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Did you know that Eugene Dibble was an American physician that was heavily involved in promoting integration in medicine but also promoted the work done in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. However, whether he knew exactly what was going on will never be known for sure since he died before the news of the study got out.

Eugene H. Dibble, Jr.

Eugene Heriot Dibble, Jr. (1893–1968) was an American physician and head of the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He is most notably known for his cooperation and involvement in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which was a clinical study conducted on syphilis and the African American male from 1932 to 1972.  

Life and Education

Eugene H. Dibble, Jr., M.D. was born in Camden, South Carolina in 1893. Dibble came from a prosperous African American family. In 1926, he married Helen Taylor, the daughter of MIT’s first African American graduate. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Atlanta University in 1915 and graduated from the Howard University College of Medicine in 1919. He interned in Washington D.C. at Freedman’s Hospital and completed his surgical residency at the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1923. After his residency, he worked as assistant medical director until he was appointed surgeon-in-chief of the U.S. Veterans Administration Hospital at Tuskegee. In 1925, he was named medical director of the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital and stayed until 1936. He also served in the army during both World Wars. Then from 1944 to 1946, he was commissioned colonel in the Army Medical Corps. In 1946, he became the medical director, for the second time, of the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital until 1965, when his cancer had worsened and had to retire. Dibble also served as a member of the Board of Trustees at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. 

His Work at John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital

Dr. Dibble was an active member of the John A. Andrew Clinical Society. His work was instrumental in promoting integration within the medical community during the 1950s and 1960s. The clinic was organized and directed by Dr. John A. Kenney, who was in 1912 surgeon-in-chief of John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital. The society provided medical assistance to needy patients and also provided an opportunity for African American doctors to work with other physicians. In the late 1940s, the society began to change its vision to providing courses in medicine and surgery for African Americans in the South. The goal was to inform attending physicians about the latest techniques in medicine and surgery.

Dr. Dibble served as Secretary in the society from 1924 to 1926 and again from 1946 to 1965. He aided Dr. Kenney in teaching the first postgraduate course in 1921 and contributed to the society’s later vision of teaching other physicians. The society was discontinued in 1969, when the American Medical Association officially desegregated and African Americans were finally able to join other medical societies. Dibble resigned from the society on August 4, 1965. 

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Dibble made various trips with the Baptist World Alliance. He visited many medical physicians around the world and provided medical care to underdeveloped countries in Africa and Asia. Dibble also helped students who wanted to go to medical school in the United States. He was awarded the 17th Distinguished Service Medal of the National Medical Association at the 67th Annual Convention in Chicago, Illinois that took place from August 13 – 16, 1962. Eugene H. Dibble, Jr., M.D. died on June 1, 1968.    

Tuskegee Syphilis Study

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was an experiment conducted throughout a period of forty years, from 1932 to 1972, in which doctors observed the progression or the natural course of untreated syphilis in African American men. The study was initiated by the U.S. Public Health Service and the subjects did not know that they were a part of the experiment and that they were not being treated. 

Dr. Dibble knew that his hospital and Tuskegee Institute needed to provide research opportunities as well as clinical care. When the offer to work on the study came, he accepted it for the opportunity to gain resources as well as funding for medical care. The study provided specialists for the patients and Raymond A. Vonderlehr was appointed to Dr. Dibble. In the 1950s, Dibble reported on the study as part of the work of John A. Andrew Memorial Hosptial and titled it: “the U.S. Public Health Service study of syphilis in the Negro male in Macon County.” In his report he mentions the study and the examinations but the word “untreated” is omitted. Dibble died four years before the study made national news and it was never known whether or not he knew about the complete ongoing of the study. He was not alive for questions to be asked. Susan M. Reverby describes Dibble, in her book, Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy, as a race/science man who was committed to the improvement of conditions for African Americans. He was not a researcher but he did support the importance of it and the need for it. 

Did you know that John Snow not only found the source of London's Broad Street cholera in 1854 but he also contributed developments in anesthesia and obstetric anesthesia. He even administrated anesthesia to Queen Victoria for the birth of her eighth child in 1853 and her daughter, three years later.

