Henricus Stander, MD Papers

Henricus Johannes Stander was born in Georgetown, Cape Colony, South Africa on June 21, 1894, to a Dutch father and a French Huguenot mother. Both parents had immigrated to South Africa to escape religious persecution in their respective homelands. Stander was raised on the family farm along with his two brothers and a sister. He received his early education in the South African Public School system. After attending South African College in Cape Town from 1911-1913 where he studied chemistry, he immigrated to the United States. From 1913-1914 he was employed as an instructor at Harvard University while continuing his studies in chemistry at the institution. Following the year at Harvard, he entered the University of Arizona where he earned his Master of Science Degree in 1916. His expertise in the field of colloidal chemistry led to immediate employment, and the year following his graduation he became a consulting chemist to the Hercules Powder Company of Wilmington, Delaware. His position required frequent trips throughout the United States and Mexico and a visit back to South Africa. To satisfy his long-standing ambition to study medicine, he entered Yale Medical School where he received his medical degree in 1921 and graduated at the top of his class.

In 1922, after serving an internship at New Haven Hospital, Stander became associated with the Department of Obstetrics at Johns Hopkins University, an association that would last seven years and shape the direction of his medical career. During this time, Stander came under the influence of J. Whitridge Williams, former dean of Johns Hopkins medical school, and a notable gynecologist, obstetrician, and teacher. This relationship proved to be a major factor in determining the future course of his career. Stander shared Williams’ belief in the need to elevate obstetrics and gynecology to a major field of study in medical schools throughout the country. Upon Williams' death in 1931, it was Stander who took over revision of the new editions of “Williams Obstetrics”, the text that was a standard in medical schools throughout the country.

In 1929 Stander accepted the positions of Obstetrician and Gynecologist-in-Chief at the New York Hospital and Chairman/Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Cornell University Medical College. He was tasked with organizing the Obstetrical and Gynecological Department of the New York Hospital and to ensure a smooth transition of the Lying-In Hospital to its new quarters. In addition, as chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Cornell University Medical College, he was responsible for devising a course of study for the training of medical students in that field.

In preparation for his administrative and teaching duties, Stander spent a year abroad visiting various clinics while observing and learning methods and procedures that would enable him to plan the best physical and administrative organization for his department. Upon his return in the spring of 1932, he took up permanent residence in New York City and in the fall of the same year New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center opened its doors.

Stander discharged his clinical and teaching duties with characteristic determination. Stander believed that maternal mortality in the United States could be lowered by two factors: better undergraduate teaching of obstetrics and gynecology in medical schools, and more intensive and rigorously supervised training of young doctors. To meet these goals, he felt that obstetrics and gynecology must be elevated in medical schools throughout the country to a major field of study rather than the sub-specialty that it was in most schools. To accomplish teaching improvements, Stander appointed a full-time teaching faculty. This system of full-time appointees was a major requirement that Stander felt was necessary to the success of the institution. He was an active and highly visible administrator. He was the president of the Medical Board from its inception in 1934 until the time of his death in 1948.

Stander was an active member of many professional societies and civic organizations. He was a Fellow of the American Gynecological Society, a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, a member of the American Medical Association, the New York State Medical Society, the Academy of Science and Medicine, and the New York Obstetrical Society. In addition, he was a member of the Board of Education of Scarsdale, New York, the community in which he lived. He belonged to three fraternities Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Xi, and Nu Sigma Nu. In 1937, he was honored by the Cuban government with its national scientific decoration "Orden de Finlay." In addition, he was granted the degree of Honorary Doctor of Medicine at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland in 1947. His publications included "The Flotation Process" in 1916, “Toxemias of Pregnancy” in 1929, and various contributions to scholarly journals in addition to his three editions of “Williams Obstetrics,” the last of which was published in 1945 as “Textbook of Obstetrics”.

Stander met Florence Mary Leigh Creelman in 1927 while on leave from Johns Hopkins for a period of clinical study in Montreal, Canada. Creelman was a registered nurse and native of Canada, and the two married that same year. They had four children, two boys and two girls.

He died on May 2, 1948.