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St. Lucia was the patron saint of blind people.

Sidney Goldring was a Polish-American neurosurgeon and educator who helped develop a brain surgery for patients with severe epilepsy. He developed the procedure throughout the 1960s and 1970s, using general anesthesia on his epileptic patients through electrodes placed on the brain to determine the precise areas that set off the seizures. Due to the success, this operation remains in use today.

He received his undergraduate (1943) and medical degrees (1947) from Washington University, where he stayed on as an assistant professor of neurological surgery in 1958. He briefly left the school to head the neurological surgery department at University of Pittsburgh from 1964 to 1966, but returned as a full professor. Goldring later served as the director for the university's McDonnell Center for Studies of Higher Brain Function from 1980 to 1988. He retired in 1990.

Also, he was a former president of the American Academy of Neurological Surgery, American Association of Neurological Surgeons and Society of Neurological Surgeons. Goldring served as chairman of the American Board of Neurological Surgery from 1974 to 1976.

Frank O. Richards was born in 1923 in Asheville, NC and attended Asheville public schools. He received his AB degree from Talladega College, Talladega, Alabama in 1944 and his MD degree from Howard University School of Medicine, Washington, DC in 1947. He completed his internship and surgical residency at Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis, after which he spent two years in the United States Air Force as chief of general surgery at the 36th Tactical Reconnaissance Air Force Base Hospital in Bitburg, Germany from 1952 to 1954. He returned to St. Louis in 1954 and served as supervisor of surgery at Homer G. Phillips. He entered the private practice of surgery in 1955.

Richards was certified by the American Board of Surgery in 1954. He was admitted as a fellow of the American College of Surgeons in 1957.

He was appointed to the clinical faculty of the Department of Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in 1954. He served on the staff of Barnes and Jewish Hospitals, also on the staffs of St. Luke’s and DePaul Hospitals (the first African American surgeon to do so), and on the staffs of St. Louis Children’s, Bethesda, Deaconess, and Christian Hospitals.

In 1960, Richards received the William H. Sinkler, MD Award given by the surgical section of the National Medical Association. He has written scientific papers which report studies on intestinal obstruction, gastrointestinal bleeding, and wound healing. He also was a participating author of A Century of Black Surgeons, the U.S.A. Experience, a two-volume treatise about the training of African American surgeons in this country, edited by Claude Organ, Jr. and Margaret Kosiba (1987).

Richards was the first African American member of the St. Louis Surgical Society, later serving as its secretary and president. He was active in many civic endeavors and served on several hospital and community boards.

He was married to the former Ruth A. Gordon of Trenton, NJ. They were the parents of two children.

*Adapted from the donor’s own biographical statement, with his permission.

Benno E. Lischer was the former dean of Washington University School of Dentistry, serving in that role from 1933 to 1945. Lischer also was an alumna of the dental school, having obtained his D.M.D. in 1900. After graduation, he served as Professor of Orthodontics until 1924, and had a private practice at the same time. He resigned in 1924 to teach orthodontics at University of Michigan and University of California until his return to St. Louis to become Dean.

http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/dental/bios/index.html#lischer

David A. Gee (1928-2006) was a prominent health administrator, serving both the former Jewish Hospital and the Washington University School of Medicine. He is best known for his 27-year tenure as president of the Jewish Hospital of Saint Louis. Gee's employment at the hospital began with an administrative residency in 1950. A year later, he attained a master's degree in health administration from Washington University School of Medicine. He graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, IN in 1949. Gee held various administrative positions at Jewish Hospital from 1951 until 1964, when he became executive director of the hospital. His presidency lasted from 1968 until 1995. Throughout his lengthy tenure at Jewish Hospital, Gee implemented a highly visible leadership approach that promoted open communication and a continued commitment to patient-centered care.

Gee also taught as a Professor of Health Administration at Washington University School of Medicine for 25 years. He penned 65 books and articles, including A History of the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis, published in 1981, and Working Wonders: A History of the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis, 1891-1992, published in 1993. Gee died on December 5, 2006. His legacy is honored with an administrative fellowship in his name at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, which is awarded to qualified candidates interested in entering the field of health administration.

Park Jerauld White was born in Green Ridge, Staten Island on December 31, 1891. He studied at Harvard College, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1913. He later received his medical degree from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1917. Shortly after matriculation, Dr. White entered the U.S. Army, where he served as a 1st Lieutenant and Medical Officer in a number of military installations across the United States.

