Dr. Abner Wellborn Calhoun

I couldn't figure out why I had some trouble finding this article in my own blog until I realized it was originally published within the first post where I reproduced the most recent newsletter of the time three years ago without its own heading. We'll fix that right here by reproducing Callie's article along with some pictures of Dr. Calhoun's mausoleum at historic Oakland Cemetery. There's a stain glass window in the mausoleum of Jesus healing the blind.

ABNER WELLBORN CALHOUN 1845-1910
FIRST OPTHAMOLOGIST IN THE SOUTH

by A. Calhoun Witham, Jr.

Abner Wellborn Calhoun was born in Newnan Georgia on April 16, 1845. He was the son of a prominent local physician Andrew B. Calhoun MD. During his formative years he was helped his father in his practice and was educated in the town of Newnan. His childhood was typical of a young person of that era until the war of Southern Secession broke out in the spring of 1861. Young Abner volunteered for duty in the Confederate army in that same year just before his sixteenth birthday. He served in the Army of Northern Virginia and fought in every major campaign for the entire four years of the war. He was wounded on four separate occasions and finally through the knee fighting in the trenches outside of Petersburg Virginia. He obviously had seen a great deal of field hospitals and physicians by the end of the war. Once Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House in 1865 he walked home with what remained of his company to Atlanta where began his studies under his father. Once his preliminary studies were completed, Abner left Georgia to study medicine in earnest at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, PA. He graduated with his M.D. in March of 1869 and returned to Georgia to start his own practice. During his early days of practicing medicine he took a great interest in the plight of the blind and as well patients with various ailments of the eye. In early 1871 he traveled to Europe to study the diseases of the eye which was relatively specialized and new field of medicine. He learned fluent German and studied with the brightest medical minds of the age in Vienna, Berlin, Paris and London. He returned to Atlanta four years later and began to practice and teach his specialty. He was the first to perform cataract surgeries in the South which must have seemed miraculous to the hundreds of patients whom he returned sight.
Dr. Abner W. Calhoun, was the region’s first specialist of the eye and ear, first taught at the Atlanta Medical College, which was originally established by his father, Andrew B. Calhoun, in 1854. He founded the college’s medical library with his own volumes (most written in German). This college later became the Emory University School of Medicine in 1915.
As the only scientifically trained ophthalmologist south of Maryland, Dr. Abner Calhoun was the specialist of choice for many a Southerner who had a serious eye problem before the turn of the century. He served as faculty president from 1900 until 1910. He and industrialist Andrew Carnegie provided funds to construct a medical college building that later became part of Grady Memorial Hospital, still a training ground for Emory residents. Unfortunately the only physical memorial to this pioneering southern physician was the medical library that was originally named in honor of Dr. AW Calhoun’s contributions to medicine and ophthalmology. The library was renamed in the late 1970’s during one of Emory University’s quests for wealthier benefactors. Although the library no longer bears his name there is a small room named after Dr. Abner W. Calhoun where you can see an exhibit of his original text books and instruments which started a great medical tradition that carries on to this day.