A history of care: Author traces growth of medicine in metro Birmingham
Bluff Park once had a significant role to play in keeping children in Jefferson County healthy.
In the early 1920s, a large house sitting on 10 acres on Shades Mountain was converted into the Children’s Fresh Air Farm, with the goal of providing a healthy atmosphere, nutritious food and medical care for kids who were malnourished. Pediatricians, ear, nose and throat specialists and dentists regularly examined and treated the children who were sent to the farm.
Founded by Dr. Henry Edmonds, pastor of Independent Presbyterian Church, and initially funded by hotel owner Robert Meyer, the farm treated and educated hundreds of children, including many with tuberculosis, and eventually became a mission for members of the church.
“At one point, there were more than 200 members on various farm-related committees there. One group of young people who repaint the farm’s furniture every spring. Others worked at the farm with the children,” wrote Lynn Edge in her recently released book, “From Steel Mills to Stethoscopes: A History of the Birmingham Medical Profession.”
Fundraising activities for the farm included “Chicken Sunday” — when everybody attending Sunday school was expected to bring a live hen, which either provided eggs or Sunday dinner.
Edge’s book, released in January by Vestavia Hills-based Legacy Publishing, recounts many tales of the metro area’s medical history, all the way from Davy Crockett’s stop in Jones Valley, feverish with malaria, to UAB’s development of remdesivir, a drug used to treat the coronavirus.
A longtime Birmingham journalist and author, Edge, along with other collaborating writers, shines a light on dozens of stories about medical pioneers in the area, some well known, but others significant but more obscure.
“One of the ones I love from Birmingham is Dr. Annie Mae Robinson, one of the city’s early female doctors and an outspoken suffragist,” Edge said. “She wasn’t about to let men have rights that women didn’t, and she was one of the early physicians who told us that smoking wasn’t good for us — men or women!”
In a question answer session with the Hoover Sun, she talks a bit about what she learned.
Q: What led you to write a book about Birmingham’s medical history?
A: Legacy Publishing approached me about the book and it sounded like something I would like to take on
Q: How did you gather your information? How long did it take you to pull it all together?
A: I read lots and lots and lots of books about the history of Jefferson County for starters. I wanted to write the book from a perspective of what was happening in the county and how that affected what was going on in medicine. The Jefferson County Medical Society had kept very good records of what happened in their meetings. That was a wonderful resource. Of course, I interviewed doctors here in town. Naturally, they had a wealth of knowledge about how medicine became such an important “industry” in Alabama. I also read many, many, many newspaper articles from archives all over the state (and some out of the state as well). I worked on the book for more than a year.
Q: You covered a long period of history. Why was it important to go so far back and end at this moment in history?
A: To tell the story of how the county became one of the world’s leading medical resources, you have to talk about when it wasn’t — when steel mills were what fueled the economy of the county. And to talk about that, you have to discuss what made the county “steel rich.” The natural resources that are right under our feet (literally) started the whole thing. With the
steel industry came medical needs and with medical needs came the growth of the medical industry here.
Ending the book was such a fluid thing. When I started writing, “pandemic” was no more than a word. By the time I finished, we were in the middle of one. Because of the pervasive medical presence here, Birmingham naturally became a part of the research trying to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and save lives. The story of the medical profession in Jefferson County is unending. There are new discoveries every day. I finally just had to say, “Okay. The book ends here. Anything else will have to be covered in a sequel.”
Q: Did you face any particular challenges in getting it done?
A: One of the biggest, of course, was just the abundance of information available. I found myself starting out to write about one subject and then having to research a number of other subjects because they were so closely related to my original “goal.” It was a lot like starting down a road from Point A to Point B and finding that there were tiny trails branching off from my main road – and all of them had to be explored.
For example, I was writing one story about an early female doctor – Dr. Laura Burton – in Birmingham, which you would think would be a fairly straightforward story, except for the fact that her ex-husband, also a Birmingham doctor, murdered her. Then you’ve got to explore why this happened and what happened to the female doctor who shared a practice with Dr. Burton.
When I was writing about Lou Wooster, I started out exploring how the local madam became a hero during the cholera epidemic in Birmingham and ended up trying to find out if there was any truth to the rumor that she had an affair with John Wilkes Booth.
Q: I understand you also got to write about at least one of your relatives. Tell us about that.
A: Frank Dulaney R.N. I heard stories about him when I was growing up. His mother and my great-grandmother were sisters.
Frank set out on a path when he was young and he didn’t change his goals. He always wanted to be a nurse and he became the first male to graduate from an accredited nursing school in Alabama. He became Babe Ruth’s personal nurse toward the end of the Babe’s life. His portrait hung in the hall at Carraway Hospital. When a family member had to be at Carraway, that person usually took the time to stop by the portrait and pay respects to Lavaughn, as the family called him. One of our family’s claims to fame!
Q: What was the most profound thing you took away from working on this book?
A: Perhaps that life is not as simple as one would imagine. So much is intertwined. If all the main “ingredients” for making steel weren’t right here in the county, there wouldn’t
have been steel mills and there probably wouldn’t have been the growth of the medical profession here.
The other thing, I guess, is “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Birmingham had a yellow fever outbreak early in its history. There was the cholera epidemic in the 1800s. People didn’t know how to deal with these events. Sometimes they were told not to worry, the problem would just go away. There were some pretty offbeat suggestions about what to do about these diseases (“abstain from Ardent Spirits”). Sound familiar?
The same themes you find in chapters one and two, you find in the epilogue. Our challenge is to learn from each one of these events and grow from the knowledge we gain.
Q: How does this book connect with the others you’ve written?
A: Funny. It doesn’t really. Several of my other books are travel guides and I have written a biography of Elvis Presley. I just like digging into things and learning as I write.
Q: What’s next for you?
A: I’m working on a biography of Dr. Carl Marbury, a past president of Alabama A&M. Together, Dr. Marbury and I are working on a book about the “mulatto story.” I’ve almost finished a novella I’m writing (It started out being a little story about a girl who wanted to be a spy since she was a child and finally got to be one. It took a dark turn and ended up being a cautionary tale about being careful what you wish for.). And I’ve been approached about taking on some other projects for Legacy.
Signed copies of “From Steel Mills to Stethoscopes: A History of the Birmingham Medical Profession” are currently available at the Alabama Booksmith in Homewood.