Medicine

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Entry Category: Medicine

Clark, Mamie Katherine Phipps

Hot Springs (Garland County) native Mamie Phipps Clark was the first African American woman to earn a Doctor of Philosophy degree in psychology from Columbia University. The research she did with her husband was important in the success of the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in which the United States Supreme Court declared the segregation doctrine of “separate but equal” with regard to education to be unconstitutional on account of such separation generating “a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community” on the part of Black students. Mamie Phipps was born on October 18, 1917, in Hot Springs to British West Indies native Harold H. Phipps, a physician, and Kate Florence Phipps, …

Coccidia

Coccidians are microorganisms belonging to the Phylum Apicomplexa and Suborder Eimeriorina, which includes eight to thirteen families, about 39 genera, and well over 2,000 species. These protists are intracellular (meaning they function inside the cell) parasites of medical and veterinary importance, including those in the genera Caryospora, Cryptosporidium, Cyclospora, Eimeria, Isospora, Sarcocystis, and Toxoplasma. Most are considered intestinal parasites that infect both invertebrates as well those animals in all vertebrate classes. These parasites cannot complete their life cycle without exploiting a host. Coccidiosis is a general term for the disease they can cause, and it is recognized as a major health concern in wild animal populations, domestic animals, and zoo animals. However, some infections appear not to cause any pathology …

Coffin, Frank Barbour

Frank Barbour Coffin was an African American pharmacist who owned and operated one of the earliest drugstores serving the Black community of Little Rock (Pulaski County). He was also one of the country’s unnoted African American poets of the nineteenth and twentieth century, barely remembered today for his two volumes of poetry and other works printed in various publications. F. B. Coffin was born on January 12, 1870, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, the son of Samuel and Josephine Barton Coffin. Holly Springs was a small town in northern Mississippi, about forty miles from Memphis, Tennessee. His mother died before he was twelve years old, leaving Coffin and at least four other siblings to be raised by their father, a farmer. …

Coggs, Granville Coleridge

Granville Coggs was a pilot in the United States Army Air Corps and was one of the Original Tuskegee Airmen. He later attended Harvard Medical School and became the first African American to serve as staff physician at the Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco, California. In 2001, he became a member of the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. Granville Coleridge Coggs was born on July 30, 1925, in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) to Dr. Tandy Washington Coggs and Nannie Hinkle Coggs. The family later moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County). His father was an educator who served as the president of Arkansas Baptist College from 1937 to 1955. Coggs attended Dunbar High School, graduating in 1942. Coggs took classes at …

Community Mental Health Centers

Community mental health centers (CMHCs) are designed for those with mental health concerns but inadequate resources to pay for services. They vary regarding the range of services provided. Some centers offer individual and group psychotherapy and medication management, while others include partial hospitalization programs; psychological, personality, forensic, and intellectual evaluations; emergency/crisis treatment; and consultation/education programs. Most CMHCs determine clients’ fees from a “sliding scale,” meaning that the fee is based upon the person’s income level and ability to pay. Fees can be as low as $5 or $10 per session. The costs of providing services are funded by federal, state, and local grants. As of 2011, fifteen community mental health centers in Arkansas serve more than 141,000 individuals throughout the …

Conway Regional Health System

Founded in 1921, Conway Regional Health System (CRHS), anchored by Conway Regional Medical Center (CRMC) in Conway (Faulkner County), serves Faulkner, Cleburne, Conway, Perry, Pope, Van Buren, and Yell counties. CRHS’s mission is to provide high-quality healthcare services for the region. During a meeting of the Conway Rotary Club in 1921, Dr. Cecil H. Dickerson, a local physician and club member, proposed building a hospital in the town. (The Rotary Club is an international community service organization for business and professional leaders.) During 1922 and 1923, Dickerson, joined by community leaders and activists, launched a bond drive to fund the new hospital’s construction. Local women organized the Faulkner County Hospital Auxiliary to raise funds. John E. Little, a Conway banker …

