao, Mike Neel and Vreeland Thompson in high tech gear, operating to save the limb of a child.

It’s not just a pretty cover. The book has real substance.

Tags:

A History of Science and Service; Memphis Medical Society; Patricia McFarland, MD; Memphis Medicine, Memphis, Memphis Medicine, Memphis; Methodist Healthcare, PhD; Thomas C Gettelfinger, University of Tennessee Center for Health Sciences; Saint Francis Hospital; S

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