When Marion Dugdale, MD, entered medical school at Harvard in the early 1950s, there were only 10 women in her class.
Through much of medical school, she wasn’t sure what specialty she would choose or where she would practice. However, according to an oral history done in 2009, she was sure of one thing: “I was not going to be a lab rat; I was going to be a people doctor.”
Dr. Dugdale became an exceptional “people doctor,” as well as an outstanding researcher and educator.
She joined what today is the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in 1958, first as a research fellow and later as a faculty member in the College of Medicine. Throughout her long career she cared for thousands of patients, educated scores of physicians, and brought national acclaim to the university.
A leader in the diagnosis and treatment of hemophilia and other blood disorders, Dr. Dugdale passed away earlier this month at the age of 96.
For roughly 50 years, Dr. Dugdale led the Hemophilia Clinic at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Dedicating her life to the care of patients with hemophilia, she practiced at many local hospitals, including what is now Regional One Health and the former UT Bowld Hospital, and was a go-to consultant at hospitals including the Memphis VA Medical Center and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Her passion for patient care earned recognition by state and national hemophilia organizations and led to the creation of the Dugdale-van Eys Scholarship for college-bound students with blood disorders.
Dr. Dugdale authored or contributed to more than 50 articles and books on hemophilia and other blood diseases. In 1987, with UT Health Science Center professor Andrew Lasslo, PhD, she patented a group of compounds that alleviated dangerous blood clots in patients living with pacemakers and other medical implants. Both Drs. Dugdale and Lasslo held UTAA Distinguished Professorships.
Born in Peru, the child of British parents, she was sent to boarding school in Canada during World War II, according to her oral history. She went to Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania, and then to Harvard, where she was one of the first women to earn an MD degree.
She came to Memphis with her husband, James McClure, MD, an orthopedic surgeon. In medical school, she had found she was drawn to hematology. “It had a very attractive aspect to it,” she told the oral historian. “You got to see the patients, but then you got to go back to the lab. To me, even now, examination of the blood smear is part of the physical exam as far as I am concerned, and the bone marrow the same thing.”
In Memphis, she began working in the hematology lab run by sickle cell anemia pioneer Lemuel Diggs, MD. She set up a small lab to continue her work on hemophilia, the start of her bench-to-bedside care that benefited so many Memphians over the decades.
She joined the university faculty in 1962. At the medical school, she was a highly respected professor, earning numerous faculty awards, as well as awards from students, for her skill as a lecturer and a teacher in the clinic.
“Dr. Dugdale was seminal in my learning to become a great physician,” said Alva Weir, MD, section chief, Hematology/Oncology at the Lt. Col Luke Weathers Jr. VA Medical Center in Memphis and a professor of medicine at UT Health Science Center.
“She was one of those who saw whole-patient physiology, rather than just guidelines guided by labs and radiology,” Dr. Weir said. “By understanding the true mechanism of diseases, she was able to truly personalize hematology by focusing on the history and physical exam, utilizing the lab to confirm her suspicions, rather than letting lab lead to other lab, until a diagnosis was apparent. Few whole-person thinkers like her remain. Medicine will miss her.”
“Dr. Dugdale embodied the true academic physician and the work being done at the UT Health Science Center College of Medicine since 1911, as we improve the lives of those living in Tennessee through patient-centered care, life-changing discoveries, and educating the future generation of physicians and health care providers,” said Michael Hocker, MD, executive dean of the College of Medicine.
Gifts in memory of Dr. Dugdale may be made to the Dugdale Benign Hematology Endowment at giving.uthsc.edu/dugdale.