Medical and Surgical Observer African American.Pdf
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
'A JOURNAL OF OUR OWN': THE MEDICAL AND SURGICAL OBSERVER AT THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AFRICAN AMERICAN MEDICAL PROFESSION IN LATE 19TH-CENTURY AMERICA Part One Todd L. Savitt, PhD Greenville, North Carolina (Editor's Note: This article is part of a two-part series. year, it served as a vehicle to connect widely scattered Part Two will appear in next month's issue.) and isolated black health professionals with each other, especially in the South, and suggested ways these On December 29, 1892, the "Initial Number" of a physicians, dentists, and pharmacists could organize new medical journal, the Medical and Surgical themselves. The MSO informed African-American, Observer (MSO), arrived at the Library of the Surgeon physicians of news and practical ideas in the world of General's Office in Washington, DC (Figure 1).' Issues medicine. As more and more blacks entered the white- of many medical journals arrived regularly at this large dominated medical world in an era of growing racism government medical library where John Shaw Billings' and racial segregation, the new journal did its part, staff was compiling the Index Catalogue, a comprehen- under Lynk's distinctive style of editorship, to promote sive directory to the world's medical literature. What the development of an African-American medical pro- distinguished the MSO from other journals to which the fession.2'3 It only partially succeeded. Despite words Surgeon General's Library (predecessor of the National and letters of encouragement and support from fellow Library of Medicine) subscribed was its ownership, African-American physicians, Lynk had a difficult time audience, and much of its subject matter. At the top of obtaining paid subscriptions for the journal, yet his edi- the Medical and Surgical Observer page in the library's torial call for the organization of a national black physi- serials-received record book, the clerk or librarian cians' association did succeed, although not until more wrote: "Only Negro M.J. in America." than 2 years had elapsed after the MSO's final issue. Miles Vandahurst Lynk, MD, editor of the MSO, Emancipation in the 1860s ostensibly opened many knew that fact quite well (Figure 2). He had established new opportunities for blacks including the chance to the MSO because he perceived that black physicians enter professions such as the law, the ministry, teach- dispersed across the country needed a journal of their ing, and medicine that previously had been the exclu- own. Although the MSO survived for only a little over a sive domain of whites. To educate African-Americans, members of both races established schools, primary From the Department of Medical Humanities, East Carolina through college and sometimes beyond, in the former University School of Medicine, Greenville, North Carolina. Confederate states. Among the many educational insti- Requests for reprints should be addressed to Todd L. Savitt, PhD, tutions for blacks founded between 1868 and 1900, 14 Professor of Medical Humanities, Dept of Medical Humanities, East Carolina University School of Medicine, Greenville, NC offered training for future physicians (Table).41-2 From 27858. those early schools emerged several hundred African- 52 JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, VOL. 88, NO. 1 MEDICAL HISTORY Vol. 1.] SEPTEMBER, 1893. [No. to. THE MEDICAL AND SURGICAIL OBSERVER. M. 1K. VANDAHURST LYNX, D., 4,~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~4 EDITOR AND PROPRIC:TOR. DEVOTED TO TIIE INTE;RESTS OF MEDICINE. DENTISTRY AND PHARMiUMACY. 1PUBLISHED M_\ONTH1 LYt. Subscription Price------ ----------$1.00 Per Year iu Advance. JACKSON-. TEN'N.: PUBLISHED BY MI. VAN-DI)WURST LY'NK-, 31. D. I _9__3_ Entered at thie Jackson Post-Office as Sccwtld-class suail nsatter. Figure 1. Typical title page of an issue of the Medical and Surgical Observer. Figure 2. Miles Vandahurst Lynk in about 1900. (Source: Indianapolis Freeman, American medical practitioners who opened offices in June 2, 1990.) rural areas, towns, and cities primarily in the South.13 The end of Reconstruction brought many changes to meetings, these physicians established fee structures, the region as black and white southerners adjusted to exchanged ideas and practical knowledge about treat- race relations after the abrupt termination of slavery. ments, presented-problem patients for discussion and Shifting, unstable political alliances among whites, the possible solutions, and socialized with others having enfranchisement of African Americans and the subse- common interests and educational backgrounds. quent struggle for their vote and then for their disen- Physicians, individually and in groups, also built hospi- franchisement by whites, the growth of white