Medicine: Negro in Florida

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The young Negro doctor, fresh from Nashville's Meharry Medical College, learned what he was up against as soon as he started to practice in Sanford, in the heart of Florida's orange-grove country. His first emergency was the case of a woman suffering from what he decided was a ruptured ectopic (outside the womb) pregnancy. When he arrived with the ambulance at the hospital, the head nurse, a white woman, demanded scornfully: "Who told you that you could make a diagnosis?"

Dr. George Henry Starke had to turn his patient over to the white doctor on duty; no. Negro was allowed to practice in the biracial hospital. The white doctor let him sit in on the operation, which saved the woman's life, and confirmed Starke's diagnosis. When it was over, the head nurse snapped: "Well, you're the first Negro I ever saw that could make a diagnosis."

Depression Years. That was in 1927. This week Dr. Starke, 52, a veteran of 24 years' practice in Sanford (pop. 11,700), opened a new $50,000 clinic (about half the cost came from his savings, the rest from a bank loan). Meantime, he had established a solid record of helping his race, and some white folks too. During the depressed 19305, Dr. Starke formed a team with Seminole County's overworked public-health nurse, Mrs. Frances McDougal. Together they toured the county, treating hookworm and giving inoculations. Though he never offered his services to whites ("I didn't want to get into trouble"), many asked his help and got it free. In one depression year, Mrs. McDougal reckoned, Dr. Starke did $27,000 worth of charity work; he got barely $2,000 a year (plus oranges) to live on.

During his graduate studies at Chicago in 1937, Dr. Starke got early training in the use of sulfa drugs against pneumonia. Back in Sanford, he soon saw a serious case of double pneumonia and venturously tried sulfa. White doctors, including the one who was officially in charge of Starke's patient in the hospital, sneaked the charts out for a private look at the progress of a treatment which they had not yet dared to try. Says Dr. Starke: "If the sulfa hadn't worked, the ax would have fallen."

But it worked, and worked a double wonder: in a few weeks, the county medical society broke precedent by allowing precedent-making Dr. Starke to practice in the hospital. (Today he is still the only Negro with this privilege, caring for patients in one-third of the beds: 14 white doctors handle the rest.) In 1950, the Florida Medical Association elected George Starke as its first Negro member.*

Memorial Clinic. To serve his 5,000 patients scattered over an area 25 by 75 miles, Dr. Starke gets around in a Plymouth. His wife, mother of three (including boys at West Virginia and North Carolina State), enjoys the only family luxury; she drives a Cadillac. Dr. Starke's two-story clinic was laid out to fit his busy practice. The 40-seat waiting room is bigger than the doctor's office and examination rooms combined, though he has found space for almost $14,000 worth of Xray, hydrotherapy, physiotherapy and other specialized equipment.