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) began sweeping the world beginning in late 2019. The virus created a large-scale public health crisis and caused some countries to quarantine entire regions—or, in the case of Italy, the entire nation. The pandemic also cratered the economies of many nations throughout the world. The virus was first detected in Arkansas in March 2020. COVID-19 is an infectious disease closely related to the original SARS virus (SARS-CoV), which produced a worldwide epidemic in 2002–2003; the virus that causes COVID-19 is, in fact, designated SARS-CoV-2. The name stems from the virus’s appearance in electron micrographs, exhibiting a crown (corona) shape. Symptoms of COVID-19 include cough and fever, and the disease spreads like influenza, through droplets in …

Crisis Pregnancy Centers

Often affiliated with anti-abortion Christian organizations such as Care Net and Heartbeat International, crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), which are also known as pregnancy resource centers, target women facing decisions about unintended pregnancies. In many states, including Arkansas, the centers offer free informational and assistive services designed to dissuade women from choosing abortion. In the late 1960s, before the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade (1973) legalizing first-trimester abortion, CPCs originated in response to the liberalization of state abortion laws. Beginning in the 1980s, during anti-abortion Republican Ronald Reagan’s presidency, CPCs began to receive public funding and increase in number. By 2016, CPCs existed in more than 3,500 locations in the United States, outnumbering abortion clinics. By 2021, according …

Cude v. State

Archie Cude, a farmer who was born and reared around Houston, Texas, moved his young family in 1948 to the remote community of Board Camp nine miles east of Mena in the mountains of Polk County. Years later, he refused to put his children in school due to his claims that God opposed the smallpox vaccinations children had to take before enrolling. Cude’s long-running legal fight over his unvaccinated children, which embroiled Governor Orval E. Faubus, finally produced an order from the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1964 that his religious beliefs did not exempt him from obeying laws requiring the education of his children and also helping to protect children and teachers from the dreaded smallpox virus. Cude v. State, …

Dibrell, James Anthony, Jr.

James Anthony Dibrell Jr. was a founder of the University of Arkansas Medical Department (now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences—UAMS) and served as its second dean. As a practicing physician and dean of the medical school, Dibrell was responsible for many of the developments in medical education in Arkansas at the turn of the century. James Dibrell was born on August 20, 1846, near Van Buren (Crawford County). His father, James A. Dibrell Sr., was a prominent pioneer physician of the Van Buren area well known in state medical circles. The Civil War had taken a toll on the family finances, so Dibrell began his medical education by “reading” medicine with his father in the evenings and working …

Diphtheria

Diphtheria is a serious contagious disease caused by toxin-producing strains of the bacteria Corynebacterium diphtheriae. Typically occurring in childhood, diphtheria is transmitted from person to person through respiratory droplets or contaminated surfaces. The symptoms appear following an incubation period of two to five days and include fever, chills, sore throat, fatigue, and swollen lymph glands in the neck. The formation of an adherent, thick, grayish pseudomembrane in the throat distinguishes the disease. Respiratory diphtheria can be fatal due to either respiratory obstruction or heart and kidney failure. Cutaneous diphtheria is a skin infection that rarely causes serious systemic illness. Recovery does not confer lifelong immunity. In 400 BC, the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates provided an early description of diphtheria. It …

Disease during the Civil War

Disease was a major problem among the armies serving in Arkansas during the Civil War. Large numbers of men living in close confines made the spread of illness likely. As many as 700,000 members of the military across the country lost their lives during the war, and approximately two-thirds of them died from disease. Outbreaks of disease were common in the state even before the beginning of the war. In 1855, a yellow fever epidemic struck Helena (Phillips County), and minor outbreaks of other diseases such as cholera and typhoid were common. The lack of major centers of population and difficulty of travel, however, prevented many large-scale epidemics before the Civil War. The state had a number of doctors in …

Dodge, Eva Francette

Eva Francette Dodge was a pioneer physician, educator in obstetrics and gynecology, and advocate for maternal health care and sex education for young people in Arkansas and the United States. Her influence was felt worldwide through her work with the Pan American Medical Women’s Alliance (PAMWA) as an obstetrical consultant. Dodge was adamant in her belief that birth control was a right of women and that sex education was to be provided for all youth. Eva Dodge was born on July 24, 1896, to George Dodge and Winnie Worthen Dodge in New Hampton, New Hampshire. Her father was a physician who greatly influenced her choice of medicine as a career. She was the eldest of three daughters. Dodge graduated from …

