Simeon Lewis Carson was born on January 16, 1882 in Marion, North Carolina, United States; the son of Marion Carson, a farmer, and Harriet Carson. His parents had been born in slavery and were unlettered. When Carson was five the suggestion of an uncle prompted his father to move to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he became a gardener for the University of Michigan.
Carson attended public school in Ann Arbor and was the first black from that city to receive the M. D. from the University of Michigan, in 1903. His neighbors, 85 percent of whom were white, presented him with a furnished office in Ann Arbor as a graduation present.
Shortly after entering medical practice Carson passed an examination for a government post as physician on an Indian reservation at Lower Brule, S. Dak. Both the climate and country were rugged, but the opportunities for rendering medical service were many and Carson performed a great deal of surgery. On one occasion he successfully removed a large goiter from an Indian upon whom the surgeons at the Mayo Clinic had refused to operate.
Upon learning that the post of assistant surgeon-in-chief of Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D. C. , had become vacant, Carson, at his wife's suggestion, took the federal examination for the position. He led a field of fifty-two applicants and was appointed. In 1908 he moved to Washington, where he remained the rest of his life. Carson held the position at Freedmen's for ten years, during which his zeal for surgery and the speed and dexterity of his hands became a local legend. He was also a keen diagnostician. In 1912, Carson treated an eight-year-old boy who had a small tumor on his right shin bone, below the knee. After X-raying, the doctors told the boy's father to prepare him to accept amputation. Carson, however, told the patient's father privately that he thought the tumor was not malignant and could be scraped off. He removed the osteoma and the patient retained his leg. In 1918 Carson resigned from Freedmen's to devote full time to his growing surgical practice. At the same time, in response to the widespread exclusion of black physicians from practice in the established voluntary hospitals, he decided to found his own private proprietary institution. On Sept. 1, 1919, he opened Carson's Private Hospital in Washington. Established and operated by one man, the hospital nevertheless offered Washington blacks first-class, personalized surgical care. Carson maintained the institution until July 31, 1938, on the basis of a standard fee of $150 for all major operations, including two weeks' hospitalization. From 1929 through 1936 Carson was also clinical professor of surgery at the School of Medicine of Howard University. After closing his hospital he remained in semiretirement, maintaining limited office hours and performing certain operations and acting as consultant at the Adams Hospital. (Carson had helped George L. Adams organize this institution, which opened on Oct. 15, 1938, and donated equipment from his own hospital. ) Self-reliant of necessity, Carson was always medically well-read. He amassed a collection of the finest surgical instruments and acquired new and improved instruments as they appeared. He was always ready to expand the use of old techniques and explore new ones, and, for example, was said to have been the first physician to use spinal anesthesia in Washington, D. C. (1910).
He demonstrated before a group from the American College of Surgeons in Washington around 1910, and in 1912 he gave a week-long surgical seminar at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn. In 1923 he operated before 600 white physicians of the Tri-State Medical Society at Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pa. , demonstrating the uses of both local and spinal anesthesia.
He died in Washington, D. C.
He was the first black to receive the M. D. from the University of Michigan. He held the position at Freedmen's, before he opened Carson's Private Hospital. He was also clinical professor of surgery at the School of Medicine of Howard University. It was said to have been the first physician to use spinal anesthesia in Washington, D. C. (1910).
On June 21, 1905, Carson married Carol Henrietta Clark of Detroit, Mich. She assisted him at the reservation in many ways, including giving anesthetics. They had two children.
