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Aesculapian Medical Society - NMA Chapter of Indianapolis, Indiana, AESCULAPIAN MEDICAL SOCIETY INC PO BOX 681491, Indianapolis, IN (2026)

02/24/2023

The Struggle for Adequate Healthcare for African Americans in Indianapolis-1906-1925 "Sisters of Charity"
by Norma Erickson
(photo: Sisters of Charity first hospital 'Hospital Indianapolis News, June 10, 1911)
When Vice president-elect Kamala Harris made her speech the night her running mate Joe Biden projected as the next President of the United States, she poignantly recognized “Women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality, liberty and justice for all, including the Black women, who are often, too often overlooked, but so often prove that they are the backbone of our democracy.” She confessed she stood on the shoulders of Black women who came before her, struggling to transform our nation from a society that derided and excluded people of color, to one that could become a better place when all were lifted to an equal standing. In the decades that surrounded the turn of the twentieth century, women of all races and even classes undertook an effort to improve society, approaching the problem from different value systems.
For white women who embraced the Progressive ideas of the time, their work became known as “municipal housekeeping”. Rooted in the idea of the woman was the mistress of her household domain, the existence of a healthy, well-ran home depended on a healthy, well-ran public sphere. They sought to “clean up City Hall” and improved many facets of life and work outside the home.
(photo: ad from The Freeman, January 25, 1913)
For some Black women, they were inspired by the Social Gospel Movement that recognized that Society—not just the Individual—required salvation. One historian framed black clubwomen’s motives as their desire to take control of their lives and to fulfill the Social Gospel through action, like the women who followed the historical Jesus of the New Testament. Social reforms became the vehicle for saving individuals, and by extension, the civic realm. As with the white push for change, the goals of Black women included uplift specifically for women. The marriage of these two manifestations of faith—uplift for salvation and female empowerment became important for many of them.
Before going deeper in the health care history that involved these women, one misconception must be pointed out: Being Black in Indianapolis in the first decades of the twentieth century did not automatically mean you were poor. There might have been only one Madame C. J. Walker, the famous self-made millionaire, but there were many successful black businesswomen and wives of businessmen who lived a comfortable life and desired respectful treatment. Second, even working-class women, many who were domestics, desired the same respect and were members of clubs that provided social interaction and improvement activities, including adequate and dignified healthcare. One example of their battle for respectability and the quest to improve lives stands out—the founding of a hospital for African Americans in 1911.
Several women’s clubs worked for improved healthcare in the African American community of Indianapolis. Their efforts ranged from directly providing care, supporting the facilities, creating places for care, and training care givers. They undertook these projects with firm convictions that women possessed unique abilities that allowed them to carry out their missions of care and to do so with as much autonomy as possible. The most ambitious of these projects was the Sisters of Charity Hospital.
The Grand Body of the Sisters of Charity (GBSC), not to be confused with Catholic women’s religious orders with a similar name, was formed in Indianapolis in 1874 in response to the needs of large numbers of southern Blacks moving to the city near the end of the Reconstruction of the South that followed the end of the Civil War. Many women’s clubs formed for a variety of ends, some social or utility minded (for instance, sewing clubs) and some with for public goals in mind (one example is the Women’s Improvement Club). Many of them embraced the motto of the National Association of Colored Women: Lifting as We Climb. The GBSC differed slightly from other women’s clubs in that it operated as a lodge, with benefits to its members that satisfied needs like burial to financial assistance when needed. The purpose of the hospital was to care for lodge members, but service was also extended to the entire Black community.
Originally housed in a former residence at 15th and Missouri Streets in 1911 (where the parking garage for the IU Health Neuroscience Center now stands), the hospital moved to another house at 502 California Street in 1918 (now an open lawn on the IUPUI campus. The hospital also served the community by formally training young women as nurses. This professional activity held great prospects for the advancement of Black women. They also worked with the juvenile courts and “wayward” girls. However much these services were sorely needed, such a small institution had a difficult time keeping up with necessary maintenance and improvements that would make the hospital a suitable place for surgery or a maternity hospital. Keep in mind that the Sisters of Charity Hospital and Lincoln Hospital were providing a place for care and treatment that should have been accessible to Black doctors, nurses, and patients as citizens and taxpayers of Indianapolis. It closed around 1921.
The Sisters of Charity pursued the quest for uplift for their community and briefly accomplished a unique achievement. The Sisters of Charity Hospital was a rare instance of an African American hospital owned and operated by black clubwomen in a northern state.

