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Born
in Eureka, California on August 13, 1902, Dr. Christie earned
a B.S. degree from the University of Washington and an M.D. from
the University of California, San Francisco. He was a football
player in college and played in the 1924 Rose Bowl game. In 1943,
he came to Vanderbilt as chair of the Department of Pediatrics.
Dr. Christie was a beloved teacher at Vanderbilt and a respected
humanitarian in the Nashville community. After his retirement
in 1968, Dr. Christie devoted much of his time to the Vanderbilt
Appalachian Student Health Coalition to establish health care
delivery to the underprivileged of Appalachia.
In
1958, Dr. Christie received the John Phillips Award from the American
College of Physicians for his research work concerning histoplasmosis.
Histoplasmosis, a disease which simulates tuberculosis clinically,
is caused by a fungus. It is known as "The Vanderbilt Disease"
because the basic work of isolating its cause was done here during
the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Dr. Christie became interested in
histoplasmosis after noticing that a large percentage of patients
examined on his wards and clinics revealed clinical signs of tuberculosis
but reacted negatively to skin testing for that disease.
In
the late 1940s, long before national civil rights legislation,
Dr. Christie moved his African-American patients into the whites-only ward at Vanderbilt University Hospital. His objective was
to provide the best of care to all his patients. He asked no one
for permission, but just moved the African-American patients downstairs
and combined the wards. Dr. Christie was particularly proud of
the fact that famed Olympic athlete, Wilma Rudolph, was one of
the children who was successfully treated for polio at Vanderbilt.
Dr. Christie's dream was for a modern state of the art medical
facility for children. This dream was achieved in 2004 with the opening of the new Vanderbilt Children's Hospital.
Dr.
Amos Christie received many national awards during his life.
In 1979, the American Pediatrics Society gave him their highest
honor, The John Howland Award. Dr. Christie touched and enriched
many lives. Perhaps his greatest legacy are the many excellent
pediatricians he trained during his twenty-five years as Chief
of Vanderbilt's Department of Pediatrics.
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