Dr. E. P. McGehee Infirmary

Located in Lake Village (Chicot County), the Dr. E. P. McGehee Infirmary served as a healthcare facility for both white and African American residents of the surrounding area. After the facility’s service as a medical infirmary ended, the Museum of Chicot County operated there for a period. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 1, 2005. Born in Alabama in 1869, Edward Pelham (E. P.) McGehee studied at Southern University in Greensboro, Alabama, as well as Vanderbilt University and the University of Mobile. After opening a practice in Alabama, he moved to Lake Village in 1899 and set up an office in the John Tushek Building. He married Sue Gordon McMurray in 1904, and the …

Drummond-Webb, Jonathan

Jonathan Drummond-Webb was the chief pediatric heart surgeon at Arkansas Children’s Hospital from 2001 to 2004. He brought the David Clark Heart Center into national prominence through his high success rate, averaging 600 surgeries per year with only a two percent mortality rate. He also performed the first-ever successful surgery using the DeBakey ventricular assist device (VAD), a miniature heart pump, in 2004. Jonathan Drummond-Webb was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, on August 29, 1959, toErrol Praine Drummond and Anne Drummond-Webb. He was first inspired to become a heart surgeon after Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first successful human-to-human heart transplant, in Cape Town, South Africa. Drummond-Webb stated in an interview that when he learned of this, he was “amazed …

DuVal, Elias Rector

In the late nineteenth century, physician Elias Rector DuVal (sometimes rendered Duval) was a leader in the drive to modernize medicine in Arkansas. In the 1870s, he cofounded the Arkansas State Medical Association (ASMA) and the Arkansas Medical Society (AMS). E. R. DuVal was born on August 13, 1836, in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) to William DuVal, who was a trader, and his wife, Harriet Tabitha Doddridge DuVal. The family included three sisters and two brothers. In 1835, DuVal’s sister Catherine DuVal married Elias Rector. Rector was a U.S. marshal for the Western District of Arkansas and Indian Territory and later served as superintendent of Indian Affairs. Educated in the local schools, DuVal graduated from Arkansas College in Fayetteville (Washington …

Elam, Lloyd Charles

Lloyd C. Elam was a groundbreaking psychiatrist and college administrator who founded the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, and later served as that college’s president. He was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 1997. Lloyd Charles Elam was born on October 27, 1928, in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Harry Elam and Ruth Davis Elam. Elam was baptized at age seven at Christ Temple Church of Christ (Holiness) USA in Little Rock; he was active in Sunday school, becoming superintendent of the Sunday school at age seventeen. He attended Stephens Elementary School, then Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, where he graduated at the age of fifteen in 1944. Elam …

Elders, Joycelyn

aka: Minnie Lee Jones
Joycelyn Elders was director of the Arkansas Department of Health and the U.S. surgeon general in the administration of President Bill Clinton. Her controversial opinions led to her resignation after just over a year as surgeon general. She was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 1995 and the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame in 2016. Joycelyn Elders was born Minnie Lee Jones on August 13, 1933, in Schaal (Howard County). She took the name Joycelyn while attending college. The eldest of Curtis and Haller Jones’s eight children, she spent much of her childhood working in cotton fields. From an early age, Jones showed considerable academic ability, and in 1949, she earned a scholarship to Philander Smith College …

Flowers, Cleon

Cleon Aurelius Flowers Sr., an African-American physician from Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), was reported to be the first physician in the country to deliver viable conjoined twins successfully during a home birth. During his fifty-nine-year career as a physician, he earned a reputation as a compassionate and generous healthcare provider in Pine Bluff and Jefferson County. Cleon Aurelius Flowers was born in Stamps (Lafayette County) on July 26, 1913. His father, Alonza William (A. W.) Flowers, was a laborer in sawmills who later became an insurance agent for Universal Life Insurance Company, and his mother, Beulah Sampson Flowers, was a teacher, community leader, and political activist. His parents also owned and operated the A. W. Flowers and Sons grocery store …

