In honor of Black History Month , I draw your attention to the life and legacy of Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller, M.D., the first Black psychiatrist in the United States, and a pioneer in neurology and pathology whose discoveries illuminated the true etiological origins of dementia.
Born in Liberia in 1872, Dr. Fuller was the grandson of a formerly enslaved couple who had emigrated there from the United States. Dr. Fuller obtained his medical degree from Boston University, and began his 20+ year relationship with Westborough State Hospital while working as head of the hospital’s pathology laboratory. Seeking further training, Dr. Fuller was chosen as one of five students to study under Dr. Alois Alzheimer at the Royal Psychiatric Hospital at the University of Munich, then headed by Emil Kraepelin. There, and thereafter, Dr. Fuller contributed significantly to the furtherance of research in dementia, and furnished swathes of his colleagues with access to his mentor’s work by utilizing his German fluency to author the authoritative English translations of Dr. Alzheimer’s research. Dr. Fuller’s own work confirmed and often eclipsed the work of Dr. Alzheimer.
It was through Dr. Fuller’s extensive postmortem studies that Dr. Fuller was able to identify pathological changes in the brains of decedents with dementia which proved that, contrary to previous theories touting dementia as linked to insanity, it was in fact neurological changes (particularly atrophy and degeneration of tissue) which constituted the origins of cognition and memory associated decline. Dr. Fuller’s focus on the presence of neurofibrillary tangles in his specimens led to better understanding of the loss in memory which became the hallmark of the disease. The author of a plethora of influential articles, in 1912, he published perhaps his most important work, a two part case study considered to be the most thorough inaugural depiction of a case of Alzheimer’s.
Dr. Fuller remained at Westborough State Hospital for two decades, where he continued to work in the laboratory as a neuropathologist, and where he acted as editor of the journal he founded, “Westborough State Hospital Papers.” In 1919, he left Westborough and rejoined the Boston University community as a faculty member. Despite his remarkable, unmatched achievements in his field, as a person of color Dr. Fuller faced systemic and personal discrimination; he was regularly undermined, passed over for positions and appointments for which he was overqualified in favor of younger, far less qualified candidates, underpaid compared to his colleagues, and refused the honor of being given titles appropriate to his role, station, and wealth of responsibilities, despite consistently exceeding expectations. He once said “with the sort of work that I have done, I might have gone farther and reached a higher plane had it not been for the colour of my skin.”
Even into his retirement, Dr. Fuller maintained a private practice in psychiatry, but his insatiable quest for knowledge and discovery was hampered by the loss of his eyesight due to diabetes at age 72. He passed away in 1953 at age 81. He was survived by his wife, the brilliant sculptor Meta Vaux Warrick, and their three children.
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