Health
Author Karen Tanner reported that Holliday was born with a cleft palate and partly cleft lip which was repaired by his uncle, Dr. J. S. Holliday, and a family cousin, the famous physician Crawford Long. She wrote that Holliday needed many hours of speech therapy conducted by his mother. Another Holliday biographer, Gary L. Roberts, argues that it is unlikely that an infant as young as two months would have undergone cleft palate surgery in that era, as most operations of this type were postponed until the child was around two years old. Roberts asserts that such an early procedure would have been sufficiently noteworthy as to merit mention in local and national media and medical journals. Thus, he considers it doubtful that Holliday had a cleft palate at all, and dismisses the claim that a surgical scar is visible in the graduation photograph. This portrait, taken at the age of 20, supports accounts that Holliday had ash-blond hair. In early adulthood, he stood about 5 feet 10 inches (178 cm) and weighed about 160 pounds (73 kg).
Shortly after beginning his dental practice, Holliday was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He may have contracted the disease from his mother, although he may also have caught it from a coughing or sneezing patient. Little or no precaution was taken against this during dental procedures as tuberculosis was not known to be contagious until 1885. He was given only a few months to live, but he considered that moving to the drier and warmer southwestern United States might slow the deterioration of his health.
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Famous quotes containing the word health:
“Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upwards towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“No one ever promised me it would be easy and it’s not. But I also get many rewards from seeing my children grow, make strong decisions for themselves, and set out on their own as independent, strong, likeable human beings. And I like who I am becoming, too. Having teenagers has made me more human, more flexible, more humble, more questioning—and, finally it’s given me a better sense of humor!”
—Anonymous Father. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 4 (1978)
“However strongly they resist it, our kids have to learn that as adults we need the companionship and love of other adults. The more direct we are about our needs, the easier it may be for our children to accept those needs. Their jealousy may come from a fear that if we adults love each other we might not have any left for them. We have to let them know that it’s a different kind of love.”
—Ruth Davidson Bell. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 3 (1978)