My Visit to Huntsville Hospital in 1958

The newspaper item below turned up recently when my brother Richard and I were going through some papers at mom's house in Huntsville. I'm glad I can now pin down pretty much the exact date and place of my tonsillectomy at Huntsville Hospital, June 9, 1958, when I was 6 years and 3 months old. The physician might have been Thomas E. Dilworth, our family physician for many years. 

I remember Dr. Dilworth very well. I have a vague memory of him making a house call when I was pretty young and sick in bed, probably at the Cloverdale house noted in the article. At one point when I was 10 or 12, I was out riding my bicycle and bitten by a dog that chased me. We couldn't find the dog, so Dr. Dilworth recommended a series of rabies shots--one a day for 14 days. He started off giving them in the abdomen, but when that area became too sore he switched to the buttocks. The final two were given one in each arm. Mom didn't drive at that time, so dad drove me to the doctor's office each day including Saturday and Sunday. 

You can read more about Dr. Dilworth in the 1985 book Medicine Bags and Bumpy Roads, a history of medicine in Madison County by Jewell S. Goldsmith and Helen D. Fulton. A profile and a photo appear on pp 295-6. The book notes that Dilworth practiced at Fifth Avenue Hospital after his partner and cousin, Dr. J. E. Whitaker, opened that facility in 1954. So I can't be certain Dilworth did the surgery, but perhaps he also had privileges at Huntsville Hospital. He and his wife Jessie are both buried in Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville. 

In this newspaper listing my address is given as 142 Cloverdale Drive. Sometime during the year after my tonsillectomy the address became 4220. I discuss this change in a blog post, "Cloverdale Drive, 'Jack and Jill' and Me."

Medical topics have been covered by newspapers for decades, but the nature of that coverage has changed over time. New techniques such as the spinal anesthetics described below were considered newsworthy at the time these two articles were published in 1909 and 1931. But when was the last time you saw a spinal anesthesia covered in the news? 

Spectacular achievements--transplants, gene therapy, robot surgery, new drugs--always get coverage until they become common or don't fulfill the initial enthusiasm. Other coverage is often devoted to children, adult local residents or various stripes of celebrities fighting cancer, etc. 

I don't know when the Huntsville Times began including these lists, or how long they lasted. Today this publication would contain many violations of HIPAA and general privacy concerns unless the patients or parents gave permission for such use. Perhaps the hospital did obtain such permission then. 

At the end of the Huntsville Hospital listing "Discharged" patients are four designated as "Colored". Presumably the facility was still segregated in 1958, with a ward or floor for black patients. That practice pretty much ended nationwide in 1965 when the law creating MEDICARE required hospitals to end racial discrimination in order to receive federal funds. 

Huntsville Times 10 June 1958

Huntsville Hospital opened June 8, 1926; this postcard is from the 1930s. Two new wings were added in 1956-57. The book by Goldsmith and Fulton mentioned above has an extensive history of this hospital. 

Here I am in the yard at Cloverdale Drive probably in 1957. From the look on my face, I may be worrying about that tonsillectomy already. 

Mom, younger brother Richard and I in front of the house. My blog post on the great February 1958 snowfall is here. 

