Edgar Hull

Edgar Hull, Jr. (February 20, 1904 – October 24, 1984), was a physician from Louisiana and in 1931 a founding faculty member of the Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans.^[1] In 1966, he became the first Dean of the Louisiana State University School of Medicine at Shreveport (now the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport).^[1] After his retirement, Hull contradicted the historian T. Harry Williams' account of the assassination and death of Governor and U.S. Senator Huey Long.^[1]

Early years

Hull was born in Pascagoula in Jackson County in southern Mississippi, the son of Edgar Hull, Sr., and the former Alice Christine Rourke. He graduated from Pascagoula High School and studied pre-medicine from 1920–1921 and 1922-1923 at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. In between those years, he was a temporary schoolteacher at Bayou Cassotte in Jackson County, Mississippi. From 1923-1927, Hull attended the Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, from which he received his medical credentials. Hull then interned at the 108-bed Highland Sanitarium in Shreveport, the seat of Caddo Parish in northwestern Louisiana. He stayed there for only six months before launching a private practice from 1929 to 1931 in Pleasant Hill in DeSoto Parish.^[1]

In 1930, Hull married the former Louise Parham (died 1937) of Shreveport in Natchitoches, Louisiana.^[1]

Medical school pioneer

On October 7, 1931, he returned to New Orleans and became one of the founding staff and faculty at the new LSU Medical Center, affiliated with Charity Hospital. In 1944, Hull was a Markle Fellow to Costa Rica and Guatemala. From 1950-1951, he was a Fulbright Professor to the University of Bologna in Bologna, Italy. In 1958, he was a consultant to Taiwan. He also performed consulting work in New Orleans at Touro Infirmary and Baptist Hospital. Shortly after Louise's death, he married the former Mallory Page Warren (1904–1986).^[1] Hull was acting head of the LSU School of Medicine in 1939 and chief administrator from 1940–1954 and 1960-1966. In between from 1954–1960, he was the medical school associate dean.^[1]

Hull was a pioneer in electrocardiography and a master of the American College of Physicians, a member of the American College of Gastroenterology, the American College of Cardiology, and the Catholic Physicians Guild. In 1966, he returned after many years to Shreveport to head the new LSU School of Medicine, which opened in 1969 partly in the facility of the former Confederate Memorial Medical Center. He worked to obtain national accreditation for what was only the second public medical school in Louisiana. He was the dean of the Shreveport campus from 1966–1973, when he retired at the age of sixty-nine to Pascagoula.^[1]

Recalling Huey Long

Hull reserved his comments on Huey Long's demise until after 1981, when the LSU Medical Center celebrated its 50th anniversary. His public recollections are incorporated in his 1983 memoirs entitled This I Remember: An Informal History of the Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans. Unlike the LSU historian Williams, Hull claimed that after the shooting Long probably could not have been saved by any medical treatment. Moreover, Hull denied that Long died from medical or surgical incompetence.^[1] Hull also criticized his own conduct in the 1935 events surrounding Long's passing at the age of forty-two. Hull had called for an autopsy of the senator but not repeatedly, and he allowed himself to be overruled in the resulting tense situation.^[1]

Death and legacy

Hull died at the age of eighty in Pascagoula and is interred there at Greenwood Cemetery.^[1][2]

Edgar and his second wife, Mallory Page Warren, had one son, the physician Edgar Warren Hull (born 1940) of Pascagoula.^[3] Hull also had a daughter with his first wife, Louise Parham, Alice Louise (born 1936), who graduated from the LSU School of Medicine in 1962.^[4]

Hull is remembered through the Edgar Hull Society, founded in 1999 at the LSU School of Medicine to promote the study of internal medicine. The society was founded by a student, Shamita Shah.^[5]

References