| Solomon Carter Fuller | |
| Birth Date: | August 11, 1872 [1] |
| Birth Place: | Monrovia, Liberia |
| Death Place: | Framingham, Massachusetts |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | physician, psychiatrist, pathologist, professor |
| Known For: | work in the field of Alzheimer's disease |
| Alma Mater: | Boston University School of Medicine (M.D., 1897) Livingstone College (1893) |
| Children: | 3 |
| Parents: | Solomon C. Fuller Anna Ursala James |
Solomon Carter Fuller (August 11, 1872 – January 16, 1953) was a pioneering Liberian neurologist, psychiatrist, pathologist, and professor.[2] [3] Born in Monrovia, Liberia, he completed his college education and medical degree (MD) in the United States. He studied psychiatry in Munich, Germany, then returned to the United States, where he worked for much of his career at Westborough State Hospital in Westborough, Massachusetts.
In 1919, Fuller became part of the faculty at Boston University School of Medicine where he taught pathology. He made significant contributions to the study of Alzheimer's disease during his career.[4] He also had a private practice as a physician, neurologist, and psychiatrist.
Solomon Fuller was born in Monrovia, Liberia to Americo-Liberian parents of African American descent. His father, Solomon, had become a coffee planter in Liberia and an official in its government. His mother, Anna Ursala (reported also as Ursilla or Ursula) James, was the daughter of physicians and medical missionaries. His paternal grandparents, John Lewis Fuller and his wife, had been slaves in Virginia. John Fuller bought his and his enslaved wife's freedom and they moved to the city of Norfolk, Virginia. The couple emigrated from there to Liberia in 1852, to a colony set up in West Africa by the American Colonization Society beginning earlier in the century. They helped establish the nation developed by African Americans and liberated African slaves.[1]
Fuller's mother set up a school to teach Solomon and other children in the area. Fuller also studied at the College Preparatory School of Monrovia.[5]
He had a keen interest in medicine given that his maternal grandparents were medical missionaries in Liberia. Fuller moved to the United States to study at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, graduating in 1893. Later he attended Long Island College Medical School.[1]
He completed his MD degree in 1897 from Boston University School of Medicine. It was a homeopathic institution open to students of all races and genders. He pursued further research at the Royal Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Munich, Germany, conducting research under Emil Kraepelin and Alois Alzheimer.[6]
Fuller spent the majority of his career practicing as a neuropathologist at Westborough State Hospital in Westborough, Massachusetts.[7] This is where he completed a two-year internship in neuropathology prior to being selected by Alois Alzheimer to conduct novel research at the Royal Psychiatric Hospital at the University of Munich, led by Emil Kraepelin. While there, he performed ground-breaking research on the physical changes that occur in the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients.[8] Approximately one year later, he returned to Westborough State Hospital with his new knowledge. He developed and edited the Westborough State Hospital Papers, a journal that began publishing results of local research.
He worked with Alois Alzheimer, the psychiatrist credited with publishing the first case of presenile dementia.[9] While working as a clinical pathologist, Fuller noted that amyloid plaques[10] and neurofibrillary tangles[11] may be significant biomarkers for the study of Alzheimer's disease, separate from arteriosclerosis, the then-assumed cause of disease.[12]
Fuller worked with patients with chronic alcoholism, noting the neuropathology of the disease. In 1909, Fuller was a speaker at the Clark University Conference organized by G. Stanley Hall, which was attended by such notable scientists and intellectuals as anthropologist Franz Boaz, psychiatrists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, philosopher William James, and Nobel laureates Ernest Rutherford and Albert A. Michelson.[13] Fuller's seminal publications, a two-part review of Alzheimer's disease, came in 1912 and was the first English translation of the first Alzheimer's case. Many of Fuller's contributions to the scientific literature were forgotten for decades, but his discoveries continue to guide research today.[14] One 21st century researcher wrote that Fuller’s discoveries had led to such “a major contribution to the body of clinical knowledge concerning Alzheimer’s disease” that the neurodegenerative disease would have been named for him if Kraepelin hadn’t insisted it be named for Alzheimer, Kraepelin’s student.[15]
In 1919, Fuller left Westborough State Hospital to join the faculty at Boston University School of Medicine. He served as an associate professor until 1933, at which time he left academia after recognizing racial disparities in the salary and promotion processes of his time. Upon retirement from academia, however, he received the title of Emeritus Professor of Neurology at Boston University. He continued in private practice as a physician, neurologist, and psychiatrist for many years.
When the Veterans Administration opened the Tuskegee Veterans Administration Medical Center after World War I with an entirely black staff, Fuller was instrumental in recruiting and training black psychiatrists for key positions.
For most of his life, Fuller lived in Framingham, Massachusetts with his wife, the sculptor Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller. They had three children.[1] After losing his eyesight in 1944, Fuller was unable to continue practicing and passed away in 1953, at the age of 81 years, due to advanced diabetes and gastrointestinal malignancy.