Pelham Doctors in 1900

I've written a number of posts on this blog related to medical history in Alabama, especially Birmingham; and also many on the history of Pelham, where we live. You can find a list of some of the Magic City medical history items here. A list of Pelham postings is here. Both lists were completed in 2017, so both need updating--maybe someday. This piece examines a bit of Pelham's medical history. 

As I sometimes do on a cold winter evening, I recently dipped into the 1900 volume of the Transactions of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama. In addition to administrative materials and papers presented at the annual meeting, this publication included each year a county-by-county listing of the doctors in Alabama. Each listing was divided into those who were members of the medical society and those who were not. Thus the Transactions, which were published from the 1850s into the 1920s are something of a snapshot each year of the state's medical profession. 

Below you can see a page from the 1900 volume that gives doctors for Shelby County. Listed first are the officers of the county society, then the members and finally doctors who had not joined. Each entry often includes medical college and year of graduation as well as the year of certification to practice in Alabama. 

In that listing are three doctors in Pelham in 1900. Here I've included what I found about these men. 

Garland Henry Smith

Smith was born on July 10, 1860, and graduated from the Medical College of Alabama in 1889. Wayne Flynt's University of Alabama Medical Alumni Association 1859-2003 lists him in class of 1890 & being from the community of Kennedy in Lamar County. At the time the medical school was in Mobile, and operated there from 1859 until 1920 when it was moved to Tuscaloosa and then Birmingham in 1945. According to the Transactions he was certified by the Shelby County medical board in 1890. 

He apparently moved around the county. The 1890 and 1896 Transactions put him in Siluria. The 1900 volume puts him in Pelham. The 1902 publication has him living in Ganadarque, which had a post office from 1895 until 1903, the name having been changed from Newala in 1895. Finally, the  American Medical Association's Directory of Deceased Physicians 1804-1929 lists him in Saginaw at the time of his death on September 2, 1905. He seems to have been a member of the medical society during his career in Shelby County. 

In 2015 I did a blog post on the Pelham Cemetery; several physicians who practiced in the town are buried there. That includes Smith; you can see his marker via Find-A-Grave below. The photo there was better than mine! Pearl Denson wife of of Dr. G.H. Smith is also buried in the Pelham Cemetery; a photo of her grave is also in the blog post. She died in 1935. Since her maiden name was Denson, is she related to the next Pelham physician on our 1900 list? 

Dr. Smith is buried in the Pelham Cemetery. 

Source: Find-A-Grave

Eli Forest Denson

Denson was born on February 15, 1853, and graduated from Vanderbilt medical school in 1879. He was certified by the Shelby County board in that same year. He appears in various volumes of the Transactions through 1902, never as a member of the society. Denson does not appear in Shelby County in the 1907 volume, so he may have moved out of Pelham at some point. He died on July 14, 1910, age 57 and is buried in the Pelham Cemetery.  His wife Emma lived until 1937 and is also buried there. 

Dr. Denson is buried in the Pelham Cemetery. 

Source: Find-A-Grave 

Joseph Madison Johnson

Johnson was also a Vanderbilt graduate, finishing in 1883. He was certified by the Shelby County board in that same years. In addition to 1900, I found him in the 1896 Transactions but not in 1902 in Pelham. I did not find him via U.S. Census records, Find-A-Grave or the AMA directory of deceased physicians. He was not a society member in those years. Otherwise, Johnson is a mystery.

A William Rufus King Johnson, 1880 graduate of Atlanta Medical College, and certified by the county board in that year, shows up in Pelham in the 1889 and 1890 Transactions  and is not a society member. He does not appear in the city in the 1896 or 1898 Transactions.

The American Medical Association's Directory of Deceased Physicians 1804-1929 has a listing for him. with some additional and different information. He was born May 12, 1854, in Highland, Alabama. Johnson graduated from the Atlanta Medical College in 1878 and certified in Alabama that same year. He was certified to practice in Texas in 1907, and lived in several places in that state until his death in Mt. Pleasant of a cerebral hemorrhage on October 30, 1928. Was he related to Joseph Madison Johnson? 