The house on Cloverdale Drive in July 2018

Imperial Valley [Calif.] Press 12 June 1909

Calexico [Calif.] Chronicle 16 January 1931

Alabama Photos of the Day: Moody Hospital in Dothan

Over the years many hospitals have come and gone in Alabama. Just in the past eight years thirteen hospitals have shuttered, all but one in rural small towns. This post examines one such defunct facility, Moody Hospital in Dothan. Incorporation papers for a new hospital in that city were filed on July 13, 1914. The three names listed on the papers included two local physicians and the wife of one of them. The doctors had practiced for some years in Dothan. I found some basic information about them in the 1907 Transactions of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama. Charles Wesley Hilliard [1871-1958] had graduated from the University of Alabama's School of Medicine in 1895. He passed his state certification exam in Pike County that year and lived in Dothan. Earle Farley Moody [1880-1952] graduated from Tulane University's School of Medicine in 1903, passed his exam in Houston County that year and also resided in Dothan.  Two photographs of Moody Hospital are included in the Dothan Landmarks Foundation, Inc. book Houston County: The First 100 Years [Arcadia, 2003, p. 79]. Both show nursing staff and were taken outside the building. One is the photo used in the first postcard below. The caption there notes the hospital "operated until around 1966" and "administered the first dose of penicillin in the state in 1949."  The entry at the Wiregrass Archives site for the first photo below declares,  "The Dothan Eagle newspaper reported that doctors here administered the first dose of penicillin to an Alabama patient in 1946." Howard Holley's History of Medicine in Alabama makes no mention of penicillin, so further research is needed to determine the actual year and other details. Clinical use of penicillin began in 1942, so either year could be correct.  A Facebook page exists maintained by someone whose father purchased the property in the late 1960's and operated a business there until 2000. Unfortunately no other details are given, and the page has had no activity since April 2017.  Hilliard is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Troy and Moody in the Dothan City Cemetery. The men did not live to see the closing of the hospital they founded in 1914.  UPDATE 6 February 2022 A recent article by Alex Valdez from January 25, 2022, discusses future use of the former hospital.  June 1972 photo by Joseph Douglas Snellgrove Source: Wiregrass Archives June 1972 photo by Joseph Douglas Snellgrove Source: Wiregrass Archives 1920 postcard of Moody Hospital Source: Alabama Mosaic 1930 postcard of Moody Hospital Source: Alabama Mosaic The former Moody Hospital building via Google Earth

Hale Infirmary: An Early Alabama Hospital for Blacks

In 1890 Hale Infirmary opened in Montgomery as one of the state's earliest hospitals for blacks. The facility was largely the work of one man, the city's first black physician, Cornelius Dorsette. I've written an entry on him for the Encyclopedia of Alabama, so let me quote myself on the origins of Hale Infirmary:

"Soon after his arrival in Montgomery, Dorsette had married Sarah Hale, but she died after less than a year. Her father was James Hale, the wealthiest black man in Montgomery at that time, and Dorsette convinced him that the city needed an infirmary for blacks. Hale donated land, and a white women's club helped Dorsette raise money for the building and its operation. The first such facility for blacks in Alabama, Hale Infirmary opened in 1890 and operated until 1958."

Dorsette came to Montgomery in 1884 at the urging of Booker T. Washington; the two were classmates at Hampton Institute in Virginia. By then Washington had been in Tuskegee for three years, and felt a black physician could be successful in Alabama's capital city. He was right. 

Dorsette also had constructed a three story professional building on Dexter Avenue that included his office. He helped found and served as the first president of the National Medical Association, an organization for black doctors, and served as a trustee of Tuskegee Institute and as Washington's personal physician. Unfortunately after a hunting trip on Thanksgiving Day in 1897, he caught pneumonia and died.  

Another prominent black Montgomery physician was also associated with Hale Infirmary. David H.C. Scott, an Alabama native, returned to the state after graduating from Meharry Medical School in Nashville. He practiced in Montgomery until his death in 1920, and often operated at Hale Infirmary which was on Lake Street near his office. Scott married the daughter of a prominent contractor, who built his son-in-law a three story building that housed a drug store and offices. Scott was also an important member of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. 

More information about Hale Infirmary can be found in the article below. As noted there, Hale Infirmary cost $7,000 to build its two stories that could hold sixty patients. 

See also Thomas J. Ward, Jr.'s entry "Black Hospital Movement in Alabama" in the Encyclopedia of Alabama. Ward says the first hospital in Alabama for African-Americans was the one at Tuskegee Institute, which opened in 1892. However, the article below notes that the James Hale Infirmary Society was incorporated in Montgomery in 1889 and presumably the facility opened the following year. 

This photo and article depict the infirmary and staff in 1919.

Source: Clement Richardson, National Cyclopedia of the Colored Race. Montgomery, 1919, p. 129

Hale Infirmary, also around 1919

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives and History

Cornelius N. Dorsette, M.D. [1852?-1897]

David Henry Clay Scott, M.D.