After finishing his military service in 1920, Dr. White moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he established a private practice. He maintained his private practice until his retirement in 1965. Beginning in 1921, Dr. White also served as the Assistant Visiting Pediatrician at Children's Hospital. He held this position until 1962. Additionally, Dr. White served as the Lecturer in Medical Ethics and Professional Conduct at Washington University School of Medicine from 1921-1946. In 1925, he was awarded an Instructorship in Clinical Pediatrics at the Washington University Medical School, a post he would hold until 1958. From 1958 to 1962, Dr. White served as an Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics. He became a Professor Emeritus in the same department in 1962. Dr. White also served as the Director of Pediatrics at Homer G. Phillips Hospital from 1945 until his retirement in 1966.

Dr. White's first moment of national recognition came in 1925 when he published an article in The Nation's Health entitled 'The Health of Colored Babies in St. Louis.' In this article, he compared the death rates of African American and Caucasian babies in the city of St. Louis. He found that for every 1,000 African American babies born, 126 died. This rate was almost double that of Caucasian babies.

In addition to his work at the Washington University School of Medicine and various area hospitals, Dr. White was also a renowned poet and essayist, an active member of a number of area and professional organizations, and a strong voice for health and civil equality for all St. Louis citizens. His works of literature were published in numerous journals and magazines, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of Pediatrics, Today's Health, and the United Church Herald. In the community, Dr. White played an active role in a number of organizations such as the YMCA/YWCA, the St. Louis Civil Liberties Union, the Committee for Environmental Information, and many others.

Dr. White served as the President of the St. Louis Pediatric Society for two years and the State Chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics for eight years. Dr. White was also an active member of the St. Louis Conference on Race Relations, a position in which he worked to help African American physicians gain membership to the St. Louis Medical Society and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. White remained an active member of St. Louis society and the university until his death on August 6, 1987.

William K. Hall (1918-2011) was an assistant professor emeritus of dermatology at Washington University School of Medicine and emeritus staff member of Barnes Hospital. He held degrees from Yale University (1939) and Harvard Medical School (1942), and then joined the U.S. Navy for the next 20 years. When he retired as a captain in the Naval Medical Corps in 1962, Hall set up a private dermatology practice in St. Charles, MO until his retirement in 1982. He joined the clinical faculty of Washington University School of Medicine in 1962.

John B. Shapleigh, II, MD graduated from Washington University School of Medicine in the Class of 1946. An instructor of clinical medicine at WUSM since 1949, he died Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011, at Mari de Villa in Ballwin, Mo., of apparent complications from a respiratory infection. He was 89.

Dr. Shapleigh, known for his compassion was the son of Dorothy S. Shapleigh and banker Blaisdell Shapleigh. He was the grandson of Dr. John B. Shapleigh, 1857-1925, the first head of Otolaryngology at Washington University Medical School.

"In 1999, Dr. Shapleigh's work helped bring about the first free-standing hospice in the St. Louis area: de Greeff Hospice House at St. Anthony's Medical Center in south St. Louis County. The hospice had helped more than 3,000 terminally ill people, by 2011... In the 1970s, he and others started one of the first hospice programs in St. Louis, at the old St. Luke's Hospital on Delmar Boulevard. Dr. Shapleigh was medical director."

"Dr. Shapleigh graduated from Country Day School, Dartmouth College and Washington University Medical School before serving as a Navy doctor after World War II. He returned to St. Louis, where he practiced as an internist, hematologist (specialist in blood illnesses) and oncologist (cancer specialist) for nearly 50 years."

URI: https://beckerarchives.wustl.edu/IG006-S108-i76 ; https://source.wustl.edu/2011/10/shapleigh-instructor-of-clinical-medicine-89/ ; https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/obituaries/dr-john-b-shapleigh-dies-helped-bring-hospice-to-st-louis/article_3e55b524-5803-5961-a71a-51d61e7a02aa.html

John B. Shapleigh (1857-1937) was the first chair of the Department of Otolaryngology at Washington University School of Medicine, serving from 1896 to 1923. Shapleigh earned his undergraduate and medical degrees from Washington University (1878) and St. Louis Medical College (1881). He first began his medical career as an assistant physician at City Hospital, but continued his studies in a post-graduate course on clincial otology in Vienna, Austria. In 1885, Shapleigh returned to St. Louis to establish a private practice and joined the faculty at the Medical Department of Washington University as professor and head of the Department of Otology. In 1901-1902, he was the dean of the faculty and was physician to St. Luke’s Hospital and the Protestant Hospital. Additionally, Shapleigh was on the staff of the Barnard Free Skin and Cancer Hospital, Deaconess Hospital, Barnes Hospital, and St. Louis Children's Hospital.

