Solomon Carter Fuller

Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller (1872–1953) was a pioneering African-American psychiatrist who made significant contributions to the study of Alzheimer's disease. He was born in Liberia, the son of a previously enslaved African who had purchased his freedom and emigrated there. Fuller graduated with an MD in 1897 from Boston University School of Medicine, which as a homeopathic institution was open to both African-American and women students. He pursued further research at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Munich, Germany. He spent the majority of his career practicing at Westborough State Mental Hospital in Westborough, Massachusetts. While there, he performed his ground-breaking research on the physical changes to the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

When the Veteran’s Administration opened the Tuskegee Hospital (Alabama) after World War I with an entirely black staff, Fuller was instrumental in recruiting and training black psychiatrists for key positions. In the early 1970s, the American Psychiatric Association established a Solomon Carter Fuller award lecture at its annual meetings.

For most of his life, Fuller lived in nearby Framingham, Massachusetts, with his wife, the famous sculptor Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller.

Works

Fuller, Solomon C. “A Study of the Miliary Plaques Found in Brains of the Aged,” American Journal of Insanity 28(2) (1911).

Further reading

• W. Montague Cobb. “Solomon Carter Fuller (1872-1953),” Journal of the National Medical Association 46(5) (1954).
• John Potter, “Solomon Carter Fuller.” Doctors, Nurses and Medical Practitioners: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook pp. 116–119, Lois N. Magner, ed. (Westport: (Greenwood Press, 1998).
• Lucy Ozarin, M.D., "Solomon Carter Fuller: First Black Psychiatrist", Psychiatric News September 6, 2002, Volume 37, Number 17, p. 19.
• Mary Kaplan,"Solomon Carter Fuller: Where My Caravan Has Rested", University Press of America, 2005.