John Snow

John Snow (15 March 1813 – 16 June 1858) was an English epidemiologist notably known for finding the source of London’s Broad Street cholera outbreak in 1854. He was a pioneer in epidemiology and anesthesiology in the mid nineteenth century.

Early Life and Education

John Snow was born on March 15, 1813 in York, England to Francis and William Snow. Growing up he experienced unsanitary conditions and contamination in his hometown. Most of the streets were unsanitary and the river was contaminated by runoff water from market squares, cemeteries and sewage waste. He was a skilled child and demonstrated an aptitude for mathematics at a young age. In 1827, when he was fourteen he obtained a medical apprenticeship with William Hardcastle in Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1832, during his time as a surgeon-apothecary apprentice, he encountered a cholera epidemic for the first time in Killingworth, a coal-mining village. Snow treated many victims of the disease and gained a lot of experience. Additionally, while he was an apprentice, Snow could not drink, gamble or marry. Eventually he adjusted to teetotalism and led a life characterized by abstinence, signing an abstinence pledge in 1835. Snow was also vegetarian and tried to only drink distilled water that was “pure”.

Anesthesia

After finishing his medical studies in the University of London, he earned his MD in 1844. Snow set up his practice at 54 Frith Street in Soho as a surgeon and general practitioner. John Snow contributed to a wide range of medical concerns including anesthesiology. He was a part of the Westminster Medical Society, an organization dedicated to clinical and scientific demonstrations. Snow gained prestige and recognition all the while being able to experiment and pursue many of his scientific ideas. He was a speaker multiple times at the society’s meetings and he also wrote and published articles. He was especially interested on patients with respiratory diseases and tested his hypothesis through animal studies. In 1841, he wrote, On Asphyxiation, and on the Resuscitation of Still-Born Children, which is an article that discusses his discoveries on the physiology of neonatal respiration, oxygen consumption and the effects of body temperature change. Therefore, his interest in anesthesia and breathing was evident since 1841 and beginning in 1843, Snow experimented with ether to see its effects on respiration. Only a year after ether was introduced to Britain, in 1847, he published a short work titled, On the Inhalation of the Vapor of Ether, which served as a guide for its use. At the same time, he worked on various papers that reported his clinical experience with anesthesia, noting reactions, procedures and experiments.

Though he thoroughly worked with ether as an anesthetic, he never attempted to patent it; instead he continued to work and publish written works on his observations and research. Within two years after ether was introduced, Snow was the most accomplished anesthetist in Britain. London’s principal surgeons suddenly wanted his assistance.

John Snow also studied chloroform, as much as he studied either, which was introduced in 1847 by James Young Simpson, a Scottish obstetrician. He realized that chloroform was much more potent and required more attention and precision when administrating it. Snow first realized this with Hannah Greener, a 15-year-old patient, who died on January 28, 1848 after a surgical procedure that required the cutting of her toenail. She was administered chloroform by covering her face with a cloth dipped in the substance. However, she quickly lost pulse and died. After investigating her death and a couple of deaths that followed, he realized that chloroform had to be administered carefully and published his findings in a letter to The Lancet.  

Obstetric Anesthesia

Snow’s work and findings were related to both anesthesia and the practice of childbirth. His experience with obstetric patients was extensive and used different substances including ether, amylene and chloroform to treat his patients. However, chloroform was the easiest drug to administer. He treated 77 obstetric patients with chloroform. He would apply the chloroform at the second stage of labor and controlled the amount without completely putting the patients to sleep. Once the patient was delivering the baby they would only feel the first half of the contraction and be on the border of unconsciousness but not fully there. Regarding the administering of the anesthetic, Snow believed that it would be safer if another person that was not the surgeon applied it.

The use of chloroform as an anesthetic for childbirth was seen as unethical by many physicians and even the Church of England. However, on April 7, 1853, Queen Victoria, asked John Snow to administer chloroform during the delivery of her eighth child. He then repeated the procedure for the delivery of her daughter, three years later. Medical and religious acceptance of obstetrical anesthesia came after in the 19^th century.