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| Photo credit: Lynn Johnson |
"Anything
on earth you want to do is play. Anything on earth you have to do is work. Play
will never kill you, work will. I never worked a day in my life."
Dr. Leila Denmark
I love to write about people who are passionate about their
jobs. They really don’t work a day in
their lives. It’s so inspirational! I found out about Dr. Leila Denmark while
researching another project that I’m working on about amazing women in history.
In an age where medicine was a male-dominated profession,
Leila Denmark stumbled upon her passion for healing. She grew up tending to the
wounded farm animals on her Georgia farm. She had such a tender heart and a
real knack for healing. This talent later translated to tending to humans. She
was the only woman who graduated from the Medical College of
the University of Georgia in Augusta.
In her 50 years of medicine, she treated thousands of patients in the private pediatric practice she opened in her home in 1930. But
she also volunteered at the Central Presbyterian Baby Clinic, where she treated
many more children of destitute parents who wouldn’t have been able to afford
healthcare. She never turned anyone away.
It was there that she did the research, which led to her
development of the invaluable whooping cough vaccine.
She never seemed to tire of treating the many children. Her
grandson, Steven Hutcherson has said, “She
would always say to the next family waiting in line to see her, 'Who is the
next little angel?’”
She was a much
sought-after doctor in her day. It has been said that she could determine
exactly what was wrong just by looking at a child.
In the early
1960s, she began to handwrite her ideas and methods for childcare in spiral notebooks. Those notebooks would
become her privately published book, Every
Child Should Have a Chance. It is her legacy, which has helped many parents who didn’t have the opportunity to get
her personal counsel.
"She
absolutely loved practicing medicine more than anything else in the
world," said another grandson, Dr. James Hutcherson of Evergreen, Colo.
"She never referred to practicing medicine as work."
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