What the doctor ordered

James Dibrell leaves lasting medical legacy

One of the great leaders in Arkansas medical history was born on this date in 1846. Dr. James A. Dibrell Jr. was a founder of the University of Arkansas Medical Department, and he served for many years as dean of the medical school.

Dibrell was born near Van Buren in Crawford County on Aug. 20, 1846, the son of a pioneering physician in western Arkansas, J.A. Dibrell Sr., and his wife, Ann Eliza Pryor Dibrell. He attended local schools, but because of his family’s troubled finances following the Civil War, he had to delay going to medical school. For a time he worked as a bookkeeper while studying medicine with his father.

In 1867-68, Dibrell pursued a course of medical studies at St. Louis Medical College. From St. Louis, Dibrell moved to Philadelphia, where he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Department, receiving an M.D. degree in March 1870.

With his newly minted medical degree in hand, Dibrell settled in Little Rock and opened a practice. In 1876 he married Lallie Reardon of Little Rock. They had two sons, both of whom also became medical doctors.

Dibrell spent much of his early career battling the scourge of yellow fever with “sanitary and quarantine work.” As president of the Little Rock Board of Health, Dibrell helped implement quarantines in a successful attempt to spare Little Rock from the 1878-79 yellow fever epidemic that ravaged Memphis and other cities.

Dibrell and a cadre of Little Rock physicians recognized the need to dramatically improve medical education in Arkansas. Indeed, most of the doctors practicing in 19th century Arkansas had little if any professional training. Complicating and delaying efforts to start a medical school was a severe case of professional jealousy among Little Rock doctors. Dr. Dibrell was one of the few doctors who could breach the chasm.

During the summer of 1879, Dibrell and seven other capital city physicians organized a medical school as a part of the new Arkansas Industrial University.

While the new medical school was affiliated with the University of Arkansas, it received no state appropriations. Initial funding of $5,000 was provided by the eight doctors who incorporated the school: P.O. Hooper, Claibourne Watkins, James Southall, John McAlmont, Roscoe G. Jennings, Augustus L. Breysacher, Edwin Bentley and Dibrell.

Dibrell was made the school’s professor of anatomy. When Philo Oliver Hooper, the first president of the medical school faculty, resigned in 1886, Dibrell became president — later changed to dean. Without interruption, Dibrell served as the main leader of the Medical Department until his death in 1904.

Historian David Baird has identified Dibrell as the key to the survival of the new medical school: “What success the school attained during its first 25 years was due in large measure to him, a man who ‘spoke with force and fluency’ and who was earnest, humble, sincere and ‘beyond all vanity.’”

The Medical Department began classes on Oct. 7, 1879, with only six students enrolled, but the numbers increased quickly. The first M.D. degree was awarded in March 1880 to Tom M. Pinson, an El Dorado native who also had previous medical school training. Much of Pinson’s medical diploma was printed in Latin, under the heading “Universitatis Arkansiensis.”

In addition to his duties as dean of the medical school, Dibrell also carried on a private practice and served in many professional posts. He was president of the Pulaski County Medical Society, the Arkansas Medical Society, and he was vice president of the American Medical Association.

On Nov. 12, 1904, the Little Rock newspapers carried front page articles announcing Dibrell’s premature death at 58 years of age. His wife had died a few years earlier — which might account for several references in the newspapers about his having a dour demeanor. Dr. Edwin Bentley, another of the founders of the medical school, acknowledged that Dibrell “had his sorrows and was acquainted with grief.”

Another colleague wrote in an obituary that Dibrell held many positions of major responsibility, posts he held “because of his ability, and not of his mixing qualities, for in that matter he seemed to a stranger distant and hard to approach.”

While we know little about Dr. Dibrell’s personality, he must have been optimistic about the future. In 1892 he bought a house being constructed at 1400 Spring St., a magnificent residence sometimes referred to as “the gadget house.” Dibrell had the house equipped with both gas and electric lighting, an electric doorbell and even a burglar alarm. A system of “speaking tubes” allowed communication between floors. A central heating system comfortably warmed the whole house. The house still stands today, reminding us of a man who contributed mightily to the medical history of Arkansas.