(History of Haitian Medicine: Annals of Medical History, V...)
History of Haitian Medicine: Annals of Medical History, V1, No. 3, 1929 Parsons, Robert P. ( Author ) { Paperback } 2013
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military Surgeon teacher author
Edward was born on July 22, 1867 in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States, the first son of William Edward Stitt and Mary (Rhodes) Stitt. His father was a merchant and an officer in the Confederate army. After his mother died while giving birth to a younger brother when Edward was three years old, he was reared in an environment of Southern gentility by an aunt in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
He prepared for college in a private school, then went to the University of South Carolina, where he took his B. A. in 1885. A Ph. C. (1887) earned at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy was followed by an M. D. (1889) at the University of Pennsylvania.
Between 1895 and 1905, in addition to his regular duties, he studied at George Washington University, the Hoagland Laboratory (Brooklyn, New York), and the London School of Tropical Medicine.
Before graduation, Stitt was accepted into the United States Navy Medical Corps and commissioned an assistant surgeon. He spent much of 1890 serving in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean. There, and later in the South Atlantic, impressed by the prevalence of epidemic diseases, he became interested in the phenomena of disease transmission and the relatively new use of the microscope in diagnosis.
Stitt was one of the first in the navy to use a microscope for the examination of microorganisms. Opposition came early from many older navy (and army) doctors who thought it an outrage to have their long experience in diagnosis overruled by young men using microscopes.
Stitt's interest in diseases of the tropics led to his selection as a medical member of the commissions formed to recommend possible routes for a canal across the isthmus of Central America.
In 1895, he was favorably inclined toward a route across Nicaragua; later, after mosquitoes were proved to be carriers of malaria and yellow fever, he agreed with the choice of a Panama route. In his first twenty years in the navy, Stitt spent all his available free time acquiring as much information as possible about tropical medicine and bacteriology; he never really stopped trying to learn more.
In 1902, Stitt was appointed head of the departments of bacteriology, chemistry, and tropical medicine at the Navy Medical School, Washington, District of Columbia. For the next eighteen years, with the exception of two duty tours in the Philippines, he remained at the school. During this time his two major books were written and published: one, Practical Bacteriology, Hematology, and Animal Parasitology (1908), which, over the years, ran to ten editions; the other, Diagnostics and Treatment of Tropical Diseases (1914), which appeared in seven revised editions over the subsequent forty years.
When Surgeon General W. C. Braisted abruptly resigned in 1920 with two years of his second term remaining, Admiral Stitt was chosen to replace him.
His first four-year term was extended to eight years when he was reappointed in 1924. As surgeon general, Stitt carried on the onerous duties of that office in an exemplary manner; he also lectured regularly at the Navy Medical School and at three civilian medical schools.
At the conclusion of his second term, in 1928, Stitt became Inspector General, Medical Activities, West Coast, a position he held for the next two and one-half years. Finally, on August 1, 1931, he was obliged to retire from active duty, having reached the statutory retirement age of sixty-four. In his retirement years, he maintained residence in Washington for the rest of his life; while he did not keep regular office hours, he spent almost as much time at the Navy Medical School as did some who were there on active duty. He was not only unofficial consultant for the navy, he also became consultant in tropical medicine to the secretary of war during World War II.
During these years, too, he spent much of his time updating his Practical Bacteriology and Tropical Diseases, both of which had become standard textbooks, internationally used, and in contributing written and oral discourses for the edification of the profession.
Admiral Stitt died on November 13, 1948, at the Naval Hospital, Bethesda, Maryland, where he had been a patient since July of that year, when he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.
Edward Rhodes Stitt was made commanding officer of the Navy Medical School, and for his service in that capacity during World War I he won the Navy Cross. In 1917, he was promoted to the rank of rear admiral. Stitt was a member of many professional and social groups, several of which he presided over as president.
(History of Haitian Medicine: Annals of Medical History, V...)
He was attendant of the St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, in Washington, where he was a member of the congregation.
Socially, Admiral Stitt was kindly and considerate, at ease in conversation and a great raconteur of old navy tales. Physically, he was a short, slender man, distinguished by a well-trimmed goatee and a fine baritone voice often heard on Sunday mornings as he sang in the choir of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church.
On July 19, 1892, in Philadelphia, Stitt married Emma W. Scott; they had three children: Edward Wynkoop, Mary Raguet, and Emma Scott. His first wife died in 1933, and, on June 22, 1935, in Hanover Co. , Virginia, he married Laura A. Carter, the widow of the director of the United States Patent Office. This marriage ended in tragedy when his wife committed suicide. Four years later, on May 3, 1937, in Baltimore, he married Helen Bennett Newton, the widow of James Thornwell Newton.