Shapleigh was president of the Medical Society of City Hospital Alumni and a member of the St. Louis Medical Society, the American Medical Association, the Missouri State Medical Association, the American Otological Society and the Academy of Medicine. After his death, his family gave a bequest in 1937 to support and maintain the Dr. John B. Shapleigh Library for the Otological Research Library within the Washington University School of Medicine.

Elijah S. Frazer (1809-1883) was a professor of obstetrics and diseases of women and children at Missouri Medical College. Born in Kentucky and resident in Springfield, Illinois in 1848 , he graduated ad endeum from the medical department of University of Missouri in 1848.

Jean H. Thurston was a pediatric neurologist who worked at St. Louis Children's Hospital. She was been a pioneer in her field, particularly in the studies of childhood seizure disorders. She was among the first to perform the first systematic studies of anticonvulsant withdrawal in infants and children, and developed the guidelines that are used as the basis in present-day treatment.

Jean Holowach began her medical studies with an M.D. at the University of Alberta in Canada, but moved to St. Louis to complete her training with a fellowship in pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in 1945. Thurston became an instructor in the Department of Pediatrics in 1949, and was promoted to assistant professor in 1954 and associate professor in 1965. She finally reached full professorship in 1975, and also became a professor of neurology with the specialization of neurochemistry in 1982.

In addition to her career at Washington University, Thurston founded the Pediatric Convulstion Clinic in 1950 and served as its director for its first twelve years. She also served as a consultant for the State of Missouri Rheumatic Fever Program from 1949 to 1954 and directed the State of Missouri Premature Program from 1949 to 1961. Due to her numerous contributions to pediatric research, Thurston received the Fomon-Peterson Founders Award from the Midwest Society for Pediatric Research in 1990 and the lifetime achievement award from the Child Neurology Society in 2004.

Jean Holowach married Donald L. Thurston, M.D, in 1949. The two met in the 1945 in the Department of Pediatrics at Washington University. They were collaborators in many research projects.

https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/obituary-jean-holowach-thurston-professor-emerita-99/

Henry Gerard Schwartz (1909-1998) is remembered as one most important and influential American figures in the field of neurosurgery. His primary research interests were focused in anatomy, surgery, and physiology of the nervous system. Dr. Schwartz made important clinical contributions to neurosurgery in pain, intracranial aneurysms, and pituitary and cerbellopontine angle tumors. He designed one of the first spring vascular clips for aneurysm surgery and refined open surgical techniques for cervical cordotomy.

Born in New York City on March 11, 1909, he obtained a bachelor's degree in 1928 from Princeton University. He then earned a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1932. Dr. Schwartz began his career as a surgical house officer at Johns Hopkins. He then studied anatomy and neuroanatomy at Harvard University for three years as a National Research Council fellow. Upon completion of his fellowship, he served as an anatomy instructor at Harvard Medical School before joining Washington University School of Medicine in 1936.

Dr. Schwartz spent the larger part of his career at Washington University, serving in a number of different positions: Fellow in Neurosurgery (1936-1937), Instructor (1937-1942), Assistant Professor in Neurosurgery (1942-1945), Associate Professor (1945-1946), Professor (1946-1970), Chairman of the Division of Neurological Surgery (1946-1974), and August A. Busch, Jr. Professor of Neurological Surgery (1970-1985). In addition to his academic appointments, Dr. Schwartz was acting Surgeon-in-Chief at Barnes Hospital from 1965 to 1967 and Chief Neurosurgeon at Barnes and St. Louis Children's Hospital from 1946 to 1974. As a well-respected educator, his training program attracted many talented students to Washington University.

During World War II, Dr. Schwartz served as Assistant Chief of Surgery and Chief of Neurosurgery in the U.S. Army's 21st General Hospital. During his service, he developed a method for handling wounds to the head and nerves that became standard procedure for the military. For this accomplishment, he received the prestigious Legion of Merit in 1945. Dr. Schwartz was honored numerous times throughout his career for his contributions to neurosurgery. Among his many other awards are the Harvey Cushing Medal from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the Distinguished Service Award from the American Board of Neurological Surgery.

