On this day in Alabama history: ‘Benjamin Franklin of medicine’ was born
Alabama physician Seale Harris (1870-1957) was at the forefront of diabetes research in the 1920s and opened the Seale Harris Clinic in Birmingham. (Courtesy of University of Alabama Birmingham Archives, Encyclopedia of Alabama)
March 13, 1870
Physician and medical researcher Seale Harris was born in Georgia. Harris is best remembered for opening the Seale Harris Clinic in Birmingham in 1922 and for discovering that excessive sugar consumption causes hyperinsulinemia. A prolific writer on a variety of subjects, he earned the nickname “the Benjamin Franklin of medicine” and served in Europe under the leadership of fellow Alabamian William Crawford Gorgas, surgeon general of the Army, during World War I. Harris was awarded the 1949 Distinguished Service Medal of the American Medical Association and was posthumously inducted into the Alabama Hall of Fame in 1965.
Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.
For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.