Several other doctors are known to have practiced in Pelham in the early 20th century. Pelham was not incorporated at the time, but population figures for the Pelham "precinct" can be found in the Alabama Official and Statistical Register 1919. In 1900 602 people lived there and 1100 in 1910.

I've written a blog post about John Payne, who is also buried in the Pelham Cemetery. Although a physician who grew up in Shelby County, and was certified by that county's board, his practice before his untimely death seems to have been in Birmingham. 

Young & Company's Business and Professional Directory of Alabama 1910-1911 lists an A.W. Horton as a physician in Pelham. Dr Andrew W. Horton died in 1910 at the age of 37 and is buried in the Pelham Cemetery.

The American Medical Directory for 1916 has a doctor listed in Pelham, Braxton Bragg Pugh. He died in Uniontown in Perry County in 1938, so he may not have been in Pelham long. 

The American Medical Directory for the years 1912, 1914, 1918 have no doctors in Pelham. 

Source:

Transactions of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama, 1900 via the Internet Archive 

Two Alabama Doctors in Trouble

In one of my recent wanderings through the Internet Archive Scholar database, I happened to come across the two notices below about a pair of Alabama physicians. Let's investigate. 

The 1913 item describes the shooting death of Dr. Frank Walton on August 18 at the hands of Gid Weaver, an electrician working for the Woodward Iron Company. "Domestic trouble is said to be the cause" of the killing, which took place in Weaver's home in Mulga in front of his wife. I've written about a similar case in Birmingham in 1901 in which a doctor named John Payne was murdered by James Cook, presumably a jealous husband. 

Walton was a 38 year old Virginia native who worked as a mining company physician, possibly also for Woodward, a huge supplier of pig iron from 1881 until 1971. In 1899 he graduated from Vanderbilt Medical School in Nashville and was licensed by the Alabama state medical board. At the time of his death he was a member of the American Medical Association. 

As the two brief newspaper articles note, Weaver was arrested, made bond, and in October was indicted for second degree murder. I did not find the results of a presumed trial. Weaver lived until 1943 and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery. I was unable to find more information on Walton.

See below for something about the second physician, Dr. G.R. Norman.

,

Source: Southern Medical Journal 1913, vol. 6, no. 10, page 701

Birmingham Age-Herald 24 August 1913

Source: Library of Congress, Chronicling America

Source: Birmingham Age-Herald 10 October 1913

Library of Congress, Chronicling America

According to the Alabama Deaths and Burials Index, 1881-1974 via Ancestry.com, Weaver was a grocer living in Homewood at the time of his death. His wife's name was Iva. 

Source: Find-A-Grave 

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This second note concerns Dr. G.R. Norman and his accomplice Kelly Adams, once a janitor at the State Capitol. The pair was accused in 1915 of stealing medical examination papers from the office of the State Health Officer, Dr. W.H. Sanders, in Montgomery and selling them to medical students to substitute during the annual examinations. 

A sting operation conducted by Dr. W. A. Avery, working for Sanders, paid Adams $25 to substitute correct exams for the originals. Adams originally wanted $100, but Avery talked the price down. Norman and Kelly had apparently worked a widespread fraud scheme at recent exam sessions.

As the first Age-Herald article below notes, nine "prominent" doctors from Birmingham and Montgomery were called by the prosecution to testify. These included William H. Sanders, prominent in medical education and public health in the state at this time. Two other physicians working in the state health department were also included. 