Source: Clement Richardson, National Cyclopedia of the Colored Race. Montgomery, 1919, p. 78

Crestwood Medical Center in Huntsville

Back in February my mother, artist Carolyn Shores Wright, had a brief stay at Crestwood Medical Center in Huntsville. My brother and I made several trips to the free coffee stand outside the cafeteria while she was there, and we passed this plaque each time. 

Dr. Bernie Moore is honored here, perhaps because he served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees for two decades. He was actually one of three physicians who founded the hospital. The other two were Drs. Ellis Sparks and James Earl Robertson. According to the Wikipedia stub on Crestwood, businessman Archie Hill was also involved. The facility opened as a nursing home in 1964, and became a hospital the following year. 

That Wikipedia piece says the hospital was named after the "district" of Huntsville in which it's located; I have yet to find any more information on the claim. My mother has lived in Huntsville since the early 1950's, and she's told me she doesn't remember Crestwood as a neighborhood or area of the city.

Oddly, the hospital's web site linked above has no historical background that I could find. You never know when a little history will pop up somewhere, though.

Birmingham Photos of the Day (37): The Birmingham Infirmary

I recently looked at a couple of old issues of the Southern Medical Journal from  1911 and 1919 and found several advertisements for Alabama health care institutions. I'll cover some more in another post, but the two related ones below jumped up first. Many such issues of the SMJ can be found at the Internet Archive. The journal, a service of the Southern Medical Association, continues publication today from it's office on Lakeshore Drive in Homewood.

The ads below can be found in the November 1919 issue. Dr. W. C. Gewin, "Surgeon in Charge," owned the facility on Tuscaloosa Avenue in West End which consisted of a former residence and an addition. He had also been a Professor of Hygiene at Birmingham Medical College. I've yet to determine when Dr. Gewin opened his clinic. 

In November 1921 the Birmingham Baptist Association purchased the Infirmary and the following month Birmingham Baptist Hospital was incorporated. Baptist Hospital Princeton currently occupies the site. You can read more about its history at BhamWiki. Howard Holley's A History of Medicine in Alabama has more history on page 69.

Birmingham Photos of the Day (35): Even More Hospitals

Two recent posts in this series here and here have offered photos related to some hospitals in the city. These four images are also related to such institutions, but go beyond the actual buildings. One is not even a photograph. Some comments are included. 

Nursing class at Norwood Hospital on August 21, 1921. 

Dr. Charles Carraway had moved his clinic from Pratt City to Norwood in 1916. The hospital, eventually renamed Carraway, grew into a massive complex that finally closed in 2008 but remains today as a sad urban ruin. 

Source: Alabama Department of Archives & History Digital Collections

This 1911 photograph shows Dr. Joseph G. Moore and five Hillman Hospital nurses identified only as Aldiffer, Black, Clifton, Ramsay and Smith. 

Moore graduated from the Birmingham Medical College in 1911. The college operated from 1894 until 1915. The Birmingham Yellow Pages for 1920 shows Dr. Joseph G. Moore with an office in the Empire Building. 

Source: University of Alabama at Birmingham Archives 

First page of the August 1906 contract between the Birmingham Medical College and the Board of Lady Managers of Hillman Hospital. The entire document is three pages in length.

Source: University of Alabama at Birmingham Archives 

This newspaper advertising flyer from May 1960 notes expansion of St. Vincent's and Children's hospitals. A readable version can be found at the Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections. 

Birmingham Photos of the Day (34): Some More Hospitals

In the previous post in this series I covered the Holy Family Hospital in Ensley. Here are photos of three other Birmingham that have experienced tremendous growth in the city over the years. I'll continue this series in future posts. 

You can find historical information on many hospitals in Howard L. Holley's A History of Medicine in Alabama [1982]. The Bhamwiki site also has entries on many local hospitals.

Hillman Hospital in 1908. See also my post from last year, "Hillman Hospital & How It Became UAB Hospital."

