Death of Billings
Leaders of U. S. Medicine went to Philadelphia last June to lament Dr. William Williams Keen (1837-1932), their senior (1900) A. M. A. past president (TIME, June 20). Dr. Keen's death made Dr. Frank Billings of Chicago senior (1902-04) of the A. M. A.'s past presidents. Last week the medical leaders journeyed to Chicago. Dr. Billings. 78 and long ailing, had slipped on a rug in the home which he shared with his only child, Mrs. George R. Nichols II, and died of internal hemorrhage.
Dr. Billings had outlived many builders of Chicago's greatness who, in their tycoonhood. became his friends and patients --Marshall Field. Levi Leiter, Harold Higginbotham, Gustavus Swift, Philip Danforth Armour, Marvin Hughitt, Cyrus McCormick, John G. Shedd, Carter Harrison Sr. For Dr. Billings' practice began in the 1880's, and he was a young man when tycoons began going to his office. He would strip them of their clothes, slap their bumptiousness and boom: "There's nothing the matter with you, except that you're too fat and you work too hard. Learn to walk from your home to your office, and cut out your big luncheons."
Another of his frequently offered recommendations dates Doctor Billings and his patients. To the torpid he would explain: "There's a Scotch game called golf. It furnishes a mild exercise. Play nine or 18 holes twice a week and take a drink or two of whiskey with soda as your reward."
One of Dr. Billings' latest accomplishments was the raising of $3,000,000 for Provident Hospital & Training School, a Chicago medical educational centre for Negroes. There are dozens of other major accomplishments labeled Billings. He persuaded the State of Illinois to turn unclaimed pauper dead over to medical schools for anatomical study. He borrowed money, went to Europe for post-graduate study, returned to show Chicago doctors the then new fad of cultivating bacteria artificially.
In 1901 the late Edith Rockefeller McCormick called Dr. Billings, then her family physician, to look after her firstborn, John Rockefeller McCormick. The child had scarlet fever, died. Nothing then was known of the cause of the disease, and very little about its control. The McCormicks at Dr. Billings' recommendation financed (and others added to) the John McCormick Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases. Among the first patients was Gladys Rowena Henry, a young woman doctor. The resident physician was young Dr. George Frederick Dick. After a few years these two married, in 1923 isolated the germ of scarlet fever. Then they originated a serum for the disease.
Other Billings credits: raising the standards of U. S. medical education; preventing the sale of harmful and spurious medicines; establishment of the Sprague Institute (studies of tuberculosis, heredity in cancer and degenerative diseases); persuading John Davison Rockefeller to let the University of Chicago have a thoroughgoing medical centre. Towards this Dr. Billings and relatives gave $1,000,000.* Dr. Billings' share was $100,000. Had Dr. Billings lived until his 79th birthday next April, he then would have received an "Homage Book," tribute of his onetime pupils. That project now is abandoned. At the time of his death Dr. Billings was carrying in his pocket a plan to organize Illinois physicians to work for the election of Judge Henry Homer to the governorship of Illinois./-
*The late Albert Merritt Billings (Peoples Gas Light & Coke Co., New York City's elevated railways, Memphis street railways. Missouri Pacific, Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul) was his uncle. Cousin is Cornelius Kingsley Garrison Billings, chairman of Union Carbide & Carbon. Another cousin was Dr. John Shaw Billings (1838-1913). soldier builder of libraries.
/-Last week Dr. Herman Louis Kretschmer, president of the Chicago Medical Society, became head of a national committee of medical men to campaign for Herbert Hoover.
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