Edwin C. J. T. Howard

Edwin C.J.T. Howard was born in Boston on October 21, 1846.^[4][6] His father, Edwin Frederick Howard,^[6] was from Boston, and his mother, Joan Louise Turpin Howard,^[6] was from New York City.^[7] He had two sisters: Adeline Turpin Howard (1844-1922)^[8][6] and Joan Imogen Howard (1848-1937),^[8][6] who was the first black graduate of Girls' High School in Boston.^[8] He was a member of a prominent 19th-century African American family that included two noted doctors.^[9][10] His aunt and uncle were Cordelia L. Howard DeGrasse^[7] and Dr. John Van Surley DeGrasse,^[8] and he was related to Edward V. Asbury, MD, a Boston doctor in the 1850s.^[9][11] Ednorah Nahar^[12] and Georgenia Cordelia DeGrasse^[8] were two of his cousins.

He attended Boston Latin School.^[4] From 1861 to 1865, he studied at Liberia College in Monrovia, Liberia under Dr. Charles B. Dunbar.^[4][6] While in Liberia, he kept encrypted diaries of his activities.^[8][10] He did not receive a degree from Liberia College.^[7]

In 1865, he returned to the United States and studied at Boston City Hospital.^[13] He was a Harvard Medical School student in the summer of 1866,^[4] and during the 1866-1867 winter session.^[14] In 1869, he graduated from Harvard Medical School.^[8][4][7][6] His thesis was on puerperal fever, a reference to bacterial infections that women may get following childbirth or miscarriage.^[4] He and Thomas Graham Dorsey were the first African American physicians to graduate from Harvard Medical School.^[2][13]

As part of his medical education, he spent time as an observer and student at hospitals and institutions in England and France.^[6]

After graduating from Harvard, Howard first practiced medicine in Charleston, South Carolina.^[8][4] He later moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.^[4] He was a throat specialist.^[13] In 1870, he treated patients in Philadelphia^[8][6][7] during the global smallpox epidemic.^[15] Records indicate that he had a “zero patient mortality rate” during the epidemic.^[13]

In 1895, he was part of the “Founding Fathers” of the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital and Training School,^[3] the first hospital for black patients and doctors in Philadelphia.^[2][8][4] He was part of the first staff of physicians^[6][13] and the first chairman.^[13] He was also a lecturer and chairman of the Nurses' Training School that was part of the hospital.^[6][7][13]

Between 1905 and 1907,^[16] he worked with a group of fellow physicians to establish Mercy Hospital, the second black-managed medical institution in Philadelphia.^{[8][4][6][13]} In 1948, Douglass and Mercy merged to become the Mercy-Douglass Hospital.^[13] The hospital closed in 1973.^[17][18]

He was one of eight black men commissioned into the United Medical Corps^[13] and served with the 12th Infantry Regiment in Pennsylvania,^[6] rising to the ranks of major and surgeon general.^[13]

In 1888, Howard was elected a member of the Philadelphia Board of Education (Public School Board of the Seventh Ward) for eleven years.^[6][13]

In 1904, he was of the first four members^[19] of Sigma Pi Phi, the first and oldest black Greek fraternity in the United States.^[4][6][13] Sigma Pi Phi, also known as “The Boule”, is a graduate-level and professional fraternity and does not have college chapters.^[5]

He was a president and member of the Citizens Republican Club.^[6]

He was a multiple level Mason, and the first Master of Alban Lodge No. 57 (now St. Alban Lodge No.35), Prince Hall Masons.^[6][13]

He was a member of the Philadelphia County Medical Society, the Pennsylvania State Medical Society, and the American Medical Association.^[7][6]