To Raise Up the Man Farthest Down: Tuskegee Universitys Advancements in Human Health, 18811987 [Hardcover]

An important historical account of Tuskegee Universitys significant advances in health care, which affected millions of lives worldwide.

Alabamas celebrated, historically black Tuskegee University is most commonly associated with its founding president, Booker T. Washington, the scientific innovator George Washington Carver, or the renowned Tuskegee Airmen. Although the universitys accomplishments and devotion to social issues are well known, its work in medical research and health care has received little acknowledgment. Tuskegee has been fulfilling Washingtons vision of healthy minds and bodies since its inception in 1881. InTo Raise Up the Man Farthest Down, Dana R. Chandler and Edith Powell document Tuskegee Universitys medical and public health history with rich archival data and never-before-published photographs. Chandler and Powell especially highlight the important but largely unsung role that Tuskegee University researchers played in the eradication of polio, and they add new dimension and context to the fascinating story of the HeLa cell line that has been brought to the publics attention by popular media.

Tuskegee University was on the forefront in providing local farmers the benefits of agrarian research. The university helped create the massive Agricultural Extension System managed today by land grant universities throughout the United States. Tuskegee established the first baccalaureate nursing program in the state and was also home to Alabamas first hospital for African Americans. Washington hired Alabamas first female licensed physician as a resident physician at Tuskegee. Most notably, Tuskegee was the site of a remarkable development in American biochemistry history: its microbiology laboratory was the only one relied upon by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (the organization known today as the March of Dimes) to produce the HeLa cell cultures employed in the national field trials for thl£Ò