Charles E. Brackett, MD
Professor Emeritus, Neurological Surgery
University of Kansas Medical Center

Frank Randall Teachenor made much of a short life. Born in 1888 in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of an engraver, he matriculated at the University of Kansas School of Medicine just a few months after his high school graduation. By 1911 he had completed his medical studies and, after a year of internship, joined the practice of the eminent Kansas City surgeon, Dr. Jabez Jackson. This association with Jackson gave Teachenor years of training and practice with one of the region’s best surgeons. Jackson was internationally known and later served as president of the American Medical Association.

Teachenor's 1911 KUMC School of Medicine class composite

At the time of the American entry into WW-I there were no neurosurgical training programs. Special courses in military neurosurgery for general surgeons were instituted at six locations around the country. Students in a third course of ten weeks’ duration, starting in January 1918 at the University of Pennsylvania, included Frank Teachenor and John Hayden, also from Kansas City. This seventy-day course of four-hour morning lectures (280 hours in all) and observation of civilian neurosurgical operations in the afternoons constituted the entirety of Teachenor’s lifetime formal training in neurological surgery.

Teachenor in his military uniform

Embarking for France in June 1918 with the medical personnel of Base Hospital #28, Captain Frank Teachenor and his surgical team were busy doing general surgery shortly after the establishment of this 2,500 bed military general hospital in July in Limoges, far behind the front. His surgical beds and operating rooms were located in the recently-completed Bellaire Seminary building. Sadly, though the hospital’s records document admitting diagnoses of about nine thousand patients, there are no records of the several thousand surgical procedures performed by Teachenor and his surgical colleagues, including the eminent Dr. John Binnie, the hospital’s chief of surgery. In fact, most neurosurgical operations were performed in evacuation hospitals near the front. Spinal injuries were not operated at this time, and peripheral nerve injuries were debrided, lavaged, and evacuated to the USA for definitive surgery. One must conclude that, though Teachnor had more neurosurgical knowledge than his colleagues at Base Hospital #28, his five years of experience with Jabez Jackson in Kansas City was his real foundation of general surgical training and experience for his responsibilities at military hospitals in France as a general surgeon, not a neurosurgeon.

The only other source of information about Frank Teachenor’s months as an American military surgeon are the collected letters of his brother, Sergeant Dix Teachenor, who wrote home to their parents nearly every other day. Here we learn that brother Frank and his team, including nurses, were transferred from Base Hospital #28 to Mobile Hospital #3, near the front, early in September. After a fire “burnt out” at the mobile hospital Frank was reassigned to Base Hospital #32, an Indianapolis-organized unit sited in eight resort hotels in The Vosges Mountains at Contrexeville, well away from the front. Dix later noted that Dr. John Binnie, commander of Base Hospital #28 visited Frank and his team. After the 11 November 1918 armistice, by 30 November Frank was back in Limoges at Base Hospital #28 in charge of the surgical wards on the second floor of the Bellaire Seminary building, doing general surgery. On 18 December Dix writes that he watched Frank amputate an arm. Through the first weeks of 1919 Frank helped supervise the contraction of Base Hospital #28. In summary, it can be observed that Frank Teachenor was involved in patient care in France from 23 July 1918 until 24 January 1919 in three different American military hospitals, thus, about six months. Dix noted that he sailed for home on the Northland on 8 February. Arriving in America in March he was assigned to a government hospital facility at Fort Dodge, Iowa, to perform peripheral nerve surgery on wounded veterans. He was discharged from the army in July 1919 after 23 months of service.

Frank Teachenor, MD, with members of the 1932 Harvey Cushing Society

Returning to Kansas City he became the city’s only neurosurgeon, in fact the only neurosurgeon between St. Louis and San Francisco. He was joined in practice by Dr. Donald Coburn from the Montreal Neurological Institute in 1937 and by Dr. William Williamson from the New York Neurological Institute in 1945. Teachenor was succeeded by Williamson as head of neurosurgery at the University of Kansas Medical Center in 1951, having been its first head since 1924. He was certified by the American Board of Surgery in 1937 and was among the first certified by the newly-formed American Board of Neurological Surgery in 1940. His close association with the Harvey Cushing Society, of which he was a founding member and also at one time its president, is worth mention. It is quite possible that Teachenor met Dr. Harvey Cushing - generally regarded as the father of neurosurgery in America - in France during The Great War. It is noteworthy that Teachenor sat at Cushing’s right hand in the official photograph of the distinguished neurosurgeons who feted Cushing at his 70th birthday celebration in 1939, the year of Cushing’s death. This honor, notwithstanding, Teachenor’s eminence in medical, neurosurgical, scholarly, and civic activities in America was beyond noteworthy.

Frank Teachenor, MD, alongside Harvey Cushing at his 70th birthday

On 28 November 1953, Dr. Frank Randall Teachenor died at age 65 of a heart attack following a stroke on his way to work. For many years, despite poor health and the loss of his only son in 1933 and his wife, Ethel, a WW-I nurse, in 1949, he had provided the only neurosurgical care available, not only for all of the hospitals in the Kansas City area, but also much of the Midwest as well. Beside his medical achievements he was respected as one of the Midwest’s first citizens in diverse civic affairs. His professional achievements were many but what all commentators stressed was his gentle, warm, and humble personality, reflected in his deep concern to treat his patients as persons and not as cases.

Frank Teachenor's KUMC faculty portrait, circa 1950

Teachenor’s obituary in the 14 January 1954 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine beautifully summarizes the life of this remarkable man. “He was the recipient of many honors and belonged to many societies but would never permit any fanfare, public adulation or notoriety of sort, even when glossed over with academic frosting.”

The author recognizes the National WW-I Museum and Memorial and the archives of the University of Kansas Medical Center as sources for information and the images of this essay.

Editor’s Note: Dr. Charles Brackett died in May 2016 at the age of 96. Active to the very end of his life this eminent academic neurosurgeon was cut of the same cloth as Frank Teachenor who he both admired and resembled. Obviously, this essay is an affectionate tribute both to Kansas City’s first neurosurgeon and also to the only neurosurgeon still living who knew him.