Norman and Adams were both found guilty. Norman was sentenced to six years imprisonment and Adams two. According to Alabama convict records, Norman's sentence took place June 8, 1915 & he was paroled April 23, 1918. He also received 30 and 60 day paroles in 1916 and 1917. I did not find Adams in those records. Sentences would have been to the Wetumpka State Penitentiary, which served the state until the original Kilby Prison opened in 1923

According to his Find-A-Grave listing, George R. Norman was born in Alabama on January 10, 1886. He attended Birmingham Medical College and graduated in 1911. His class photo can be seen here. Norman took the medical certification exam in Montgomery and passed. The Transactions of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama [p. 582], has him listed in 1913 as practicing in Arley, Winston County. That volume also notes he had moved that year to Jefferson County. 

I found George R. Norman in the U.S. Census for 1920 and Norman, his wife Helen and their two children in the 1930, and 1940 listings. In that first one Norman was living on Blackwells Island in Manhattan; the city hospital was located there and perhaps that was his place of work. The census notes that both his father and mother were born in Alabama. Norman was apparently living in a boarding house; the household had nine people of different last names. 

By 1930 his circumstances had changed. He was married to Helen, more than a decade younger, and they lived in a house they owned at 2529 Admiral Place in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Norman worked as a "material" doctor in private practice. Others in the household were children George R. Jr. and Charles A. Norman. A niece, Docia Stricklin, also lived with them. By the 1940 census Helen was listed as a registered nurse. 

The Normans remained in Tulsa, and he died on January 21, 1942, at the age of 56. He is buried in Rose Hill Memorial Park in Tulsa; his gravestone can be seen below. Helen died in 1963 and is also buried there, as is Charles who died in 2017 at age 83. I did not investigate George R. Jr. 

Other than the gravestone seen below, I have found nothing else on Kelly Adams. 

Source: Southern Medical Journal 1915, vol. 8, no. 4, page 337

Birmingham Age-Herald 4 March 1915

Library of Congress, Chronicling America

Columbia (Tenn.) Herald 12 March 1915

Source: Library of Congress, Chronicling America

Alabama Convict Records 1886-1952 via Ancestry.com

That symbol is a Masonic one. His wife Helen's marker shows the symbol of the Order of the Eastern Star, a Masonic group open to both men and women. 

Source: Find-A-Grave

This marker may be that of Kelly Adams and his wife. The stone is located in Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery.

Source: Find-A-Grave

Dr. Justina Ford at Alabama A&M and Beyond

Source: Colorado Health Care History

Ford, Justina Laurena Carter (22 Jan. 1871-14 Oct. 1952), physician, was born in Knoxville, Illinois, and grew up in Galesburg in the west central part of the state. She was the seventh child in the family, and her mother is reputed to have been a nurse. According to the 1900 U.S. Census, her father was born in Kentucky and her mother in Tennessee. 

In a profile published in Negro Digest two years before her death, Ford declared a very early interest in medicine. “I wouldn’t play with others unless we played hospital, and I wouldn’t play even that unless they let me be the doctor. I didn’t know the names of any medicines…” (quoted in Harris, 42) She also remembered liking to prepare chickens for meals in order to see their insides and visiting sick neighbors to help them. Ford grew up to pursue that childhood interest in medicine and became the second African-American female physician in Alabama and the first in Colorado.

            Little else is known of Ford’s early life. Ford attended Hering Medical College in Chicago, one of several schools in the U.S. (others are known in St. Louis, Missouri, and Fort Wayne, Indiana) named after the German immigrant Constantine Hering (1800-1880), who is often called the “father of American homeopathy.”  She graduated in 1899. 

By that time about twenty percent of physicians in the United States were graduates of homeopathic schools. Almost 1600 black physicians were practicing in the U.S. at the time; fewer than 200 were women. The first female African American physician in the U.S., Rebecca Lee Crumpler, had graduated from the New England Female Medical College in 1864.

            In Ford’s 1900 U.S. Census record, enumerated on June 7, she is listed in Chicago’s 4^th Ward as one of six residents of a boarding house.  Also listed is John E. Ford, 39, a clergyman born in Kentucky, as were both his parents. This man is presumably Ford’s first husband; how they met and what eventually happened to him is currently unknown. 

