Physician
Centurion, 1920–1951
Born 17 February 1876 in Lynchburg, Virginia
Died 24 August 1951 in Whitefield, New Hampshire
Buried Mount Auburn Cemetery
, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Proposed by Walter B. James and Francis Carter Wood
Elected 6 March 1920 at age forty-four
Century Memorial
Dr. Christian graduated from Randolph-Macon College in 1895, took his medical degree from Johns Hopkins in 1900 and his A.M. at Harvard in 1903. He started his doctor’s calling as assistant pathologist at Boston City Hospital; but in 1908 President Eliot made him a full professor and Dean of the Harvard Medical School. He was known as the “Boy Dean.”
He was Dean only until he got the Medical School out of the doldrums it was in at that time; but he continued a member of the faculty till 1939. From 1910 to 1939 he was Surgeon-in-Chief of the Peter Brigham Hospital. As a teacher of medicine he was steeped in the Osier-tradition and was himself a most vivid and exciting lecturer. He could be forthright without creating resistance, and he was immensely popular with both students and doctors. He seemed possessed of a daemon who drove him to give advice unsought, help unsolicited, and constant encouragement to those who faltered. He had a vitality which made him charming and a source of inspiration.
And he was a wonderful doctor.
George W. Martin
1951/1952 Century Association Yearbook