and black tals where they could apply the modem surgical tech- farm tenancy, the burgeoning of towns with increasing niques newly developed in European and American numbers of wage earners of both races drawn from the medical centers. National, state, and local medical soci- countryside, and the regular contact of whites and blacks eties published their organizations' proceedings, papers in a less structured nonslave society made for rising ten- presented at monthly meetings, and news of members, sions between the races. As this anxiety expanded in the often in their own societies' medical journals. final decades of the century, resulting in Jim Crow laws, Excluded from the usual activities that bound togeth- poll taxes, lynchings, and race riots,'4 5 and as the med- er most American physicians, late 19th century physi- ical profession became increasingly overcrowded owing cians of color often felt isolated, behind the times, and to the uncontrolled proliferation of medical schools,16 less technically skilled than their white counterparts. the response black physicians received from their white They were barred from joining medical societies and colleagues was not always cordial. Some white doctors thus from the medical, professional, and social viewed physicians of color as economic competitors and exchanges that occurred at meetings,'1,18-21 forced to as intruders threatening to upset well-established social turn surgical patients over to white physicians at the and professional networks. They devised ways to close doors of hospitals that barred them on the basis of skin ranks against the newly trained black physicians joining color, and unable to depend on white physicians for con- their number.',13,17 sultation in difficult cases or on their assistance with As the profession functioned before the entry of surgery and anesthesia. Although African-American more than a handful ofAfrican Americans (a few blacks physicians presumably kept up with the latest medical had practiced in the United States during the antebellum thinking by reading the same journals as white physi- period), physicians competed with one another for cians, they could not learn about black professional patients, but also worked together by consulting on dif- affairs or comfortably express their ideas and experi- ficult or puzzling cases, assisting when surgery required ences relating to issues of race in white-owned and an anesthetist or extra hands, and organizing medical white-oriented journals. Some black practitioners com- societies for professional advancement. At society batted these problems with varying degrees of success JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, VOL. 88, NO. 1 53 MEDICAL HISTORY TABLE. BLACK MEDICAL COLLEGES, 1868-1923 Name City Year Opened Year Closed Affiliation Howard University Medical Dept Washington, DC 1868 None Lincoln University Medical Dept Oxford, Pa 1870 1874 Presbyterian (local) Straight University Medical Dept New Orleans, La 1873 1874 American Missionary Association Meharry Medical College Nashville, Tenn 1876 Methodist Episcopal Leonard Medical School of Shaw University Raleigh, NC 1882 1918 Baptist Louisville National Medical College Louisville, Ky 1888 1912 Independent Flint Medical College of New Orleans University New Orleans, La 1889 1911 Methodist Episcopal Hannibal Medical College Memphis, Tenn 1889 1896 Independent Knoxville College Medical Dept Knoxville, Tenn 1895 1900 Presbyterian Chattanboga National Medical College Chattanooga, Tenn 1899 1904 Independent State University Medical Dept Louisville, Ky 1899 1903* Colored Baptist (Kentucky) Knoxville Medical College Knoxville, Tenn 1900 1910 Independent University of West Tennessee College of Medicine and Surgery Memphis, Tenn 1907 1923 Independent Medico-Chirurgical and Theological College of Christ's Institution Baltimore, Md 1900 1908? Independent *Merged with Louisville National Medical College. by attempting to establish collegial relations with white preceptor, a common arrangement between medical stu- physicians in their communities; opening their own hos- dents and physicians at that time. That tutelage under pitals and drug stores; forming medical associations Hairston enabled Lynk to shorten his medical school with other local black doctors, dentists, and pharmacists, education by a year. Lynk's association with Hairston and enrolling in postgraduate courses in the North.'3 continued on and off for many years. (Hairston moved to In 1891, Miles V. Lynk (1871-1956), newly graduat- Jackson in the early 1890s and joined forces with Lynk ed from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, in practice for a time, then moved to other Tennessee Tennessee, entered this separate and unequal medical towns, and eventually to Memphis, where he taught at world. A scrapper from his youth, Lynk did not let the one of Lynk's later