Sometime later that year Ford traveled south to Alabama to take the state’s medical certification exam. Why she picked such a distant southern state to begin her practice remains a mystery, although the presence of Booker T. Washington and Tuskegee Institute may have been factors. Washington had recruited Dr. Cornelius N. Dorsette to set up practice in the state capitol of Montgomery in 1884 as one of Alabama’s earliest black physicians. In 1891 Washington persuaded Dr. Halle Tanner Dillon to come to the state and serve as the resident physician for Tuskegee Institute’s faculty and students; she remained in that post until 1894. When she passed her grueling medical certification exam in August, 1891, she became the first female physician of any race to be certified in Alabama.

            Instead of Tuskegee, Ford settled in Normal, just outside the city of Huntsville in north Alabama. Normal was the site of the State Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes, a land-grant school founded in 1875. She was certified to practice medicine after passing the test administered by the Madison County Board of Medical Examiners sometime after the census count in Chicago in June, 1900, and before March 31, 1901; she is listed in the 1901 Transactions of the state medical society as a successful candidate. Joining some 55 black physicians in Alabama, she apparently became the college’s resident physician. The archives at what is now known as Alabama A&M University seems to have only one item related to Ford, a “sick list” dated December 30 and 31, 1902, giving the names of people she vaccinated.

            About this time Ford decided to move her practice elsewhere and chose Denver, Colorado. She may have hoped a black female physician would have better opportunities in the West rather than the Jim Crow South, where even male black physicians could have difficulties developing a practice.

            Ford’s decision proved to be the right one for her. In a career that lasted more than four decades, she built a formidable reputation for her skills in obstetrics, gynecology and pediatrics. Ford remained a distinct minority, however. In 1950, two years before her death, only seven black doctors were active in Colorado; she was the only woman among them. She still had to overcome discrimination; for most of her years in practice black physicians and patients were not allowed at Denver General Hospital. Toward the end of her career she did receive admitting privileges at the hospital and membership in the Denver and Colorado medical societies.

            As Ford’s practice in Denver began, she traveled to patients’ homes by horse and buggy and then bicycle. Later she bought a car and hired a driver; Ford herself never learned to drive an automobile. She also used taxis to reach her patients, who lived both in the city and in often difficult to reach rural areas. In addition to fellow blacks, Ford treated poor whites, Mexicans, Greeks, Koreans, Hindus, Japanese and any others who sought care from her in that diverse western town. She accepted whatever patients could pay in cash or goods and claimed to have delivered 7000 babies (only 15% black!) in her long career.

            Whether Ford’s first husband accompanied her to Alabama and Colorado is currently unknown. She is known to have married Alfred Allen after her arrival in Denver, but she retained the name by which she was so well-known. Her religious home in Denver was the Zion Baptist Church. Early in her career Ford bought a nine-room house at 2335 Arapahoe Street, where she lived until her death. Although in later years she began to lose her sight, Ford treated patients until just weeks before she died. She was survived by her husband; the pair had no children.

Source: Colorado Health Care History 

            Shortly before her death, Ford was given the Human Relations Award by the Cosmopolitan Club of Denver. That award, plus her admission to the Denver and Colorado medical societies in 1950 meant that Ford received some recognition in her lifetime for her long career of patient care and self-sacrifice.

            Other recognitions have come since her death. In 1975 the Warren Library, an east Denver branch of the city’s public library system, was re-named the Ford-Warren Library. In February, 1984, the house on Arapahoe Street was moved to 3091 California Street to avoid demolition. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the home is now the location of the Black America West Museum and Heritage Center. Her first floor office and waiting room remain as she used them. The Dr. Justina Ford Medical Society was formed in 1987 to support black physicians training in Denver. The Colorado Medical Society, which for so many years rejected Ford as a member, passed a resolution in 1989 declaring her a “Medical Pioneer of Colorado.”

