CHAPTER LX 

 LAWRENCE F. FLICK, M.D.* 



VICE-PRESfDENT OF THE NATIONAL TUBERCULOSIS ASSOCIATION FROM IQO5 TO 



1908 



TO THE pioneer in any field of human endeavor there must 

 always come many hours of discouragement. If, however, 

 he has the perseverance to continue, he will sooner or later 

 be heartened by the continuing development of the movement 

 that he has started. Dr. Lawrence F. Flick was a pioneer in 

 every sense of the word. He had the vision, the conviction, and 

 the perseverance of the true pioneer. The nation-wide cam- 

 paign against tuberculosis, to which he as an individual contri- 

 buted so much, must today bring him great encouragement in 

 contrast with the numerous discouragements to which he was 

 subjected in the earlier days of his work. 



Dr. Flick was born at Carrolltown, Cambria County, Pa., on 

 August 10, 1856. He was the son of an Alsatian farmer and 

 one of a numerous family of children. As a boy he attended the 

 township schools, and when thirteen entered the Benedictine 

 School, Latrobe, Pa. During his first year in college his health 

 broke down and he returned home with a mild attack of tubercu- 

 losis. He made a fair recovery by living largely out-of-doors at 

 home, but he did not become very strong and robust. The 

 result was that after a few months of teaching in Newark, N. J., 

 he again broke down, and after a second recovery, taught school 

 for two winters in the mountains near his home. 



Because of the unsatisfactory condition of his health he de- 

 cided to study medicine, hoping thus to find the way to his own 

 cure. After a year's preliminary work in a country doctor's 

 office, he matriculated in 1877 at the Jefferson Medical College in 

 Philadelphia and graduated from that school in 1879. After a 



* Written by Philip P. Jacobs. 

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