Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

Edith donated a large part of her modern art collection to the New Orleans Museum of Art and
the family foundation eventually added an auditorium annex there. She had modernist views on
education—both Newcomb Nursery and Country Day were founded as “progressive schools” which
sought to educate the whole child without traditional “rote” learning.
Possibly the most noteworthy accomplishment of the next generation was in the 1960s when
Edgar Stern, Jr., committed the Stern Family Fund toward blocking the proposed construction of
a River Front Expressway that would have severed the French Quarter from the Mississippi River.
The largess of the Stern Fund allowed for preservationists to mount a spirited campaign and win
at a time when most cities were bulldozing old buildings in the name of progress.
Edgar Stern died in 1959 and did not live to see Edith honored by both secular and religious
organizations. After receiving the Loving Cup in 1964 she was awarded the Saint Mary’s Dominican
College Medal in 1968; the Hanna G. Solomon Award at the Jewish Community Center in 1972;
and the Benemerenti Medal from the Archdiocese of New Orleans in 1977. Her dedication to
human dignity transcended all groups and faiths.
—Howard Hunter
A LTON
O CHSNER
(1896-1981)
Edward William Alton Ochsner.
DR. ALTON OCHSNER, COURTESY OF OCHSNER HEALTH
SYSTEM ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.
World renowned thoracic specialist Alton Ochsner was the guiding surgeon among a group of five
physicians who in 1942 founded the Ochsner Clinic, 1 today the world-renowned Ochsner Health
Systems. Later in life, Ochsner would also lead a national movement to educate the public about the
hazards of smoking tobacco. The first Ochsner Clinic opened on Prytania Street near Touro Hospital
with nineteen physicians on staff. 2 At the time, group practice was rare in New Orleans, and somewhat
controversial. Until then doctors had practiced solo, made house calls, or served as hospital physicians
or faculty members of Tulane University Medical School. Famously, the decision to form a joint practice
led some competing doctors to leave bags of forty silver dimes on each founder’s doorstep.
Ochsner Clinic grew rapidly, within fifteen years opening its permanent campus in Jefferson
Parish just beyond the borders of New Orleans. Its practicing hospital was a former army camp
near the Mississippi River levee and Huey P. Long Bridge. At the clinic, Ochsner left management
to others, remaining until his death a voice of reason and cooperation in the medical field. His reputation
as a surgeon by the age of forty-five made him the natural leader of the new clinic, but he
had already achieved some national fame with his work linking tobacco smoking with lung cancer.
Ochsner was a Midwesterner who grew up in South Dakota in a close knit family. He graduated
from the local university and, as his physician cousin A. J. Ochsner recommended, attended
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. After his graduation in 1920, he took a
position in Chicago with his cousin. A. J. Ochsner financed two years of study for him in Europe,
after which Alton joined the University of Wisconsin staff. In 1927, the chairmanship of Tulane
University’s Surgery Department opened up following the retirement of Rudolph Matas (q.v.). A fellow
student from St. Louis recommended Ochsner, who won the resulting appointment.
Dr. Ochsner made his reputation practicing at the fabled Charity Hospital in New Orleans while
also serving as a Tulane Medical School faculty member. There he also researched and wrote. In
cooperation with Dr. Michael DeBakey, already well known and within a decade to be in Houston,
Dr. Ochsner published a startling paper in the journal Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics. This 1939
article concluded, “In our opinion the increase in smoking with the universal custom of inhaling
is probably a responsible factor [for lung cancer], as the inhaled smoke, constantly repeated over
a long period of time, undoubtedly is a source of chronic irritation to the bronchial mucosa.” The
nation’s anti-smoking campaign was born.
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