Source: Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections

St. Vincent's Hospital in the Lakeview District in 1908.

Source: Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections

Baptist Medical Center on Montclair Road in the 1970's. The facility is now Trinity Medical Center. 

Source: Alabama Dept. of Archives & History Digital Collections 

Birmingham Photos of the Day (33): Holy Family Hospital

In February 1941 four nurses---three of them nuns---from Nazareth, Kentucky, arrived in Ensley to open a clinic to serve poor blacks in the area. For a little over $12,000 they bought land, a duplex for the convent and "a little Negro hut" for the clinic. Interns from St. Vincent Hospital donated their services two days a week to the free clinic.

After the U.S. entered World War II, the Sisters of Charity were unable to obtain materials to build a clinic, so they added two more "huts" to the complex. In 1946 seven black physicians formed the first official medical staff, and fund raising efforts began in the city for a new building. By July 1950 some $250,000 had been raised.

On January 10, 1954, the new structure, Holy Family Hospital, was dedicated. After an expansion in 1964, the hospital had 83 beds and a staff of 130. Four years later the Sisters sold the facility and the new owners renamed it Community Hospital. After another sale and renaming to Medical Park West, the hospital closed in 1988. 

Further details can be found at BhamWiki. Currently vacant, the building at 1915 19th Street is owned by Faith Chapel Christian Center and was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage in 2008. The Birmingham News published an article about the purchase of the hospital by Faith Chapel on October 13, 2006, pp. 1H and 8H, "Church shares new vision for historic hospital." The article includes three photos, two contemporary ones of the outside and inside a hallway of the facility. A third photo show Mervyn Sterne, John P. Newsome, Col. Wiliam S. Pritchard, and E.H. Gilmore at the groundbreaking in September 1952. Gilmore was a Jefferson County Commissioner.  

Below the photos is an article about the hospital published in the January 1963 issue of the Journal of the National Medical Association.




The hospital occupied this building in 1953. This postcard is from the 1950's.

Source: Alabama Department of Archives & History

These photos of the front and back of the hospital were taken on December 6, 1954, for the Jefferson County Board of Equalization. 

Source: Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections 

Here's a photograph of the front of the hospital taken in 2010.

Source: BhamWiki

History Panels in Jefferson Tower at UAB

Despite all the construction at UAB in recent decades, Jefferson Tower remains one of the most distinctive buildings on campus. The sixteen-story structure opened in December 1939 as the county's Jefferson Hospital and a few years later became part of the UA School of Medicine. It served as University Hospital until the North Pavilion opened; all inpatient activities were transferred there by September 2010. Various offices and clinics now occupy the building.

In the lobby of the main entrance are six panels that offer historical photos around various themes. The panels are labelled Change, Education, Tradition, Community, Care, Service. I managed to get semi-decent photographs of three of them, as seen below.

I'm not sure how long these panels have been up, but I've been at UAB since 1983 and have walked by them for many years. Originally a mix of historic and contemporary photos, this UAB Archives exhibit has become all historical by now. The University's archives date to 1990, but these panels have an even older aura. 

As I've noted in previous blog posts, such as the one on the Hillman Hospital Annex Cornerstone, most of us walk by history every day and never notice. 

 

 

Postcard of Jefferson-Hillman Hospital around 1945, roughly the time the University of Alabama School of Medicine moved from Tuscaloosa and became a four-year program. Dig those cool cars! And I wish Jefferson Tower still had that striking entrance.

 

 

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Birmingham Photo of the Day (18): St. Vincent's Hospital in 1908

This photo continues our series from the 1908 book Views of Birmingham. 

Today the St. Vincent's Health System operates in several locations in addition to the large hospital complex in Birmingham's Southside. The first temporary location established in 1898 by the Sisters of Charity Hospital Association was much more modest--the home in Fountain Heights of industrialist and founder of Bessemer, Henry F. DeBardeleben.

Groundbreaking for the facility shown in this photograph took place in March 1899, and this permanent location opened on Thanksgiving Day 1900. Known as Mount Saint Vincent, the hospital was the first in Birmingham to have x-ray equipment installed.

