Physician
Centurion, 1913–1948
Born 19 January 1869 in Augusta, Georgia
Died 13 February 1948 in Richmond, Georgia
Buried Magnolia Cemetery
, Augusta, Georgia
Proposed by Beverley Robinson and Edward C. Post
Elected 6 December 1913 at age forty-four
Century Memorial
Warren Coleman. [Born] 1869. Physician.
My elders and betters have stood in this place and have told us of Dr. Coleman, and as I reflect on what they said, at our May Monthly Meeting, at which the story was told, it comes to mind, irresistibly, how much this Association will mean to any man if he has the wit and wisdom to let it. All members contribute to what we are here, but too few members permit the collective effect to be theirs. Warren Coleman did and, no doubt at all, his membership of thirty-five years helped make him the person he was: responsive, solicitous, gentle in manner, his tastes fine, his expressions always showing high traditions and lofty ideals.
And yet having said all this, it is necessary to say that it is a man’s work which counts most—else there is nothing but a tiresome clubman who rates zero with men who do the work of the world. And so, when Allen Whipple wrote me about Dr. Coleman, he told me first about his professional attainments; and what Allen said in effect was this: Warren Coleman had been a physician and teacher at Bellevue Hospital for more than fifty years and he developed—which is the important word—until, during his last fifteen or twenty years, he was about the ablest clinician there. This was especially true in the field of treatment of typhoid patients; for in this field it was Dr. Coleman who established the validity of an adequate diet for patients with typhoid fever. In the past, they had been treated with a very restricted, inadequate diet, but he demonstrated—and it has since been accepted—that the typhoid patient needs a high calorie diet. “Certainly!” said Dr. Whipple, in the treatment of typhoid patients he stands as very eminent.”
I think that Warren Coleman would have liked his friend’s restrained professional praise. And no less would he have liked his friend Bill Lockwood’s praise. No characterization of a friend could have been more affectionate than Bill’s, more evocative of the ideals of the Century. Our membership here is an adventure in friendship and Dr. Coleman, as Bill made plain to us all, exemplified that adventure.
Source: Henry Allen Moe Papers, Mss.B.M722. Reproduced by permission of American Philosophical Society Library & Museum, Philadelphia
Henry Allen Moe
Henry Allen Moe Papers, 1948 Memorials
