(Frank Billings' classic and forever relevant 1916 masterp...)
Frank Billings' classic and forever relevant 1916 masterpiece, with a 2013 Foreword by S. H. Shakman of the Institute Of Science (www.InstituteOfScience.com) "Four Score and Seventeen Years Ago", providing an historical review and update on the subject of the relation between oral infections and systemic diseases.
Frank Billings was an American physician. He was professor of medicine at Rush Medical College grom 1898 to 1924.
Background
Frank Billings was born on April 2, 1854, on a farm at Highland, Wisconsin, United States. He was the fourth of the seven children of Henry Mortimer Billings, a native of New York, and Ann Bray, his wife, born in Kentucky. The first of this family in America was William Billing, who emigrated from Taunton, England, about 1650.
Education
Frank attended the state normal school of Platteville, Wisconsin. He obtained his medical degree from the Chicago Medical College in 1881.
Career
After an internship in the Cook County Hospital Frank began practice in Chicago. He commenced a teaching career of over forty years in 1881 as assistant demonstrator in his alma mater, which later became the Northwestern University Medical School. After a term of post-graduate study in Europe, he was, in 1887, advanced to professor of physical diagnosis, and in 1892 to professor of medicine. He joined the faculty of Rush Medical College as professor of medicine in 1898. Appointed dean of the faculty in 1900 he held the two positions until 1924. From 1905 to 1924 he was professor of medicine at the University of Chicago. In this long teaching career he exerted a vital leadership in three of Chicago's medical schools and profoundly influenced their policies.
Billings was always an advocate of change. He was an iconoclast, who tore down only to rebuild for the better. Appointed secretary of the faculty of the Chicago Medical College in 1886, he had a leading part in the construction of the new school building and of Wesley Hospital. Later he was instrumental in obtaining funds for building the N. S. Davis Hall to house the school's dispensary. Following his appointment as dean of Rush Medical College in 1900 he transformed that school and the Presbyterian Hospital into an efficient teaching unit. After the affiliation of Rush with the University of Chicago, clinical teaching was centered at the former, while the pre-clinical courses were given at the South Side school. To improve the clinical and laboratory facilities he built Senn Hall for the school and obtained over a million and a half dollars in bequest for new construction and equipment for the Presbyterian Hospital.
In 1902 he obtained a bequest to organize the John McCormick Memorial Institute in connection with Rush Medical College. In 1911 this research unit was strengthened by the construction of the Anna W. Durand Contagious Hospital, also due to Billings's efforts. A further link in this chain of medical research forged by Billings was the Sprague Memorial Institute, founded in 1909, which in turn largely supported the Children's Memorial Hospital. By his further efforts the Home for Destitute Crippled Children and the Country Home for Convalescent Children were affiliated with Rush Medical College and later were made integral units of the university's school on the South Side.
Billings's hospital connections began with his appointment to the staff of Mercy Hospital in 1888, which post he held for ten years. In addition to his later ties with the Presbyterian Hospital he served on the staffs of the Cook County Hospital and St. Luke's Hospital from 1890 to 1906. With others he founded the Institute of Medicine of Chicago in 1915, acting as governor until his death. He was chairman of the Illinois Board of Charities from 1906 to 1912.
When the Medical Reserve Corps of the army was organized in 1908, Billings was one of the first appointees. Incident to the World War he went to Russia in June 1917 as chairman of the Red Cross commission to that country. Called to active duty in November he was assigned medical adviser to the provost marshal-general and later chief of the Division of Reconstruction in the Surgeon-General's Office. He was discharged as a colonel and promoted to brigadier-general in 1921.
In 1902 Billings delivered the Shattuck Lectures before the Massachusetts Medical Society, choosing for his subject the pathology of pernicious anemia. In 1915 he was chosen to give the Lane Lectures at Leland Stanford Junior University. In these lectures, published in 1916 under the title Focal Infection, he disclosed the results of years of clinical research which awakened world-wide interest. He also edited Forchheimer's Therapeusis of Internal Diseases (1914), the second edition of the work, and with successive collaborators edited the volume on General Medicine of the Practical Medicine Series (1901 - 1921). Through the years he built up one of the largest and most remunerative practices ever achieved in Chicago. Confidence in his integrity and in the sanity of his judgment brought a flow of bequests to the institutions in which he was interested and to these he added liberally of his own goods. He surrounded himself with a group of assistants and students who organized the Billings Club, which continued after his death. Billings retired from practice and teaching in 1924. He died from a sudden severe gastric hemorrhage at his home in Chicago.
(Frank Billings' classic and forever relevant 1916 masterp...)
Membership
Billings was president of the Chicago Medical Society in 1890 and of the American Medical Association in 1902. He was a member of the Chicago Pathological Society, the Chicago Neurological Society, and the Chicago Society of Internal Medicine.
Personality
Except as a disciple of Dr. Christian Fenger in his younger years, Billings was never a follower. He could tolerate cooperation in leadership, but hardly a leader. He was a big man physically, radiating power and personality. He was, however, genial and companionable, sympathetic and full of humor and kindness. He held the affectionate esteem of all associates.
Connections
Billings was married on June 26, 1887, in Washington, D. C. , to Dane Ford Brawley, daughter of Daniel and Lucy Brawley of that city. She died on October 2, 1896. They had one daughter, Margaret.