02/21/2023

Harvey Middleton, MD (Feb. 15, 1895-Mar. 18, 1978).
Born in Denmark, South Carolina, Middleton graduated from Benedict College in 1919. After a brief service in the Army during World War I (1918-1919), he attended the School of Medicine at Boston University (1920-1922) and graduated from Meharry Medical College with an M.D. (1926). A cardiologist, Middleton completed postgraduate work in the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease at Harvard Medical School, Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, University of Michigan, University of London, and the Indiana University Medical School.

In 1928, after a brief practice in Springfield, Tennessee, Middleton joined the staff of St. Joseph Hospital in Anderson, Indiana. He moved to Indianapolis in 1935, where he unsuccessfully applied to become the only Black doctor on the staff of City Hospital. He was allowed to volunteer in the outpatient clinic at the facility. He purchased a portable cardiette EKG machine and went into private practice making electrocardiograms.
The hospital subsequently relented in their discrimination, and Middleton received a staff appointment at City Hospital in 1942. He later served on the staff of St. Vincent, Methodist, Community, and Winona Memorial hospitals.
The author of several scientific papers and journal articles on cardiology, Middleton was affiliated with numerous professional medical organizations. As a civic leader in Indianapolis, Middleton was active with the YMCA, serving on the metropolitan board for three years, chairing several committees of the Senate Avenue YMCA, and working as a delegate at the International YMCA conference in Paris in 1955.

02/21/2023

Dr. Frank Perry Lloyd
Born in South Carolina, Frank Perry Lloyd (Oct. 20, 1919-Aug. 27, 2002) graduated from South Carolina State College, then from the Howard University School of Medicine in Washington D.C. He served as a Rockefeller Fellow at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, then taught at Columbia University. Coming to Indianapolis, he established his own medical practice, delivering babies and doing research in gynecology and obstetrics.
Lloyd became one of the first African American doctors on the medical staff at what was then Methodist Hospital at 16th and Capitol in 1954. He launched a new era as director of medical research in 1963, laying the groundwork for Methodist to become a teaching/research facility in addition to patient care.

In 1981, Lloyd became the first African American president of the hospital. Leading the institution through an era of major expansion, he hoped Methodist could become an Indiana version of the famous Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. The hospital pioneered the state’s first adult open-heart surgery in 1965, then the use of an artificial kidney in 1966, and kidney transplants in 1972.

Frank Lloyd also joined other civic entrepreneurs who put Indianapolis on the national map beyond the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race and high school basketball. The late State Rep. William A. (Bill) Crawford, an influential Indianapolis Democrat, called him “a unique personality—a Renaissance man.” Lloyd was the first chairman of the White River State Park, paving the way for the downtown park as an anchor for urban renewal. He also served as co-chair of the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee (GIPC), which was a key organization for the city’s revitalization in that era.

He was the key founder of the Midwest National Bank, expanding lending opportunities when traditional banks restricted their lending to African Americans. He joined with other investors in 1968 to start radio station WTLC-FM, offering a new African American perspective in the radio market. He served as president of the Metropolitan Development Commission during the 1970s, as city fathers were laying the groundwork for the city’s growth spurt in subsequent decades. He also was one of the founding members of 100 Black Men, an organization offering mentoring for young African American men.

