Lemuel Diggs

Lemuel Whitley Diggs (January 8, 1900 – January 8, 1995) was an American

In 1938 he helped create in Memphis the first blood bank in the South, only the fourth in the US. He helped Danny Thomas create the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, also in Memphis, in 1962.

In 1971 his work led to the creation of the first comprehensive research center for sickle cell disease at the University, which later endowed a Professor of Medicine position named after him.

His Morphology of Human Blood Cells, which he co-authored with Ann Bell and medical illustrator Dorothy Sturm, is on its 7th edition and is still used as a textbook.^[1][2]

A 1984 interview with Diggs entitled, History of Medicine in Memphis has been published.^[3] Diggs died in January 1995, on his 95th birthday.

Publications

• 1954: (with Dorothy Sturm & Ann Bell) The morphology of blood cells in Wright stained smears of peripheral blood and bone marrow, Chicago: Abbot Laboratories
• 1956: Morphology of Human Blood Cells
• 1933: (with C.F. Ahmann & J. Bibb) "The incidence and significance of the sickle cell trait", Annals of Internal Medicine 7: 769-778

References

• Elliott, J. Michael (1995-01-28). "Lemuel W. Diggs, 95, a Leader In Study of Sickle Cell Anemia". The New York Times.
  ISSN 0362-4331
  . Retrieved 2022-11-06.
• Wailoo, Keith (2001). Dying in the city of the blues : sickle cell anemia and the politics of race and health. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
  OCLC 44794906
  .