Information about the hospital's beginnings can be found in Howard Holley's History of Medicine in Alabama (1982). 

The Bhamwiki site has this postcard of the hospital in 1910:

Birmingham's "Heaviest" Medical Block

Between 1902 and 1912 four of the tallest buildings in the Southeast at that time were constructed at the corner of 20th Street and 1st Avenue North in Birmingham. The Woodward, Brown Mark, Empire and American Trust and Savings Bank buildings were anointed as the “Heaviest Corner in the South” by Jemison Magazine and over the years the word “South” has often been replaced by “World” or “Earth.” In 1985 the location was recognized by installation of a historical marker and listing in the National Register of Historic Places. 

The heaviest corner on “earth” in 2005

Source: BhamWiki

The UAB Medical Center has what might be called “Birmingham’s Heaviest Medical Block” bounded by 19th and 20th Streets and 6th and 7th Avenues South. Buildings once and now at this spot have been the sites of much of the city’s medical history.

The oldest of these structures and one still standing is now known as “Old Hillman”. The four-story stone and brick Hillman Hospital was dedicated in July, 1903 and named after local benefactor Thomas Hillman, President of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company. The hospital was constructed on lots 1-6 of the block, purchased from John S. Cox. He had bought the land from the Elyton Land Company in 1877 for $250. A Victorian house on the property was used as the hospital’s first nursing dormitory. 

The Hillman Hospital complex, ca. 1929. The original structure on the right was erected in 1902 and the annex, in the middle, was added in 1913. On the left is the 1928 addition, or “new” Hillman.

Source: Birmingham Public Library

Hillman Hospital 
 From the book Views of Birmingham, Alabama published in 1908

Thomas T. Hillman

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama  

Efforts to organize a charity hospital for the city had begun in 1884, and Hillman’s donations had helped fund several locations, including a 100-bed facility that burned in 1894. Hillman required that his support pay for wards for both white and black patients. Hillman Hospital was chartered by the state legislature in 1897 and operated by a Board of Lady Managers—wives of local businessmen, a group involved from the beginning as the Daughters of United Charity.

The four floors and basement were crowded with various facilities, including offices, reception rooms, a laundry, store rooms, and boiler and fuel room for the steam heat. Twelve private rooms and four adult and one child wards occupied most of the first and second floors. The third floor held a surgical amphitheater that could hold up to 80 students, sterilizing and ether rooms, two private operating rooms and more private rooms. The fourth floor held the kitchen (with dumb waiter access to other floors), nurses’ dormitory rooms, a dining hall and additional private rooms.

By 1924 over 4600 patients a year were treated at Hillman. Financial difficulties had continued, and in 1907 the land and building were sold to the Jefferson County Board of Revenue. An annex built in 1913 failed to relieve the overcrowding of the 90 beds Dr. Will Mayo had noted on his visit in 1911. Finally the “new” Hillman Building opened in 1928, followed eleven years later by a five story outpatient clinic.

Hillman Outpatients Clinics building, demolished in 1964

Source: Holmes, History of the University of Alabama Hospitals [1974]

Those seats in the main surgical amphitheater of Hillman Hospital were filled by faculty and students from the Birmingham Medical College. The school was a proprietary college owned by nine prominent Birmingham physicians and opened in October 1894. The college and the Birmingham Dental College were first located in a five-story building on 21st Street North originally occupied by the Lunsford Hotel. The school had electric lighting, lecture rooms, several laboratories and operated a free dispensary. Students were also exposed to patients at the city charity hospital, infirmaries owned by faculty members and clinics in nearby towns.

In 1902 the college constructed its new home next to Hillman Hospital and a two-story autopsy house behind it. By that time the school had 94 students who were required to study four terms instead of the original two. In 1910 the medical and dental schools merged to become the Birmingham Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical College. One of the school’s achievements was the 1899 graduation of Elizabeth White. She was the second female to graduate from an Alabama medical school, following Louisa Shepard who had graduated from the Graefenberg Medical Institute in Dadeville in the 1850s. 