Flu Epidemic of 1918

aka: Influenza Epidemic of 1918
A deadly influenza outbreak began in 1918 and spread around the world, killing more people than any other outbreak of disease in human history. In Arkansas, the flu killed about 7,000 people, several times more than the state lost during World War I. This flu’s history remains significant today as world health officials seek to prevent an outbreak of a similar influenza epidemic mutated from swine or “bird flu” from poultry. In the fourteenth century, Italian doctors noted a mysterious illness that often turned into an epidemic. They called it the influentia in medieval Latin, believing it was caused by an adverse influence of the stars or alignment of the planets. By the eighteenth century, it was called influenza di …

Gaines House

The Gaines House, located at 1702 South Gaines St. in Little Rock (Pulaski County), is home to the nonprofit organization the Gaines House Incorporated. Established in 1967 in the Governor’s Mansion Historic District, the Gaines House is a home for women eighteen years or older who are or are close to being homeless and who have mental, physical, or behavioral disabilities, including drug and alcohol abuse. It was founded by the combined efforts of the Little Rock Junior League, the Pulaski County Mental Health Association, Arkansas Rehabilitation Services, and Altrusa International of Little Rock. The house was built in 1870 and was designed by Charles Thompson. The two-story, single-family-type home could be classified as Federal style with inspiration from both …

Gammage, Washington Lafayette

Washington Lafayette Gammage served as a medical officer with the Fourth Arkansas Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. During the conflict, he published The Camp, the Bivouac, and the Battle Field, a history of the regiment from the unit’s organization up until December 1863. The work details the experiences of the men of the regiment along with giving detailed reports of the battles that the unit participated in during the period. Little is known of Gammage’s early life. He appeared in the 1850 federal census in Cherokee County, Texas. An Alabama native, he was twenty-two at the time of the census, placing his birth year around 1828. He graduated from the University of Louisville Medical School in 1849 and worked …

Garland, Mamie Odessa Hale

Mamie Odessa Hale Garland served as midwife consultant for the Arkansas Department of Health from 1945 to 1950 and is credited with training the state’s elderly and illiterate “granny midwives” to ensure that they knew the proper techniques to manage the medical aspects of pregnancy, labor, and delivery and could complete birth certificates. Her contributions led to Arkansas’s improved maternal/infant mortality rates and regulation of midwives. Mamie Odessa Hale was born November 19, 1910, in Keeny’s Creek, West Virginia. She was the third child born to Emanuel Hale and Minnie Maude Creasy Hale. In 1941, Hale attended the Tuskegee School of Nurse-Midwifery for Colored Nurses in Alabama, a program sponsored by the Children’s Bureau; a bachelor’s degree was required to …

Glenn, Harold Virgil

Dr. Harold Virgil Glenn was an osteopathic physician in Stuttgart (Arkansas County) whose decades-long efforts in historic preservation and civic leadership made a lasting impact on the region and the state. Harold V. Glenn was born on June 1, 1900, near Allendale, Missouri, the son of Frank Howard Glenn and Naomi Showalter Glenn. His family relocated in 1904 to Stuttgart, where his father had responded to a call for more doctors in the area by setting up an osteopathic practice. Glenn served in the U.S. Army at the end of World War I. Glenn’s father graduated in 1904 from the American School of Osteopathy (ASO)—later renamed A. T. Still University—in Kirksville, Missouri, having studied under the founder of osteopathy, A. …

Government Free Bathhouse

The Government Free Bathhouse in Hot Springs (Garland County) provided free baths to the indigent, sick, and injured who sought access to the local thermal springs, which were thought to have medicinal properties. Spurred into existence by an act of Congress in 1878, the free bathhouse operated until 1957. In 1832, the federal government made the hot springs of Arkansas a federal reservation Businesses arose to offer food, lodging, and entertainment, but access to the water was free. After the Civil War, businesses tried to take ownership of the hot water. This enraged visitors, who felt that everyone had a right to access the water for no charge. On December 16, 1878, Congress passed compromise legislation that reaffirmed federal ownership …