St. Louis has a history of advancing medicine. Here are 4 health care pioneers who saved lives (2024)

Stories of sacrificeand heroism indoctors, nurses, and other health care workers abound during the novel coronavirus pandemic. But area hospitals and the health care providers who work in themare the product of hundreds of years of hard work and dedication. The state of medical instruction was so scandalous in St. Louis at one point that riots broke out. Around that time, a medical doctor’s education in the Gateway City was only three months long.But medical schools improved, partly due to the founder of the Bavarian Brewery, Dr. Adam Hammer (who was a better humanitarian than brewer), and his fellow German doctors, adding science to medicine for the first time in St. Louis history. But women in religious orders dedicated their lives to nursing the sick. What follows arejust a fewout of manymedical pioneers of our city.

The memory ofDr. W.A. Lawrence, a woman, may have almost been completely lost to history save for an advertisem*nt found in a book printed in St. Louis a few years before the Civil War. I could find nothing else about her—not even her first name—and all that I can recount about her comes from what she tells us about herself. Dr. Lawrence came from Martinsburg, in what is now West Virginia, and “most respectfully tender[ed] her to services to the LADIES of St. Louis.” After giving her credentials and her educational background, she stated she “feels confident that the Ladies of this city greatly prefer one of their own sex to attend them during sickness…” Was Dr. Lawrence the first woman doctor in St. Louis? It's unclearif records are able to show one way or another. The building where her offices were located, 206 N. 7th Street, has long since been demolished.

In the years after the Civil War, a group of similarly remarkable women arrived from the German Empire, having honed their skills in treating the scourge of smallpox. Led by a Bavarian-born woman, Mother Odilia, the Servants of the Divine Heart arrived in St. Louis on November 16, 1872, and took up residence in an unheated building next to the then-German parish of St. Mary of Victories, the second-oldest church in the city. Due to their new residence, they became known as the Sisters of St. Mary. Originally only five Sisters and their Mother Odilia, their skills at treating smallpox victims, which has a mortality rate of 30 percent, became needed immediately upon their arrival, as an epidemic of the disease swept through St. Louis.

On top of the smallpox epidemic, cholera returned to the city, adding to hardships facing the Sisters and their patients. By no means were they safe from the diseases they were treating, and the story goes that one of the balconies in St. Mary of Victories was reserved for the Sisters so they could attend mass in the church without coming into contact with members of the congregation. They also wore bells on their habits to warn passersby of their presence as they walked the streets of St. Louis. Smallpox would continue to threaten St. Louis, and the Sisters would even be given official permission to treat its victims by the city in 1883. Eventually, the Sisters would build St. Mary’s Infirmary on Papin Street, which was sadly demolished several years ago, but their legacy and their order continue to serve the people of St. Louis.

Smallpox continued to threaten St. Louis into the 20th centuryand even endangered the World’s Fair in 1904, exceptthe quick thinking and actions of a doctor prevented a catastrophe. Relating the story to a reporter over a half-century later from his home in Chesterfield with his wife, Doodles, at his side, Dr. Martin E. Sheets in 1962 told the story of how he prevented the spread of smallpox when he successfully dealt with what could have spread panic. The first case ended with a standoff, when workers locked the doors to an exhibition hall where the afflicted worker was located. Finally, they agreed to allow the man to be transported to the City Hospital in Lafayette Square. The second case of smallpox occurred later on during the Fair, and again Dr. Sheets’quick actions prevented its spread. The doctor recognized the symptoms and immediately ordered the patient removed from the Fair’s hospital to the City Hospital, where there was a quarantine wing for smallpox patients. The World’s Fair did not suffer an outbreak of any major diseases.

The people of St. Louis also realized when relics from the past were no longer working. A newspaper article from 1895 reported on the substandard conditions at the Quarantine, south of the city on the Mississippi near what is now the Jefferson Barracks Bridge. What had originally been created in the early 19th century as a place to hold steamboat passengers destined for St. Louis from spreading disease into the city had long since outlasted its usefulness. Two men, Thomas Griffin and Sam Brown, detained on the island for two weeks, described the treatment of African Americans who were not even infected with smallpox. Even worse, they were then placed in beds next to actual patients with the disease.

In the early 20th century, civic leaders and doctors collaborated to construct the Robert Koch Hospital to improve conditions for patients. Instead of looking like an institution, the design of the buildings focused on a more residential feel, taking advantage of the pleasant, rural surroundings overlooking the Mississippi River. The Koch Hospital would go on to pioneer new ways of treating those with communicable diseases, eliminating the terrible legacy that had once pervaded the old Quarantine.