Physician and surgeon, was the son of Alexander Curtis and Eleanora Patilla Smith.One of nine children,Austin attended the Raleigh public schools and went north to college,graduating from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1888.He received his medical degree from Northwestern University in 1891 and became the first intern hired by Chicago's fledgling Provident Hospital.The first voluntary African American hospital,Provident opened the doors of its two-story frame building a few months before Austin started his internship.Provident Hospital boasted an interracial medical staff as well as the first training school for African American nurses.There Austin formed alliances with tw0 individuals who would influence the rest of his life.The first was Daniel Hale Williams,a renowned African American physician and one of the founders of Provident Hospital,who hired Austin for the Provident internship.The second was seventeen-year-old Namahyoke "Nama" Sockum,whom Austin married in either 1888 or 1891.They would go on to have four children and would become of the most prominent and active couples in African American society of their time.
After his one-year internship at Provident,Austin opened a private general surgical practice in Chicago.Namahyoke continued her volunteer activities;for example,she helped organize Colored American Day at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and became active with the National Republician Committee.Within three years of opening his medical practice,Austin had made a name for himself among Chicago physicians and in the community.In one case,the 1895 Chicago Journal and Evening Press carried a report of a man who suffered a blow to his head by an irate cook wielding a butcher's cleaver.Austin was called called to the hospital to save the man's life an on arriving discovered that he had treated this patient twice in the past,once repairing damage done to the man's head by a pitchfork and another time patching wounds from a blow with a beer bottle.Despite the extensive injuries caused by the cleaver attack,Austin managed to peform the delicate operation necessary to save the patient's life.
Austin also participated in a number of charity endeavors and belonged to the Chicago Society Baseball League.He helped found the city's Civic League,as he said,not only to "help worthy colored people attain to a higher mode of life,but to suppress crime."
When the city commission decided in 1895 that it was time to appoint an African American to the medical staff of Cook County Hospital,Austin name was among the first considered.At the time no African American man had ever been asked to join the staff of a nonsegregated hospital.But that year Theodore W.Jones,himself an African American man,had been elected to the post of the city commissioner.Was filling positions on the medical and surgical staff of Cook County Hospital.Theodore convened a committee of twelve local physicians to select the newest addition to the hospital's surgical staff,and the group agreed that the time had come to integrate the staff.A tight battle ensued with the group nearly equally divided between Austin and another physician,but they finally chose Austin.Austin maintained that job,along with his growing private surgical practice,until 1898 when his old mentor Daniel stepped from the post of surgeon in chief of Freedmen's Hospital in Washington,D.C. Among those suggested for the was Austin.At first it did not look as through Austin would win the much-coveted position.He finished second in the civil service examination required for all applicants,and many African American newspapers throughout the country lobbied ardently for a different candidate.Nevertheless,Austin was eventually offered the postman offer that some speculated owed more to Namahyoke political connections than to his qualifications.
Once Austin moved to Washington and assumed the post,the rumors and controversy quieted.Austin was acutely aware of the role that the that the hospital,founded in the midst of the Civil War,played in the mind of the country's African American population.He defended the institution in a report he wrote in 1899 to the secretary of the interior,whose office oversaw its operation and who,in an earlier report,had made staffing and regulation suggestions."To the negro race especially Freedman's Hospital means a great deal more,both from a philanthropic and scientific standpoint,than can be made to appear in such a brief statement as this necessarily is," Austin wrote.He helped usher the hospital into a twentieth century,overseeing the installation of a modern telephone system,a new children's ward,and the expansion of the nurses' home.In the four years he served as surgeon in chief,428 surgeries were peformed,among which were only 5 deaths.
Although Austin resigned from the post of surgeon in chief in 1902,he remained on the surgical faculty of Freedman's Hospital until 1938.From 1911 to 1912 Austin served as president of the National Medical Association,the professional association for African American physicians.He was known among the students at Howard University Hospital was affiliated,for his careful and extensive explanations in the surgical theater and his powers of observation.He drilled into these students his favorite surgical saying,"Diagnosis must depend upon the preponderance of symptoms."Howard students were not the only ones to enjoy the benefit of his teachings.He offered frequent demonstration clinics in West Virginia and elsewhere throughout the South.Among his favorite students were his three sons,all of whom became doctors and trained at Howard University.To distinguish him from his second son,who bore his name,Austin's colleagues gave him the nickname "Pop." Austin remained close to all his sons and opened a private surgical hospital in Washington with the eldest,Arthur Leo.
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