            Ford’s long career exemplifies the status of both female and African American physicians in America in the first half of the twentieth century. As Ford began her practice in 1900, there were about 7000 female physicians in the United States, or nearly five percent of all doctors. That percentage remained steady until the 1970's when it began the rise that continues today. In 1920, almost midway through her career, she was one of only 65 African American female physicians in the United States. The U.S. Census that year counted almost 3900 black male doctors. By 1930 the total number of black physicians had fallen to 3805.

            Justina Ford had to overcome both race and gender prejudice to carve out a successful practice. Black male and white female physicians had their own problems with obtaining an education, developing a practice, and relating to a white male medical establishment that mostly ostracized them. Ford, like other black female doctors, had a double set of problems to face. Perhaps both her personal drive and the fact that she settled in Denver, with its multi-racial population, made her remarkable career possible.

Bibliography

 “Dr. Justina Ford: Honored as First black Female Physician in Colorado.” Colorado Medicine 86(4): 60, February 15, 1989

Harris, Mark. “The Forty Years of Justina Ford.” Negro Digest 8:42-45, March 1950

Johnson, Connie. “Dr. Justina Ford: Preserving the Legacy.” Odyssey West 7(2):4-5, March-April 1988

Lohse, Joyce B. Justina Ford, Medical Pioneer (2004)

Riley, Marilyn Griggs. “Denver’s Pioneering Physician and ‘Baby Doctor”: Justina L. Ford, M.D., 1871-1952” in Marilyn Griggs Riley, High Altitude Attitudes: Six Savy Colorado Women (2006)

Smith, Jessie Carney. “Justina L. Ford (1871-1952) Physician, humanitarian” in Jessie Carney Smith, ed. Notable Black American Women Book II (1996)

Tollette, Wallace Yvonne. Justina Lorena Ford, M.D.: Colorado’s First Black Woman Doctor (2005)

Tollette, Wallace Yvonne. Justina’s Dream (2005)

Dr. Mastin of Mobile Tours the World in 1901

Reading old newspapers often turns up fascinating material. I was recently wandering around in the Library of Congress digital collection Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers for another project unrelated to Alabama history and found the long article below. The piece appeared in the St. Paul Globe in Minnesota on July 21, 1901. Given the nature of the article, it probably appeared in other papers around the country. 

Wondering who these surgeons were, I skimmed the first paragraph and found "Dr. Mastin of Mobile, Ala." as one of the four. The travelers intended to visit and conduct clinics in Berlin, Moscow, Siberia, Korea and Japan. Some hunting and fishing would be included en route to Siberia. Interestingly, Mastin is mentioned in the article only that one time.

At first I thought this Dr. Mastin might be Claudius Henry Mastin, Sr. [1826-1898], with whom I am somewhat familiar. However, a check of my file on him quickly alerted me that although he had practiced in Mobile, he had also died three years earlier.

The Dr. Mastin mentioned in this article must be his son, Claudius Henry Mastin, Jr., who died in August 1925. Like his father he practiced in Mobile as well. Both men are buried in Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville. The elder Mastin received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1849; his son from the same institution in 1884.

I wonder if young Dr. Mastin received his invitation to this trip based on his father's renown. After Confederate service in the Civil War, the older man spent decades participating in various medical organizations, publishing numerous articles and even invented several surgical instruments in addition to his clinical practice. I really need to do a blog post about him one day.

Standing Tall at UAB: The Statue of Dr. William E.B. Davis

This statue is found to your left as you start up the front entrance steps of the New Hillman building on the UAB campus. You can find out more about the building in an earlier blog post. The man depicted is William Elias Brownlee Davis [1863-1903], described in the subtitle of an article about him as "surgeon--teacher--organizer." Davis was one of Alabama's most prominent 19th century physicians.

