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Did you know that Eugene Dibble was an American physician that was heavily involved in promoting integration in medicine but also promoted the work done in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. However, whether he knew exactly what was going on will never be known for sure since he died before the news of the study got out.
Eugene H. Dibble, Jr.
Eugene Heriot Dibble, Jr. (1893–1968) was an American physician and head of the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He is most notably known for his cooperation and involvement in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which was a clinical study conducted on syphilis and the African American male from 1932 to 1972.
Life and Education
Eugene H. Dibble, Jr., M.D. was born in Camden, South Carolina in 1893. Dibble came from a prosperous African American family. In 1926, he married Helen Taylor, the daughter of MIT’s first African American graduate[1]. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Atlanta University in 1915 and graduated from the Howard University College of Medicine in 1919. He interned in Washington D.C. at Freedman’s Hospital and completed his surgical residency at the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1923. After his residency, he worked as assistant medical director until he was appointed surgeon-in-chief of the U.S. Veterans Administration Hospital at Tuskegee. In 1925, he was named medical director of the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital and stayed until 1936. He also served in the army during both World Wars. Then from 1944 to 1946, he was commissioned colonel in the Army Medical Corps[2]. In 1946, he became the medical director, for the second time, of the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital until 1965, when his cancer had worsened and had to retire[1]. Dibble also served as a member of the Board of Trustees at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.
His Work at John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital
Dr. Dibble was an active member of the John A. Andrew Clinical Society. His work was instrumental in promoting integration within the medical community during the 1950s and 1960s. The clinic was organized and directed by Dr. John A. Kenney, who was in 1912 surgeon-in-chief of John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital. The society provided medical assistance to needy patients and also provided an opportunity for African American doctors to work with other physicians. In the late 1940s, the society began to change its vision to providing courses in medicine and surgery for African Americans in the South. The goal was to inform attending physicians about the latest techniques in medicine and surgery.
Dr. Dibble served as Secretary in the society from 1924 to 1926 and again from 1946 to 1965. He aided Dr. Kenney in teaching the first postgraduate course in 1921 and contributed to the society’s later vision of teaching other physicians[3]. The society was discontinued in 1969, when the American Medical Association officially desegregated and African Americans were finally able to join other medical societies. Dibble resigned from the society on August 4, 1965.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Dibble made various trips with the Baptist World Alliance. He visited many medical physicians around the world and provided medical care to underdeveloped countries in Africa and Asia. Dibble also helped students who wanted to go to medical school in the United States[3]. He was awarded the 17th Distinguished Service Medal of the National Medical Association at the 67th Annual Convention in Chicago, Illinois that took place from August 13 – 16, 1962[2]. Eugene H. Dibble, Jr., M.D. died on June 1, 1968[1].
