Speaker: Parker Dhillon
Lecture Title: “The Broken Spine of a Segregated City ”

📅 Date & Time: Wednesday, October 14, 2026, at Noon
📍 Location: Library Room 424 + Online
🍕 Pizza and snacks will be provided.

Join the Student History Club for an examination of the evolution of spinal trauma care at Roper Hospital and the Medical College of the State of South Carolina between 1900 and 1950.

Through archival research—including hospital records, pathology reports, Medical Society proceedings, faculty documents, and institutional histories—this presentation explores the shift from conservative management of spinal cord injuries to modern neurosurgical intervention. It argues that this transformation was driven not only by advances in anatomical knowledge, but also by the development of essential physiological infrastructure, including blood banking, anesthesia, infection control, and perioperative care.

The presentation centers on Dr. Frederick E. Kredel, whose arrival in Charleston in 1937 brought Harvey Cushing’s philosophy of physiologically integrated surgery to the city. Kredel’s work establishing blood transfusion services, modernizing anesthesia, and ultimately conceptualizing the hemicorporectomy represented a significant departure from the therapeutic nihilism that had previously characterized spinal cord injury treatment.

The presentation also considers the social realities of Jim Crow Charleston, examining how spinal injuries disproportionately affected African American waterfront and Navy Yard laborers and how the segregation of Roper Hospital shaped access to emerging medical technologies. By bringing together the histories of medicine, race, labor, and institutional development, this study demonstrates that the modernization of spinal trauma care cannot be understood apart from the social systems that shaped both injury and access to treatment.