02/17/2023

Grand Body Of The Sisters Of Charity
Women’s club, 1874-ca. 1990s

The Grand Body of the Sisters of Charity (GBSC), not to be confused with Catholic women’s religious orders with a similar name, was formed in Indianapolis in 1874. African American women of Bethel African American Episcopal Church, including Celeste Allen, Eliza Goff, Ada Goins, Dr. Beulah Wright Porter, and Hulda Bates Webb, organized the club to serve southern Blacks moving to Indiana after Reconstruction and the Civil War. The founders recognized “great suffering and need that existed among people of the state” and established the club’s mission to address that need. In its early decades, the organization raised funds for medical treatments, provided at-home nursing care and companionship, and distributed clothing and food. Club members, some white organizations, and the public contributed funds through dues, fundraising events, and donations.

Between 1900 and 1930, GBSC operated a network of lodges around the state, with member benefits including burial and financial assistance. In 1911, the club established a 14-bed hospital for African Americans in a former residence at 15th and Missouri streets in Indianapolis. The hospital aimed to care primarily for lodge members, but it extended service to the entire Black community. Many of the lodges that had been instrumental in raising funds for hospital construction continued to support the institution once it opened.

For about 10 years, Lincoln Hospital, which was organized and operated by a group of prominent African American male physicians, and the GBSC hospital served the African American community with in-patient care and nurse training programs. GBSC’s staff and budget, however, were quickly overtaxed. In 1912, the hospital absorbed the Ward Sanitarium on Indiana Avenue, a surgical hospital that prominent Black physician Joseph H. Ward had established around 1906. It then moved to a smaller house at 502 California Street in 1918. The organization lacked financial resources to provide services to meet national accreditation requirements, forcing it to close in 1921.

As a hospital owned and operated by African American clubwomen, the Grand Body of the Sisters of Charity Hospital was a unique institution for the African American community in Indianapolis during the brief Black hospital movement of the early 1900s. The organization’s founding members also played instrumental roles in the formation of other important African American women’s charitable organizations of the era, including the Alpha Home (1883), established to care for the elderly, and the Woman’s Improvement Club (1903), which played a significant role in the care of African Americans who suffered from tuberculosis.

Membership peaked at 1,200 and 18 lodges in 1912, then began to gradually decline in the 1920s. The Grand Body of the Sisters of Charity focused on providing general support and operating its lodge network in the 1920s. The organization also worked with the juvenile courts and created a junior membership program. It added transportation services, visits to nursing homes, and fundraising for scholarships.

Membership languished through the years of the Great Depression and thereafter. Sixteen remaining members consolidated the remaining lodges into a single lodge in Indianapolis around 1980. The Indianapolis Recorder, the city’s African American newspaper, reported in 1993 that the organization’s members celebrated its 115th anniversary “with a king and queen contest.” It disbanded sometime after that. The former state headquarters remains standing at 1034-1036 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Indianapolis.

02/15/2023

Dr. Joseph Ward is as foundational to Indianapolis's rich African American history as The Freeman publisher Dr. George Knox and entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker, whom he helped her start in her adopted city. Born in Wilson, North Carolina to impoverished parents, young Ward traveled to Indianapolis in search of better opportunities. He attended Shortridge High School and worked as the personal driver of white physician George Hasty. According to The Freeman, Dr. Hasty "'said there was something unusual in the green looking country boy, and to the delight of Joe as he called him, he offered to send him to school.'" By the 1890s, Ward had earned his degree from the Indiana Medical College and practiced medicine in Indianapolis. Barred from treating Black patients in city hospitals, he opened Ward’s Sanitarium and Nurses’ Training School on Indiana Avenue around 1907. He also convinced administrators at the segregated City Hospital to allow Black nurses to take courses alongside white students. This opened professional opportunities to African American women in an era in which they were often relegated to domestic service and manual labor. Ward also gave back to his city by helping found the African American Senate Avenue YMCA.