In 1985, Dr. Schwartz was elected Honorary President of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies. He also served as Chairman of the American Board of Neurological Surgery (1968-1970) and as President of the Southern Neurosurgical Society (1952-1953), the American Academy of Neurological Surgeons (1967-1968), and the Society of Neurological Surgeons (1968-1969).

Hugh M. Chaplin, Jr. was an emeritus professor of medicine and pathology best known for his work in hematology. Chaplin received his medical degree from Columbia University in 1947 and joined the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine in 1955. He remained at the medical school until 1991, during which time he served as an associate dean, director of the Student Health Service, and director of the Irene Walter Johnson Institute of Rehabilitation.

Dr. Edward Wheeler Dempsey was Dean of the Washington University School of Medicine from 1958-1964. Dr. Dempsey served during a turbulent time when the medical school administration was involved in a dispute with the strong-willed president of the Board of Trustees of Barnes Hospital, Edgar Monsanto Queeny. At the time, it was feared by some observers that a schism would result between the two institutions that would threaten the continued growth of the medical school.

Dr. Dempsey was a graduate of Marietta College (Marietta, Ohio) and received master of science and doctor of philosophy degrees in biology from Brown University. He was a member of the faculty of the Harvard Medical School from 1938 until coming to Washington University as Professor and Head of the Department of Anatomy in 1950. He continued as Head of Anatomy after being named Dean, and retained that appointment until 1966.

In 1964, Dr. Dempsey resigned from the deanship to serve in President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. Upon his return from Washington in 1966, he was appointed to the Chair of Anatomy at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He later served as a visiting professor at Stanford University. The many honors given to Dr. Dempsey and the offices he held in professional organizations are detailed in this collection.

Lauren Vedder Ackerman was born in Auburn, New York in 1905. In 1927, he received a bachelor's degree from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He received his medical degree at the University of Rochester in 1932. In 1942, following residences in California and Massachusetts, he became Chief of Laboratories at Ellis Fischel State Cancer Hospital in Columbia, Missouri. He would become the medical director of that institution.

In 1948, he was appointed professor of pathology at Washington University School of Medicine where he taught for 25 years. He also served as the director of the school's Division of Surgical Pathology and as pathologist-in-chief at Barnes Hospital. Later in his career, he joined the faculty at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1973.

Dr. Ackerman contributed more than 200 papers and abstracts and wrote several textbooks that are standards in the pathology field. In 1947, he co-authored Cancer: Diagnosis, Treatment and Prognosis. He later wrote Surgical Pathology in 1953 which set the standard for the practice of that specialty. He was credited with establishing surgical pathology as a separate medical specialty that involves the diagnosis of disease based on surgical biopsies. He died in 1993 at the age of 88 in New York.

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/30/obituaries/lauren-ackerman-88-professor-and-an-author-of-medical-texts.html

Jessie L. Ternberg, PhD, MD, received her undergraduate degree from Grinnell College in 1946 and her doctorate in biochemistry from University of Texas in 1950. During her time at Texas, she and Robert Eakin discovered the mechanism by which the vitamin B-12 is absorbed in the intestine. She received her medical degree from Washington University in 1953 and interned at Boston City Hospital after graduation. Ternberg returned to Washington University for her research fellowship and surgery residency at Barnes Hospital becoming the first female resident in surgery at Barnes Hospital and Washington University. She joined the faculty in 1959 as an instructor of surgery, eventually reaching full professorship in 1971 as professor of surgery and associate professor of surgery in pediatrics. She was the first female surgeon on the faculty of the Washington University School of Medicine. In 1972, Ternberg was appointed as the chief of the newly created Division of Pediatric Surgery. She was the first woman to be elected head of the faculty council. On her retirement in 1996 she was made professor emerita of surgery and surgery in pediatrics.

Throughout her career, Ternberg made significant contributions to medicine in her research. Her best-known study is the appliance of electron spin resonance spectrometry to the investigation of free radicals. She also published A Handbook of Pediatric Surgery in 1980, which became a standard reference book for doctors due to its emphasis that children must be treated different from adults since diseases take different form in adolescents. Ternberg received wide recognition, including awards such as the Washington University Alumni Award, the International Women's Year Award for Health Care, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat Woman of Achievement Award and membership in Alpha Omega Alpha. Washington University School of Medicine established the Jessie L. Ternberg Award in 1998, which is given annually to a female medical school graduate who best exemplifies Ternberg's "indomitable spirit of determination, perseverance and dedication to her patients."