Black History Month: Study Abroad

Dr. Percy Julian pioneered the creation of drugs and other chemicals from substances previously found only in plants. His synthesis of physostigmine, found in the Calabar bean, yielded a treatment for glaucoma. From the soybean, he wrested a fire retardant used to douse gasoline fires on aircraft carriers during World War II; the soybean also became the foundation for hydrocortisone treatments for arthritis and for hormonal treatments. In his lifetime, Julian registered more than 130 chemical patents.

Julian was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1899. Alabama's educational system was segregated, and public school for Blacks ended after eighth grade. Julian continued his education at a two-year teacher training school for Black students before entering DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, in 1916. Julian graduated from DePauw in 1920 at the top of his class. When he applied to Harvard University's PhD program, the leading chemists there said nobody would hire a Black researcher. Julian then taught at Fiske University. He eventually received his master's degree from Harvard, only to be thwarted again when he aimed for a doctorate that would allow him to pursue research. He taught chemistry at several universities before getting Rockefeller Foundation support to pursue his doctorate at the University of Vienna in 1929. 

[Source: National Endowment for the Humanities]

James McCune Smith (1813-1865)--first black American to obtain a medical degree, prominent abolitionist and suffragist, compassionate physician, prolific writer, and public intellectual--has been relatively neglected by historians of medicine. No biography of Smith exists to this day, though he has been the subject of several essays. Born, in his own words, "the son of a self-emancipated bond-woman," and denied admission to colleges in the United States, his native land, Smith earned medical, master's, and baccalaureate degrees at Glasgow University in Scotland. On his return to New York City in 1837, Smith became the first black physician to publish articles in US medical journals. Smith was broadly involved in the anti-slavery and suffrage movements, contributing to and editing abolitionist newspapers and serving as an officer of many organizations for the improvement of social conditions in the black community. In his scientific writings Smith debunked the racial theories in Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, refuted phrenology and homeopathy, and responded with a forceful statistical critique to the racially biased US Census of 1840. Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, and John Brown personally collaborated with James McCune Smith in the fight for black freedom. As the learned physician-scholar of the abolition movement, Smith was instrumental in making the overthrow of slavery credible and successful.

[Source: Journal of the National Medical Association]