Dr. Leila Denmark

#64/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Leila Denmark, the world's fourth-oldest person at 114, overcame deep-rooted prejudice to become one of America's first paediatricians, and the oldest practising medical practitioner until poor eyesight finally forced her retirement at the age of 103. Leila began her 73-year career treating sick children in 1928, the same year that another pioneer, aviator Amelia Earhart, became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, and the year that Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin.

She practiced medicine in Atlanta for 73 years and well past her 100th birthday. When she retired, at 103, the veteran pediatrician was the oldest practicing physician in the country, according to the American Medical Association. And she only retired because she couldn’t see as well as she once did, “otherwise she would have kept on,” said her daughter, Mary Denmark Hutcherson. “She was an excellent diagnostician and she dispensed medical advice over the phone until she was 110 because her mind was still sharp," Mary said. "It was her eyesight that was failing.” Over the years reporters would call and want to interview her, but the doctor made her intentions clear from the beginning, her grandson said. “She’d tell them if all they wanted to talk about was her age or where she was practicing, that was not what she wanted to talk about,” said Dr. James D. Hutcherson, who lives in Evergreen, Colo. But she loved to talk about babies and how to keep them healthy, he said.

Leila Alice Daughtry was born in February 1898 on a farm in the small town of Portal, Bulloch County, Georgia, about 170 miles south-east of Atlanta, the state capital. The third of 12 children to Elerbee and Alice Cornelia Hendricks Daughtry, she grew up in a farming community, attending high school at an agricultural and mechanical school. From a young age she had a passion to heal, learning to tend to plants and wanting to heal animals. Initially drawn to teaching, Leila earned a BA degree from Georgia's Tift College in 1922 and then taught science. However, realising that her ambitions lay in medicine, she pushed aside the prejudices that existed particularly in the South, and enrolled at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta in 1924. That was the time when her fiancé John Eustace Denmark had just been posted to Java, Dutch Indies, by the United States Department of State, and wives were not allowed to accompany their spouses to that post. Four years later and the only woman in a class of 52 students, she became the third woman to earn a medical degree from the college.

Three days after graduation, she married her long-term sweetheart, the banker John Eustace Denmark. The couple moved to Atlanta, where she began her internship in the segregated black wards of Grady Hospital. That same year, Leila became the first resident physician and admitted the first sick baby at the newly founded Henrietta Egleston Hospital for Children (now Children's Healthcare of Atlanta) when it opened later in 1928. In 1930 she began a second internship at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, before returning home to give birth to her only daughter, Mary Alice. The following year Leila established her private practice in paediatrics in her Atlanta home so that she could embody the advice she gave to parents: "Be the one to raise your child". Her emphasis was on good parenting, good nutrition and common sense. She also gave time each week to the Central Presbyterian Church, which opened a charity baby clinic. Throughout her career, her office was always in or near her home and open all hours for those in need of care.

When a whooping cough epidemic swept through Atlanta in 1932, Leila was spurred on to conduct pioneering research in the diagnosis, treatment and immunisation of the disease that killed so many underprivileged babies. Working with Eli Lilly and researchers at Emory University, Leila's findings led to the development of the pertussis vaccine and the modern-day DPT vaccination. During her 70 years as a paediatrician, Leila preached preventive medicine and old-school parenting techniques. At the mid-point of her career, from ideas formulated over the previous four decades, a book outlining tips for raising healthy children was published in 1971, “Every Child Should Have a Chance”. It has been reprinted several times. She wrote a second book, with Madia Bowman, titled “Dr. Denmark Said It!: Advice for Mothers from America's Most Experienced Pediatrician” written in 2002.

Unmoved by generations of baby experts advocating "hands-off" parenting, her book extolled a child-rearing philosophy that placed responsibility for a child's health and happiness solely on parents. She later explained, "If we had every mother taking care of their children, we wouldn't need prisons." Leila also believed strongly that a woman should not leave home to join the workforce, a stance that drew criticism from the media as well as others in the medical community. She suggested that children placed in day care would grow to have little self-discipline or confidence in others.

To keep costs to a minimum in a country that had no free healthcare service, Leila did not employ a nurse or receptionist and relied on a "sign-in sheet" to bring order to her waiting room. She also rarely charged patients more than $10 for an office consultation, and it was not unusual for her to spend an hour counselling a new mother. Over the years, her Alpharetta farmhouse office was visited by families from all walks of life. Her medical instruments were few and barely changed: a stethoscope, an otoscope, blood pressure cuff, chemicals to test urine and to measure haemoglobin, and, most of all, her inquiring mind. Leila gained a reputation for being able to diagnose a child's illness from just looking – and as a no-nonsense doctor who did not mince her words. In an interview, she recalled, "When a mother asks, 'Doctor, what makes my baby so bad?'" she was likely to get the answer, "Go look in the mirror. You get apples off apple trees."

Leila received many honours and awards, including the Fisher Award (1935) and honorary doctorates from Tift College (1972), with the citation "a devout humanitarian who has invested her life in paediatric services to all families without respect to economic status, race, or national origin"; Mercer University (1991); and Emory University (2000). She was Atlanta's Woman of the Year in 1953 and won the Atlanta Business Chronicle's lifetime achievement award in 1998. In 2002, the Georgia General Assembly commended Leila "for her stellar medical career". On her 100th birthday in 1998, Leila refused a slice of cake because there was too much sugar in it. When she refused cake again on her 103rd birthday, she explained to the restaurant's server that she had not eaten any food with added sugar for 70 years. As she approached her 110th birthday, Leila credited her longevity to drinking only water, eating no refined sugars and including a protein and vegetable with every meal. She added, "You keep on doing what you do best, as long as you can. I enjoyed every minute of it for more than 70 years. If I could live it over again, I'd do exactly the same thing."

Leila lived independently in her Alpharetta, Georgia home until age 106. She moved to Athens, Georgia to live with her only child, Mary (Leila) Hutcherson. On February 1, 2008, Leila celebrated her 110th birthday, becoming a supercentenarian. According to Hutcherson, Leila's health deteriorated severely in the autumn of 2008 but later improved as she neared her 111th birthday. She died in 2012 at the age of 114 and 2 months. She was one of the few supercentenarians notable for something other than their longevity. Leila Denmark's husband predeceased her in 1990. She was survived by her daughter. Her family said it is important to note that Dr. Denmark didn’t set out to become famous. Her only goal was to raise healthy babies and help them become healthy adults. 

Source: Wikipedia and Google search.