Birmingham Medical College in 1912

Source: BhamWiki

Despite improvements in facilities, funding and graduation requirements, the school closed in May, 1915. Six years earlier Abraham Flexner had inspected the Birmingham school and the Medical College of Alabama in Mobile. He and his team were touring the country gathering information on all the nation’s medical schools for the American Medical Association. His 1910 report was very critical of most of those schools, including those two and others in Alabama; many schools, especially proprietary ones, closed in the next few years. The Birmingham school’s owners sold it to the University of Alabama, which operated it until the final students graduated. After a move to Tuscaloosa, the University’s Medical College of Alabama opened in Birmingham in September, 1945, using Jefferson Hospital as its base of operations.

Before that major change another building was constructed on the block in addition to the outpatient clinic already mentioned . In 1929 Hillman Hospital opened a nursing dormitory. The structure was renovated and reopened in July 1965 as the Roy R. Kracke Clinical Services Building. Dr. Kracke was the first dean of the Medical College of Alabama when it opened in Birmingham in September 1945. 

Constructed in 1928 as a student nursing dormitory for Hillman Hospital, the building was renovated and opened as the Roy R. Kracke Clinical Services Building in 1965.

Source: Holmes, History of the University of Alabama Hospitals [1974]

Roy R. Kracke, M.D. [1887-1950]

Source: National Library of Medicine/Images in the History of Medicine

By the 1930s another expansion of Hillman Hospital was desperately needed. The County Commission hired prominent local architect Charles H. McCauley to design a seven-story annex to cost $1.5 million in U.S. Public Works Administration funds. By the time the building was dedicated in December 1940, nine more floors were added at a final cost of $2.25 million.

The new hospital was state-of-the-art and known as the finest hospital in the South. Two banks of high-speed elevators carried doctors, nurses, patients and others from floor to floor. The fifth floor was a maternity ward; the seventh floor featured eleven operating rooms. Both of those floors were air conditioned. The top two floors had living space for 150 nurses and 25 interns and resident physicians. From March 1942 until April 1944 two of the floors were used for secret work by the U.S. Army Replacement and School Command. Responsible for personnel training, the unit’s headquarters had been relocated to Birmingham from Washington, D.C., to protect it from possible enemy attack.

1939 architect's rendering of Jefferson Hospital

Source: BhamWiki

Four years later the facility became the Jefferson-Hillman Hospital where the new Medical College of Alabama would soon be located. The UA Board of Trustees renamed it University Hospital in 1955 and finally Jefferson Tower in 1979. By September 2010 all inpatient activities had been relocated to the new North Pavilion hospital complex and other areas.

Since 1940 four other buildings have appeared on our particular block. Dedicated in February 1958, the Reynolds Library held the magnificent rare book collection donated by Alabama native and radiologist Lawrence Reynolds. In October 1975 the collection was moved to the new Lister Hill Library two blocks away. The Reynolds building was demolished in July 1979 to permit construction of the Center for Advanced Medical Studies. That building is now the Pittman Center, renamed to honor longtime medical school dean Dr. James A. Pittman who died earlier this year.

In December 1960 the Health Sciences Research Building opened next to what is now the Kracke Building. Six years later this facility was renamed the Lyons-Harrison Research Building to honor Drs. Champ Lyons and Tinsley Harrison, the medical school’s first chairs of the surgery and medicine departments.

The Monday Morning Quarterback Tower was dedicated on July 18, 1977, as Phase I of the Alabama Heart Hospital. Funding from the Monday Morning Quarterback Club helped with construction. The Tower was built on the site of the Birmingham Medical College and Hillman Outpatient Clinics buildings.

My guess would be that this particular block holds as much medical history as just about any similar area in the Southeast. Certainly, a significant portion of Alabama’s medical history is represented by the patients, doctors, nurses and many others who spent so much of their lives in these particular buildings.

A version of this piece appeared in the Birmingham Medical News November 2012.