MEMORABLE CAREER
A High Falls doctor’s contributions during her 60 years in medicine benefited others in many ways
Dr. Marie-Louise Johnson has a list of things she’d like to accomplish now that she’s about to end a 60-year career in medicine, and taking it easy isn’t one of them.
The 91-year-old dermatologist and educator intends to plant more flowers, compose more sacred music and write more poetry now that she’s found a doctor to take over her Kingston practice.
At a recent interview in her High Falls home, Johnson said Dr. Brooke Bair of New Paltz will succeed her at Dermatology Services of Kingston at 368 Broadway. The practice is connected to Yale School of Medicine, Johnson’s alma mater.
“Before this, I couldn’t leave, but now, letting go will be a very happy occasion because my mission will continue under very reliable leadership,” Johnson said.
“She insisted she would not retire until she had in place a fully functional dermatology center that would serve the needs of this community far into the future,” said her husband, Dr. Kenneth Johnson, 93, a retired cardiologist.
“You can’t get Americantrained dermatologists to set up a practice in Kingston. They’re making a fortune in cosmetic dermatology, and they’re in ur-
ban areas. Their average annual income is $570,000. In a rural area like this, you can’t even come up with a third of that, so Marie-Louise said, ‘I’ll make my own,’” he said.
In April 2016, when she presented the Lobitz Lecture to the Oregon Dermatology Society in Portland, a flyer marking the occasion recognized some of Johnson’s achievements in her field: In 1954, Johnson was among the first 300 American women to achieve a doctorate in the sciences; she was the first woman to receive the American Academy of Dermatology’s Master Dermatologist Award (in 1995) and, in 2000, Johnson became the first woman president in the American Dermatological Association’s 125-year history.
“She’s very famous and is one of the most prominent figures in dermatology in the United States of America,” said her husband. “She’s gotten every citation as a teacher and researcher and was named ‘practitioner of the year,’ ‘teacher of the year’ and ‘scientist of the year.’ She’s paved the way for other women in medicine and is a star in every way.”
In a 2010 publication of the Yale School of Medicine, highlighting Johnson’s work and recognizing a $1 million endowment she’d established at the school, Richard L. Edelson, M.D., chair of the Yale Department of Dermatology, called Johnson “a physician, scientist, humanist” adding that she “sees every medical problem as a mystery inviting a solution, a teaching opportunity, and a very personal challenge.”
Still, among her many accomplishments, Johnson said she regards her service in Kingston as one of her most fulfilling. Not only has she recruited a dozen new physicians to the area, but she has trained scores of general medical practitioners in dermatology.
Early on, Johnson and her husband said she recognized the local shortage of dermatologists to adequately diagnose and treat medical conditions, so she established a post-graduate training program for board-certified physicians and physician assistants at the Mid-Hudson Family Health Institute.
When she was 3, Johnson’s family moved to a farm in High Falls where she still lives.
At the age of 13, Johnson volunteered at the former Benedictine Hospital. Those were the days before “candy stripers,” and she was put to work in the operating room. “I was the 1940 version of a candy striper, I guess. The nurses were great . ... World War II was starting up and ... the nurses were thrilled to have me. I scrubbed syringes, all kinds of instruments. I even gave drop ether,” she said.
It was then that she vowed to study medicine and one day return to her rural home “because my heart was always here,” she said.
Johnson graduated from the Yale School of Medicine in 1956 after earning her doctorate two years earlier in microbiology.
Not long after meeting and marrying her husband, the two were recruited for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, studying the effects of the A-bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Johnson served as chief of dermatology for the program, which was a successor to the Manhattan Project.
“They were very anxious to gather that data,” she said. And, with the help of physicians, they gathered “good, hard data to prove that radiation isn’t good for your health.”
While treating patients who had been exposed to radiation, Johnson was able to allay the fears of many victims, her husband said.
“The majority of the people she was caring for had not been exposed to enough radiation to lead to disease, so it relieved people, for example, on the other side of the mountain in Hiroshima,” he said. “There was satisfaction in the follow-up, and she did all she could to help the Japanese people.”
The couple’s home is decorated with woodcut prints and other art collected in Japan during their years there.
After Johnson finished her work in Japan, she became director of dermatology at New York University-Bellevue Hospital and later moved on to Dartmouth Medical School, where she trained Vietnam War medics at the Veterans Affair Hospital in nearby White River Junction, Vermont.
As she prepares to retire, Johnson said she counts her opportunities to help everyday people more gratifying than all the citations and plaudits.
The humble doctor is content to let her husband recount her career, but smiles as he labels her a champion of the poor and one who has treated patients with the highest ethical and professional care.
Her smile widened when she was asked what she will do after Bair takes over the Kingston practice she has nurtured for 38 years.
“There’s more stuff to be done,” she said. “I intend to do it.”