He created the pause that refreshes. John Stith Pemberton was born in Knoxville, Georgia in 1831 and grew up in Rome. In 1850, he graduated from a College of Herbal Medicine in Macon and then went to pharmacy school in Philadelphia. Returning to Georgia, Pemberton set up shop as a druggist in Columbus. During the […]
He was one of the most powerful Americans of the 20th century and served in public office for more than half of it. Richard Brevard Russell, Jr., born in Winder in 1897, graduated from the University of Georgia’s Law School. He immediately entered politics, winning election to the state legislature at 23. At 33, he […]
Anyone who has ever had surgery owes him of debt of thanks. Crawford Long was born in Danielsville, Georgia in 1815 and graduated from the University of Georgia. While getting his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, he witnessed firsthand the excruciating pain of patients undergoing surgery, and the crude methods used to alleviate […]
Lyman Hall was an ordained minister, a doctor and one of three Georgians to sign the Declaration of Independence, quite a resume for a man born in Connecticut in 1747. Hall was from old New England stock and graduated from Yale. He abandoned the congregational ministry for medicine and moved South, eventually settling in Georgia […]
It killed more Americans than all of our 20th century wars combined. When 138 soldiers at Camp Gordon in Atlanta were hit with it this day in 1918, the Spanish Flu epidemic had spread across Georgia. The flu hit just as World War I ended. That war took 10 million lives over four years. The […]
Warm Springs soothed his body and restored his spirit. Franklin D. Roosevelt made his first visit to the healing waters on this day in 1924. Roosevelt contracted polio three years earlier and traveled to Warm Springs on the advice of George Foster Peabody, his friend and part–owner of the springs. He visited 41 times. Other […]
Viruses and bacteria are two very different things. We know that now thanks to a pioneering scientist born in Jonesboro. Known as the father of modern virology, Thomas Milton Rivers also had a hand in the development of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine. Rivers graduated from Emory College and went on to Johns Hopkins Medical School. […]