Born in Trussville, William and his older brother John formed a third generation of doctors in the family. Grandfather Dr. Daniel Elias Davis was an early settler in Alabama; their father, Dr. Elias Davis, was killed at the Battle of Petersburg during the Civil War.

John Daniel Sinkler Davis graduated from the Medical College of Georgia in 1879, and when he set up practice in Birmingham two years later invited his sibling to come "read" medicine under him. William studied at the University of Alabama, medicine at Vanderbilt and the University of Louisville and graduated from Bellvue Hospital Medical College in New York City in 1884. Then the Davis brothers began a joint practice in Birmingham.

 
The brothers were nothing if not ambitious. Within a decade they had started the Alabama Medical and Surgical Journal, founded the Birmingham Medical College where experimental surgery on dogs was included in the curriculum, and opened a private clinic for surgery and gynecology on Third Avenue. The brothers also helped organize the Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association at a meeting in October 1887 held in the local YMCA. The organization still exists today as the Southern Surgical Association.

Originally located on 21st Street North in a former hotel, a new building for the Birmingham Medical College was constructed in 1902 in the same block where this statue now stands. A two-story autopsy house was added later. The college graduated its final class in May, 1915. Graduates from the school included one woman, Elizabeth White. Clinical training took place at Hillman Hospital, St. Vincent's Hospital, and other city facilities including the Davis Infirmary.


In addition to the Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association, William served other medical groups before his death in 1903. He was Vice-President of the American Medical Association in 1892 and President of the American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 1901. Dr. Davis published extensively in the medical literature, as the references in the Carmichael article noted below demonstrate.

He was killed at a railroad crossing in the city when he was only 40 years old. His wife Gertrude lived until June 1953; both are buried in Oak Hill Cemetery.

This bronze sculpture is the work of Giuseppe Moretti and was cast at his Roman Bronze Works in New York in 1904. The work was commissioned by members of the Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association. Moretti's slightly larger cast-iron statue of Vulcan debuted that same year at the St. Louis Exposition.

 

Davis in 1887
Source: BhamWiki

Further Reading

Carmichael EB. William Elias Brownlee Davis: Surgeon--Teacher--Organizer. Ala J Med Sci 1966 April; 3(2): 224-229

Moore RM. The Davis Brothers of Birmingham and the Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association. Ann Surg 1963 May; 157(5): 657-669

Alice McNeal, M.D.: Alabama's First Female Anesthesiologist

          On May 8, 2010, in a ceremony in Montgomery, Alice McNeal, M.D., was inducted into the Alabama Healthcare Hall of Fame along with other members of the 2010 class of honorees. Dr. McNeal became the second anesthesiologist inducted; Robert A. Hingson, M.D., in 1999, was the first. 

       The Hall of Fame was established in 1997 “to recognize those persons, living or deceased, who have made outstanding contributions to, or rendered exemplary service for healthcare in the State of Alabama.” Past honorees have included such well-known medical figures as Peter Bryce, William Crawford Gorgas, James D. Hardy,  Seale Harris, Tinsley R. Harrison, Sr., Luther Leonidas Hill, Basil I. Hirschowitz, John W. Kirklin, Josiah C. Nott, Lloyd Noland, David Satcher, and J. Marion Sims. 

In September 1945, the first class of students began their studies at the Medical College of Alabama in Birmingham. This four-year school had replaced a two-year program in Tuscaloosa, and thus students no longer needed to leave Alabama to obtain a medical degree. The demands of creating this school quickly and almost from scratch led DeanRoy Kracke to open a few opportunities for female physicians. When the school opened, Dr. Melson Barfield-Carter, an Alabama native who had practiced radiology in the city since 1929, was named Professor and Chair of the school's Radiology Department. Three years later, Dr. Alice McNeal became the second female department chair at the Medical College.