Dr. Ward temporarily left his practice to serve in the Medical Corps in France with the 92nd Division Medical Corps. He became one of two African Americans to achieve the rank of Major in World War I. During Ward’s absence, his brother-in-law, Dr. M.D. Batties, temporarily took over the sanitarium. In 1924, Dr. Ward became the first African American commander of the segregated Veterans Hospital No. 91 at Tuskegee, Alabama. With his appointment, the hospital's staff was composed entirely of Black personnel. These pioneering practitioners treated Southern Black veterans, many suffering from PTSD following WWI service. Ward's decision to accept the position was itself an act of bravery, coming on the heels of hostility from white residents, politicians, and the Ku Klux Klan.
Under Ward's leadership, the Buffalo American reported, patients "are happy, content and enjoying the best of care at the hands of members of their own race who are inherently interested in their welfare." The Journal of the National Medical Association noted in 1962 that Ward "amassed an enviable reputation in the Tuskegee community. His legendary inspection tours on horseback and his manly fearlessness in dealing with community groups at a time when there was a fixed subordinate attitude in Negro-white relations." Dr. Ward proved so adept as a leader that the War Department promoted him to Lieutenant Colonel. A 1929 editorial for the JNMA praised Ward for his ability "to win over to your cause the White South" and noted "'Those who led the opposition to the organization of a Negro personnel openly and frankly acknowledge their mistake and their regret for the earlier unfortunate occurrences.'" President Calvin Coolidge concurred with these characterizations in an address to Congress. In 1937, Ward pled guilty to "conspiracy to defraud the Government through diversion of hospital supplies." African American newspapers contended that the “trumped up charges” were an attempt by the Democratic administration to replace Black personnel with white. Ward quietly returned home to Indianapolis and resumed his private practice, which had moved to Boulevard Avenue. At a time when African Americans were often excluded from medical treatment, Dr. Ward made care accessible to those in Indianapolis and, on a much larger scale, to Southern veterans.

The Aesculapian Medical Society was a proud sponsor of the historical marker that is positioned on the corner of 22nd Street and Senate, just before the ramp to I-65. The marker states the following:

Side One

African American surgeon and hospital administrator Joseph Ward moved to Indianapolis and practiced medicine by the 1890s. Barred from treating black patients in City Hospital, he opened Ward’s Sanitarium and Nurses’ Training School on Indiana Avenue ca. 1907. This private hospital later moved here. Dr. Ward served in France with the all-black 92nd Division in WWI.

Side Two

In 1924, Ward became the first African American commander of the segregated Veterans Hospital No. 91 at Tuskegee, Alabama. White residents, politicians, and the Ku Klux Klan responded with hostility to the appointment of an entirely black staff. Ward’s adept leadership challenged the Jim Crow Era perception that black Americans were unfit to manage federal facilities.

