CROTHERS, BRONSON (1884-1959)

American physician and researcher

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Bronson Crothers was the son of a popular Unitarian minister in Harvard Square. He took his M.D. at Harvard and his clinical training at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Children's Hospital, Boston. After several more years in private practice in Minnesota and the Army Medical Corps during World War I, he developed an interest in neurological diseases, studying in Walter Cannon's physiology laboratory at Harvard and at the New York Neurological Institute. Crothers returned to the Children's Hospital in 1920, in what he described as “the experiment of assigning a pediatrician to the neurology service,” when he was made the first chief of neurology.

Crothers had two large fields of clinical research: birth trauma, particularly brachial plexus injuries, and cerebral palsy. His first responsibility became the creation of a highly interdisciplinary outpatient clinic for children with cerebral palsy. Therein he brought together psychologists, nurses, therapists, teachers, surgeons, and social workers to collaboratively help their charges and to explore the nature of the condition. Crothers's work with some 1,800 people with cerebral palsy culminated in a monograph with Richmond S. Paine (1920-1969), The Natural History of Cerebral Palsy (1959), which is still consulted today.

Beyond his intellectual contributions, Crothers was a prominent national consultant in issues relating to children with disabilities, chairing President Herbert Hoover's 1932 White House Conference on Child Health and Protection. In addition, he helped found the multidisciplinary American Academy of Cerebral Palsy with George Deaver, Winthrop Phelps, Temple Fay, Earl Carlson, and Meyer Perlstein. Finally, his trainees absorbed Crothers's fascination with interdisciplinary clinical research and, in turn, trained many more leaders. These disciples included Winthrop Phelps, who went on to establish the institute that would later become the Kennedy-Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.