            Alice McNeal was born in 1897 in Hinsdale, Illinois. She graduated from Rush Medical College in Chicago in 1921, and during the next two years completed internships at Women's Hospital in Philadelphia and Durand Hospital in Chicago. In 1925 she began a stretch of twenty-one years as Anesthesiologist and Instructor in Anesthesia at Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago. During this period she completed a residency in anesthesia under Huberta Livingstone in 1926 and a second residency under Ralph Tovell in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1938 and 1939. Dr. McNeal was certified by the American Board of Anesthesiology in 1941.

McNeal in 1921, at the time she received her Rush MC certificate

She received her M.D. the following year, one of 5 women among 129 total graduates

Source: Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center Archives [Chicago]


 

            During World War II McNeal was active in the effort to bring female physicians into the U.S. armed forces. Women doctors had not been allowed to enlist in World War I; they could not yet vote and thus were not "citizens". A few were allowed to be "contract" physcians during that conflict. McNeal and Dr. Virginia Apgar led the effort in World War II; in April 1943 the Sparkman-Johnson Bill passed Congress, and women were allowed to enlist. 

            By early 1946, Dean Roy Kracke needed a Chief of Anesthesia for the hospital of the new medical school. Apparently John Adriani, a prominent anesthesiologist at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, was offered the position but declined. By May of that year Dean Kracke had persuaded Dr. McNeal to accept the post, and she arrived in Birmingham to become an Assistant Professor of Surgery and Chief of the Surgery Department's Anesthesia Division. In August 1948, Dr. McNeal was named Chair of the newly created Department of Anesthesiology and remained in that position until stepping  down in 1961. She retired the following year. Dr. McNeal died on December 31, 1964.

            In October 1946 Dr. McNeal began organizing a School of Nurse Anesthetists at the hospital. In the spring of 1948 she was one of four founding members--and the only female--of the Alabama State Society of Anesthesiologists. As a result of her efforts, the department's residency program was certified by the American Board of Anesthesiology in February 1949. In that same year, under the auspices of the International Refugee Organization, Dr. McNeal made a nine-week trip to Munich, Germany, and lectured to some 150 local physicians on modern medical practices. She served as President of the Southern Society of Anesthesiologists for 1956-57.

            Dr. McNeal’s professional career had two phases. At Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago, she worked under Dr. Isabella Herb and two other female anesthesiologists, Drs. Nora Brandenburgh and Mary Lyons. By the time she arrived in Alabama, she already had 21 years experience in anesthesia. In her new home, she found herself to be not only one of the few female physicians but one of the few physician-anesthesiologists in the state. In the early years, she coordinated anesthesia administration at the university's busy hospital (formerly the county hospital in the state's most populous county) with help from a few nurse anesthetists, an occasional resident, and sometimes a dental student doing an anesthesia rotation. By 1950 her department coordinated 9700 anesthetics a year at the hospital.

Dr. McNeal presents the Chief Resident’s Chair to Patricia F. Norman, M.D. in 1959. This tradition continued in the department into the early 1990s. 

Source: UAB Archives

She is remembered fondly by those who knew her; former UAB President Dr. Charles McCallum's comment that she was "a great teacher, well-liked, and worked hard" is typical. Dr. McCallum also said “She loved to dance.”  [Source: my interview with Dr. McCallum in 1992] Jim Jones, M.D., a faculty member in her department from 1958 until 1960, remarked that “She dearly loved fine conversation, classical music and well-written books…and good scotch!” Dr. Jones also noted, "Alice in an interview shortly before her demise, denied being a pioneer but did admit to being perhaps a veteran in the field of anesthesiology." [Sources: written tribute by Dr. Jones, December 1971 and my interview with him in March 1996] 

          Former UAB President S. Richardson Hill, Jr., told me in a letter in June 1993 that "I liked her very much and thoroughly enjoyed her company...my wife was also very fond of her, and occasionally on special occasions they exchanged presents. At one time Alice gave my wife a beautiful pocketbook which she had made."

