Notes |
- Biography
From Mamiya Medical Heritage Center, Hawaii Medical Library:
"Arthur Flournoy Jackson was born at West Point, Troup County, Georgia, on October 28, 1878. He was the son of Arthur Ophelius and Alice (Zachry) Jackson. His grandfather was Major Wyche Sanford Jackson of Revolutionary War fame.
He was educated in the schools of West Point and received his B.S. from Alabama Polytechnic Institute in 1901. From 1905 to 1907 he attended the University of North Carolina as a medical student. He then entered the University of Pennsylvania from which he received his M.D. in 1909. Dr. Jackson interned at Philadelphia General Hospital from October, 1909, to April, 1911. The following year he was granted a certificate in tropical medicine and hygiene from the University of Pennsylvania. Later he became a resident physician at the Pennsylvania State Tuberculosis Sanitarium.
Coming to Honolulu in July, 1912, Dr. Jackson served as resident physician at Queen's Hospital until January, 1914. On the completion of his residency, he entered private practice in Honolulu. He was on the staff at Queen's Hospital as visiting physician and surgeon and was physician at Palama Settlement, Mid-Pacific Institute, Castle Home, and Lanakila Hale.
On November 20, 1914, Dr. Jackson married Margaret Christy Tupper in Honolulu. Three daughters were born to the Jacksons: Alice Rebecca (Mrs. Louis B. Wagner), Margaret Christy (Mrs. William R. Scott), and Nancy Lee (Mrs. Clark F. Spencer).
Dr. Jackson began his service in World War I as medical examiner of draftees, and, after sending many men into active service, he felt that he should volunteer and that, being a doctor, the logical place for him to serve would be in the Red Cross. Commissioned as captain, Dr. Jackson went to Siberia with the Hawaiian Red Cross unit which left Honolulu in November, 1918. Arriving in Vladivostok, he was sent to Nikolsk to inspect a typhus hospital. While he was there the infamous "Death Train" filled with Bolsheviks arrived from Samara. Hundreds of people had been crowded into box cars which they were not allowed to leave, half-fed and with no sanitary precautions, sickness and death were rife. The train was unloaded, the well put into new cars, and the 550 sick taken to the Russian Military Hospital, which had a 250 to 300 bed capacity.
The doctor's next assignment was to a hospital for tubercular Czech patients in Buchedu, Manchuria. These patients had been driven out of Czechoslovakia by the Bolsheviks and when the hospital closed they were returned to their homeland via San Francisco, completing their circle of the globe. While at Buchedu, Dr. Jackson was asked to be medical director of the anti-typhus train which the Red Cross operated all over Siberia. The purpose of this expedition was to go to all areas infected with typhus and, by working with the officials and the population, try to eradicate the disease. Eventually, so many of the personnel aboard the train became ill that the work had to come to an end.
Following this, Dr. Jackson received orders to become superintendent of the Red Cross Hospital at Omsk, which was the largest and finest in Siberia. Along with this position he was made medical director of Western Siberia. In the winter of 1919-1920, failing health compelled Dr. Jackson to return to Hawaii. In recognition of his services to the Russian people the Russian government decorated him with the order of St. Anne, third degree.
He returned to Honolulu and private practice in February, 1920. On January 1, 1921, Dr. Jackson joined with Drs. George Straub, Guy C. Milnor, Eric A. Fennel, and Howard Clarke to establish The Clinic, now the Straub Clinic. By that spring he was in very poor health, and in September he left for Philadelphia where he died on October 5, 1921, following surgery. He was within a few days of his 43rd birthday.
Dr. Jackson was a member of the American Medical Association, the Hawaii Medical Association (president in 1920), Honolulu Medical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Honolulu Chamber of Commerce, Ad Club, Public Questions Club, a director of the Y.M.C.A., director of the Pan Pacific Union, a member of Central Union Church, and a Mason.
An editorial in the "Star-Bulletin" had this to say of Dr. Jackson: "Much of his professional life was given over to unremunerative work among obscure, impoverished people. When he received a call to go into Red Cross work in Siberia, he answered it at a serious financial loss to himself, and those who were associated with him there testify to his fidelity to duty and to the unselfish and humane spirit in which he carried on his arduous activities. He served his country well, and his death is a loss to his profession in Hawaii and to the people of Hawaii." Dr. Straub remembered Dr. Jackson as the most Christlike man he ever knew, and the late Dr. Fennel, who also knew him intimately, used to say that Dr. Jackson was the greatest practicing Christian that he had ever known."
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