A Medical Pioneer for Children

He was considered Los Angeles’ “doctor of the century,” a medical visionary who created a successful treatment for early polio victims by observing the construction of harnesses for mule teams and adapting it to a surgical technique.

He set up shop for his innovative treatment in a magnificent stable with a clock tower on an estate in the exclusive West Adams district, founding Los Angeles’ first orthopedic hospital.

Throughout a career that spanned almost seven decades, Dr. Charles LeRoy Lowman’s techniques were legend and his list of accomplishments lengthy: the first orthopedic surgeon in the Southwest; in 1931, the first to develop a surgical technique called “fascia transplants” that enabled some polio victims to walk; and the first in the state to push for special schools for handicapped children. In 1971, the Los Angeles Medical Assn. honored him as “Doctor of the Century.”

*

His dream of “treating the whole child”--not just the physical disabilities, but education, social and psychological growth--eventually took root on a 3 1/2-acre estate between Flower and Hope streets.

But that was two decades after the day in 1900 when the 21-year-old Lowman got off a train in Los Angeles with a sandwich and $10. He quickly landed a job as a bill collector for $60 a month, squeezing deadbeats for an ice company.

Moonlighting as a secretary for the state Highway Commission added $15 a month to his income and by 1902 helped him pay the tuition at the USC School of Medicine.

After finishing his studies in Boston, he returned to Los Angeles, becoming the first orthopedic surgeon in the Southwest.

By 1909, he had opened a small clinic with the help of volunteers from a nearby Bible school. The group and clinic soon incorporated as the Crippled Children’s Guild, for children whose parents couldn’t afford to pay for treatment.

His work was interrupted by World War I service as an Army captain. While he was away, the West Adams rococo mansion that Lowman had his eye on for a new hospital burned to the ground, leaving only a brick stable, a gazebo and a fishpond.

But John Brockman, a wealthy businessman and Lowman’s landlord at the clinic, scooped it up on Lowman’s behalf. He was so impressed with Lowman’s enthusiasm and spirit that he sent the captain a telegram offering him a deal: Lowman could have the property free if he raised $100,000 and erected a building within three years.

When Lowman returned, he moved the clinic into the stables. The horse stalls were divided by curtains to make examining rooms, harness rooms were turned into offices and feed bins were used to mix plaster for patients’ casts.

With the clock ticking away on his deal, Lowman inspired hundreds to join his crusade, including Anita Baldwin, daughter of land baron “Lucky” Baldwin, who gave him $50,000.

His pitch for contributions was a bold gamble. He went right down the 1919 city telephone book, writing hundreds of letters and enclosing a crisp new greenback in each. “This is real money,” he wrote. “It has gone out to bring your dollar back with it.”

He more than doubled his money.

*

On April 1, 1922, Los Angeles’s first orthopedic hospital opened, including a school for its young patients. Because children would be spending months or even years in the hospital, Lowman believed it was important to provide a school, sports and organized clubs. The public school at the hospital was the forerunner of special education. Ambulances worked double-duty, bringing patients to the hospital and taking them sightseeing.

*

Heating was added to the converted koi pond. The therapeutic pool helped patients build strength and stamina, while the warm saltwater relaxed their muscles.

For six years, Lowman worked with the Los Angeles school board to get more teaching programs and transportation for handicapped children. In 1926, legislation he spearheaded became state law, opening up special education schools for handicapped children. One of the first, in North Hollywood, was named for Lowman.

Lowman turned to working on an experiment aimed at helping children walk. In 1931, two decades before the polio epidemic, Lowman pioneered what was hailed as one of the greatest orthopedic advances at the time.

Watching freight wagons being pulled across the Mojave Desert and noticing the X pattern of the chains connecting the mules, Lowman devised a surgical technique that took strips of connective tissue called fascia from the patient’s leg and crisscrossed them across weak abdominal muscles for support.

By 1954, when Dr. Jonas Salk released his polio vaccine, Lowman’s treatment had become legendary.

The vaccine came on the heels of a series of medical advances that had, since World War II, virtually eliminated tuberculosis of the bones and joints, rickets, and the bone infection osteomyelitis.

As children no longer needed long hospital stays, the hospital opened its door to adults.

Lowman had critics, however. According to Dr. M. Mark Hoffer, director of pediatric orthopedics at the present-day Orthopaedic Hospital, there was for decades a rivalry between Childrens Hospital and Orthopaedic Hospital.

Hoffer said that Dr. John Wilson Sr., first orthopedic leader at Childrens Hospital, always considered Lowman a “country bumpkin,” and Childrens Hospital refused to have anything to do with Lowman’s hospital. It has only been since Lowman’s death in 1976 that the two facilities have seriously tried to establish a better relationship, he said.

Today, as the Orthopaedic Hospital Foundation celebrates its 80th anniversary at the same address, the only vestiges of the original site are the palm trees lining the entrance driveway once known as the “Portal of Hope.”

L.A. Then and Now / Cecilia Rasmussen