02/14/2023

Beulah Wright Porter Price
Physician and educator
Beulah Wright Porter Price (Jan. 2, 1869-Nov. 2, 1928) was an educator, physician, and active participant in the African American women’s club movement in Indianapolis in the early 20th century. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, she moved with her mother, a widow who worked as a seamstress, to Indianapolis sometime after 1880. She started her career as a schoolteacher in the Indianapolis Public Schools in 1889 and married Jefferson D. Porter, a mail carrier, on March 8, 1893.
Following her marriage, she gave up her position as a teacher and enrolled in the Indiana Medical College, a private proprietary school established in 1869 that admitted a small number of African Americans. In 1897, Porter opened a medical practice in Indianapolis, becoming the city’s first African American woman physician. She treated mostly African American women and children.
Porter frequently interrupted her medical career whenever a need for her to return to teaching arose. In 1901, these interruptions, which historians attribute to the reluctance of people to seek treatment from an African American female doctor, eventually led her to abandon her medical practice entirely. In 1905, she became principal of the segregated Robert Gould Shaw School, a position she held for 25 years. That same year, Porter represented Black Hoosier schoolteachers at the Colored National Teachers Convention in Atlanta where she also presented a paper.
Although Porter gave up her practice, her medical expertise proved an invaluable asset to the Women’s Improvement Club (WIC) of Indianapolis in its tuberculosis work. With Lillian Thomas Fox, Porter co-founded the WIC in 1905, which Fox originally established as a literary club two years prior. Poor housing and health conditions in the Black community compelled the organization to focus on the fight against tuberculosis.
At its founding, the WIC had broadened its stated goal of self-improvement and instruction of its members to embrace community assistance and improvement. In 1905, lanner Guild, a settlement house in the Black community sponsored by white Indianapolis mortician Frank W. Flanner, publicly announced a plan to provide care for Black tuberculous patients. The Flower Mission Hospital, built in 1903 to focus on TB treatment and care and attached to City Hospital, excluded African American patients. The WIC quickly moved to take over and execute this project independent of any public funding or assistance.
The Oak Hill Tuberculosis Camp was sponsored by the Women's Improvement Club and operated in the Brightwood area from 1905 to 1916.
Credit: Indiana Historical Society
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Importantly Porter and other members of the WIC established a tuberculosis camp to treat infected African American children. In August 1905 the club secured the permission of William Haueisen, a white Indianapolis businessman, to set up an outdoor tuberculosis camp on his Oak Hill property located in the Brightwood area, adjacent to Martindale on Indianapolis’ eastside which was a primary residential center of the African American community. The Oak Hill Camp was purportedly the first outdoor tuberculosis camp in the entire country. Primarily using tents for its facilities, the camp remained in operation until 1916.
By 1910, Porter was living as a boarder with the influential African American physician Dr. Joseph H. Ward. Her first husband died in July 1914. His death certificate listed his marital status as “divorced.” The exact date of Porter’s divorce from him is unknown.
Walter M. Price, an Indianapolis Public Schools teacher, became Porter’s second husband on November 14, 1914. The couple resided in the area surrounding Indiana Avenue, the heart of the African American community, before moving north to 2817 Boulevard Place sometime in the 1920s.
Porter was one of the charter members of the Indiana State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs. She served on the first management committee for the African American Phyllis Wheatley YWCA and as chair of its health committee. She also was a donor for the building constructed exclusively for the organization on North West Street in 1922. Porter served as an officer of the Grand Body of the Sisters of Charity, the Parlour Reading Club, the Mayflowers Club, and the local chapter of the NAACP. She belonged to the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and was a member of the Bethel AMS Church.

02/13/2023

Lincoln Hospital
In the early twentieth century, Indianapolis African American doctors were barred from treating their own patients and performing surgery in Indianapolis’ hospitals. In 1909 with no access to a safe environment for performing surgery and a black population that was understandably dissatisfied with the poor conditions in segregated hospital wards, a group of black physicians established their own hospital in a converted two-story residence on the northeast corner of 11th Street and Senate Avenue.
Though it was not Indianapolis’ first all-Black hospital, Lincoln Hospital was the only one that treated African Americans, regardless of their ability to pay.
About 23 African American doctors practiced in the city at that time. It located at the northeast corner of Senate Avenue and 11th Street. Today, you will see a historical marker on that corner located just under the I-65 overpass and across from the Stutz Building. The Aesculapian Medical Society of Indianapolis endorsed the project and provided monetary donations to help pay for the marker.
The historical marker recalls the challenges of these dedicated physicians and young women from other cities in the state who trained there. It includes information about two other small hospitals of the era--a private clinic opened by Joseph Ward, MD and Charity Hospital, operated by the Sisters of Charity, a philanthropic black women's club.
At Lincoln Hospital, with 19 rooms and a surgery suite, the physicians had the ability to fully practice their profession. The hospital also provided a nursing school for young black women who were excluded from schools because of racial segregation.
Though City Hospital was a public facility, Blacks avoided treatment there because they feared inferior and discriminatory care. Instead, they relied on home remedies and mail-order drugs, according to Lincoln Hospital co-founder Dr. Sumner A. Furniss.
Dr. Furniss and other Black doctors had an additional motive for opening Lincoln. Though they had received education equivalent to that given to white doctors, they could see their patients only in the patient’s home or in their offices. If a Black doctor’s patient needed hospital care, a white doctor had to assume the case.
Lincoln Hospital’s 12 patient rooms could accommodate 17 patients. According to its annual report, Lincoln Hospital was equipped with every necessity of a modern, thoroughly equipped hospital.
In 1911, the Recorder praised Lincoln nurses for their “softness of touch,” “dexterity of purpose,” and “gentleness of spirit …”
The hospital relied financially on the efforts of women’s groups. It also operated a school for Black nursing students.
Two white Indiana businessmen, politician William English and Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Carl Fisher provided substantial startup support.
Unable to sustain a profit, Lincoln Hospital closed in 1915.

