Member Directory,
1847 - 1922
Henry A. Christian
Physician
Centurion, 1920–1951
Walter B. James and Francis Carter Wood
Lynchburg, Virginia
Whitefield, New Hampshire
Age forty-four
Cambridge, Massachusetts
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