           Unfortunately, Dr. McNeal committed suicide on New Year's Eve 1964. She had stepped down as Chair of the department in 1961, although she remained on the faculty for a year or so after that. McNeal was an only child; her parents were long dead, and apparently she had no reason to return to Illinois. Her body was cremated, but a gravestone for her can be found in Birmingham's Elmwood Cemetery. There the spirit of this stranger in a strange land rests along with many other individuals prominent in Alabama history.

Although she published only two research papers, Dr. McNeal created the foundation for academic anesthesia in the state by chairing the first department for so long, providing excellent patient care and many clinical improvements, and training so many anesthesiologists, dentists, and nurses. Dr. McNeal is thus an important figure both in the history of the state's medical education and its female physicians as well. She was the first female anesthesiologist in Alabama, and one of the first females to chair of an academic anesthesia department in the United States. In 1998 the University of Alabama Board of Trustees established the Alice McNeal, M.D., Endowed Chair in Anesthesiology in her honor.

Dr. McNeal and others in the Hill Heart Suite, Medical College of Alabama, Birmingham in the early 1960s.

Source: Alvin Bearman, M.D. [one of her last residents]

Two photos of Dr. McNeal during her time at UAB. 

•Ca. 1922

•Graduated MC Phi Beta Kappa and AOA

•Woman on right may be her mother

•Photo taken in back yard of family home?

Source: Fran Watkins, long-time CRNA at UASOM

Anesthesia Staff, Presbyterian Hospital, 1936

•Nora Brandenburgh, M.D.

•Alice McNeal, M.D.

•Mary Lyons, M.D.

•Isabella Herb, M.D.

•Spring 1936

      Source: Bulletin, Presbyterian Hospital, April 1936

Anesthesiology 11: 96, 1950 [Department’s first publication]

Julie Cole Miller has written a very nice profile of Dr. McNeal with some additional photos that is available here.

 

A Story in Stone: John Payne, M.D. [1860-1901]

Cemeteries are places crowded with fascinating stories, and the Pelham City Cemetery just off U.S. 31 at the corner of Industrial Park Road and Lee Street is no exception. There among many others with the same surname is the marker of John Payne, M.D.

Born in August 1860, Payne appears in the 1880 U.S. Census living in Shelby County with his father William H., a farmer, and mother Jane and his nine siblings. Somehow Payne managed to go to medical school, graduating from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1886. That school would have offered him one of the best medical educations available in the U.S. at the time. Members of the Shelby County medical board which tested him that same year for certification were apparently not impressed. The state medical association’s Transactions for 1887 noted, “This examination is not credible to the board. The papers are badly arranged, written on both sides, and some of the sheets evidently missing.”

Nevertheless, the board granted his certificate, since “The answers are usually correct.” After his examination, Payne moved to the Birmingham area and practiced there until his death. Sadly, he was shot by telegraph operator James P. Cook on May 30, 1901, and died the next day. A newspaper account of the murder declared that “The physician was a very popular young man.”

According to that press article, Cook shot Payne twice in the head from behind the doctor. Cook had recently separated from his wife, “said to be a very handsome woman,” and jealously was presumed to have fueled both the separation and the murder.

Payne apparently never practiced in Pelham, although during his lifetime several other physicians did. Based on the state medical society’s annual Transactions, at least four doctors were in Pelham at some point during those years: Eli F. Denson, Andrew W. Horton, and two Johnsons, Joseph M. and William R.K.

Payne is not the only physician buried in the City Cemetery who practiced elsewhere. William Betta Cross is known to have spent time in Helena and Columbiana before his death on Christmas Day 1884. That’s another story hidden in stone. An inventory of the cemetery done in 2002 is available.  

More photos can be seen at the Find-A-Grave site for Dr. Payne.

A version of this article appeared in the Pelham City News Fall 2013 issue.