Science and Medicine

Adams’s books and stories about the African American residents of lower Richland County brought him both regional and national attention as an author who was able to present the black dialect with great precision, and also as a white author who unhesitatingly portrayed the hardships of racial prejudice in the 1920s and 1930s.

Following her graduation in 1894 from the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children in 1891, Allan returned to Charleston and participated in the first sitting of the South Carolina Medical Board, the only woman to do so.

In 1891 Babcock became superintendent of the South Carolina State Lunatic Asylum in Columbia, its first to have been trained in psychiatry. Babcock arrived eager to modernize and improve the institution.

Bachman consistently presented a sound scientific case for all races of humans as members of the same species. Drawing on his keen knowledge of the nature of species, he presented his argument in numerous articles and in The Doctrine of the Unity of the Human Races, Examined on the Principles of Science, published in 1850. Yet Bachman condoned slavery, and he was an unyielding defender of states’ rights.

The species was discovered by the Reverend John Bachman in 1832 on the Edisto River a few miles north of Jacksonborough. In 1833 John J. Audubon painted a male and named the species after his friend Bachman. The Bachman’s warbler is believed to be extinct.

Bacot kept a diary but recorded little about her hospital work. Published many years after her death, the diary provides insight into the social life of a single, young, upper-class southern woman during the Civil War.

By 1898 Banks was named the first head nurse at Charleston Hospital and Training School, and she dedicated her life to nursing and seeking more equitable health care for African Americans. Promoted to superintendent of nurses, Banks devoted more than thirty-two years to this hospital and the training of nurses.

Beginning in 1926, Banov served as the public health officer for both the county and the city of Charleston. He combined the two departments in 1936 and remained as director until his retirement in 1962. Despite South Carolina’s small public health allocations, Banov attracted the attention of peers throughout the country and both federal and private funding sources because of his efficiency and diligence.

Bolden is a veteran of four space flights. In January 1986 he served as part of the crew of the space shuttle Columbia, which deployed the SATCOM KU satellite, and performed experiments in astrophysics and materials processing. Four years later, in April 1990, Bolden piloted the space shuttle Discovery, whose crew deployed the Hubble Space Telescope.

Bolden is a veteran of four space flights...On completion of his fourth shuttle mission, he had logged more than 680 hours in space.

While Brodie was at Winthrop College during the late 1920s, her biology professor noticed her interest and called her to the attention of Howard K. Gloyd, a well-known herpetologist. Gloyd helped Brodie get a position at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, where there was an excellent program in herpetology under the direction of Alexander G. Ruthven. During her first year there she stayed with Frank N. Blanchard and his wife, and Blanchard taught her many of the procedures used by professional herpetologists. On trips back to her Leesville home she collected many specimens for the University of Michigan collection.

After practicing medicine in North Carolina for two years, Brown moved to Charleston and became the first black female physician to practice in South Carolina. With several other African Americans, she contributed to the establishment of the Cannon Hospital and Training School for Nurses in 1897, which was later renamed McClennan-Banks Hospital.

Burton’s intense interest in the culture and history of the South Carolina lowcountry resulted in three landmark books: South Carolina Silversmiths, 1690–1860 (1942); Charleston Furniture, 1700–1825 (1955); and the critically acclaimed Civil War narrative The Siege of Charleston, 1861–1865 (1970). A dynamic individual with charm, refinement, and an engaging personality, Burton spent forty years as director of the Charleston Museum, retiring in 1972.

He is widely considered to be the first African American to have his medical findings appear in print.

When he returned to the United States, Cain quickly came to enjoy a prominent position among Charleston’s physician elite, occupying significant posts at public and private medical institutions in the city, as well as operating a lucrative private practice.

Callen is best remembered for her work as a nurse midwife, delivering more than one thousand babies and providing prenatal and postnatal care to mothers. Recognizing that lay midwives provided the only care for many of the African Americans in rural South Carolina, Callen sought opportunities for educating women in midwifery.

Laws concerning segregation prevented African Americans from utilizing the training ward at City Hospital. McClennan and his associates began efforts to create a hospital that was “owned and conducted by the colored people of Charleston.”

Carolina bays form unique habitats occupied by several endangered animal and plant species, including bobcat, osprey, bear, mock bishop’s weed, and rose coreopsis.

Chalmers’s writings did not mark a significant development in medicine, but he was highly regarded in his time by British physicians such as Fothergill, Whytt, and William Cullen of Edinburgh University, one of the most influential teachers of medicine in the late eighteenth century.

Despite the burdens of his position, Chamberlain produced more than sixty scientific publications, mostly on birds but also on amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. His most important contribution was South Carolina Bird Life, written with [Alexander] Sprunt.