02/13/2023

Early History of the Aesculapian Medical Society - NMA Chapter of Indianapolis, Indiana

In 1903, a group of Black physicians, dentists, and pharmacists in Indianapolis formed the Aesculapian Medical Society (AMS). Named after the ancient Greco-Roman god of medicine and healing Asclepius (Aesculapius), the organization was established in response to the refusal of the Indianapolis Medical Society and Indiana State Medical Association to admit Black physicians.

This loosely organized group of medical professionals was more firmly established when Dr. Edwin Moten took over leadership of the society in 1929. By the 1940s, the society’s dentists and pharmacists had left to form their own organizations.

AMS is one of the oldest affiliate chapters of the National Medical Association (NMA). Established in 1895, NMA is the nation’s oldest and largest organization representing African American physicians and health professionals. Programs, policies, and services developed by NMA are implemented at the local level by AMS.

Throughout its history, the Aesculapian Medical Society has focused on professional development, medical education, health policy, public health, and group cohesion and recognition. It has also been committed to self-protection against discriminatory practices within the local medical community. During the 1940s and 1950s, AMS members pushed for the admittance of Black doctors and patients into Indianapolis medical centers. By 1953, all hospitals in the city had agreed to integration.

In the succeeding decades, AMS has supported the continued advances of Black physicians into medical education and hospital administrative positions as well as contributed funds for medical school scholarships for Black students. It has also been committed to improving healthcare and eliminating health disparities for African Americans and other medically underserved populations.

AMS has had a long history of prominent members, including Dr. joseph H. Ward, Dr. Harvey N. Middleton, Dr. Paul A. Batties, Dr. Edward Moss, Dr. Raymond O. Pierce, Dr. George H. Rawls, and Dr. Mary Bush. Along with their accomplishments in the medical field, these individuals were also important civic leaders in Indianapolis.
The Aesculapian Medical Society welcomes all Indianapolis physicians of color to participate in the organization. In addition to local monthly meetings, AMS members also attend regional and national conferences of the National Medical Association.

Photo: W. R. Brown and I. B. Johnson of the Aesculapian Medical Society showing X-rays, ca. 1950s
Credit: Indiana Historical Society

02/12/2023

Sumner A. Furniss (Jan. 30, 1874 -Jan. 18, 1953) was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and moved to Indianapolis with his family as a small child. He attended public schools and graduated from Indianapolis High School (later renamed Shortridge High School). He also studied at the Lincoln Academy in Missouri, where his father was an instructor.

He began studying medicine in 1891 under Dr. E. S. Elder, a white physician. Concurrently, he attended the Medical College of Indiana, graduating second in his class in 1894. That same year he successfully competed for a City Hospital internship, becoming the first African American professional to serve at the hospital. He started his own practice the following year, eventually moving his office to 401 Indiana Avenue, where Canal Square Apartments is located today.
Dr. Furniss continued his general practice for over 50 years. He was one of a handful of Black physicians to hold memberships in the Marion County and Indiana medical societies, the Indianapolis Medical Society, and the Indiana State Medical Association until these organizations denied memberships to African Americans. In 1909, because they were denied admitting privileges at the city’s hospitals, Dr. Furniss and nine other Black physicians formed the Lincoln Hospital Association to establish a public-style hospital where they could treat their patients.
He was also active in politics in the early 1900s. From 1917 to 1921, Dr. Furniss served as the second African American on the City Council and was a member of the Marion County Republican executive committee.
In 1912, he was an alternate delegate to the Republican Party National Convention. He was a lifetime member of the Flanner House board and was a charter member and first president of the Senate Avenue YMCA.
His brother Dr. Henry Furniss, who was briefly associated in practice with him in Indianapolis, served as consul to Bahia during the McKinley administration and in 1906 was appointed as minister to Haiti under Theodore Roosevelt.

Picture - Dr. Sumner A. Furniss in his private office, n.d.
Credit: The New York Public Library.

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