Latest / Learn Literacy Podcast / 24. History of Dyslexia Part 12: Orton Part 2
Transcript
- Cheryl Urbanczyk: Hi everyone and welcome to this episode of the Learn Literacy Podcast, where we focus on language for life by teaching literacy through language and structure. Today we have episode 12 in our History of Dyslexia series. We are focusing on Dr. Samuel Orton and this is part two of our study of Dr. Orton and his biography and contribution to the field of dyslexia. So we're reviewing A biographical sketch of his from the Bulletin of the Orton Society, Volume 25, Issue 1, January 1975. And the title is Samuel T. Orton MD, Who Was He? And there a preface here. It says it's a program in memory of Dr. Samuel Tory Orton, whose name the Society Bears was arranged for the annual banquet meeting at the 25th anniversary of the Orton Society. In response to the topic question, Samuel T. Orton, who was he, Mrs. Orton gave a biographical sketch, supplemented by the personal memories of several of his formal former associates and friends, and Richard L. Maslin MD and Margaret B. Rawson commented on his impact on the fields of neurology and education. So let's go over part one biographical sketch and personal memories. Okay, Mrs. Orton starts off. That's Dr. Orton's wife. Sam Orton was born in Columbus, Ohio on October 1st, 1879, the son of Edward Orton, LLD, a noted geologist who was then president of Ohio State University, and Anna Torrey, whose sister was the mother of President William Howard Taft. Although rather a delicate child, Sam was described by an older sister as the imp at the age of four, and his participation in the activities of his neighborhood friends seems to have been one of the reasons his parents decided to send him east to his cousin, Horace Taft, for his college preparatory years. Although he did not shine as a scholar at Taft School, his pranks in pursuit of quote science were long remembered there. It was to his father, however, that Sam felt indebted to for his real education. As a boy, he would tag along with his father's classes on their geology trips, from which he developed a lifelong interest in nature, as well as his keenness of observation and the writing of precise scientific reports. There was also a certain rhythm in Dr. Orton's written lectures, which he himself thought he might have gained from the cadences of the King James Version of the Bible. which his father often read aloud to his family, along with commentaries from Greek and Hebrew texts. Sam Orton's college years were spent at Ohio State University, from which he graduated with a BS degree in 1901, in spite of some loss of time because of trouble with his eyes. He suffered from severe migraine headaches throughout his adult life. Both of his parents died at about this time and the Columbus home was closed leaving him very much on his own and with limited resources when he entered the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania in the class of nineteen five. He earned money during some of his summer vacations by digging in the Ohio Indian Mounds, and as a medical student, he undertook a research project under the auspices of the State Archaeological Society, which resulted in the publication before he graduated of his first scientific paper. Dr. Orton continued his training in pathology the following year in the laboratories of the eminent Dr. Frank B. Mallory at the Boston City Hospital. And it was there that he became acquainted with Dr. Elmer E. Southard, who invited him to participate in the intricate pathological study of the brain of a hydrocephalic patient at the Danvers, Massachusetts State Hospital in 1906. Thus was Dr. Orton embarked on his medical career as a neuropathologist. He later spent four years in that capacity at the Worcester, Massachusetts State Hospital, where Dr. Adolf Meyer Johns Hopkins fame had preceded him. This was followed by an interim of special study in the laboratories of Professor Alzheimer in Germany in 1913. So we can see just from that short biographical sketch just how grounded and esteemed Dr. Orton was in his preparation in understanding the brain, studying the brain, connecting with learned scientists around the world and and really building his own understanding of brain structure and function. Upon his return, Dr. Orton accepted an appointment as pathologist and scientific director at the Venerable Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, where he served for the next five years. There he was able to work with the neurological and psychiatric patients in the hospital wards, which enabled him to make closer correlations between various symptoms and the post-mortem findings in the laboratory. This bedside experience may have increased his natural sensitivity to the feelings of people in distress. This was the time of World War One, which brought about a revolution in psychiatry Taking it out of the mental hospitals to the battlefronts, opening up many services to wounded and shell shock soldiers upon their return, and developing preventive medical hygiene programs for civilians. Shortly after, a new type of hospital, the psychopathic hospital, was developed in three centers Ann Arbor, Boston, and Baltimore. Dr. Orton received a call in 1919 to go to Iowa City to build and direct a psychopathic hospital there and established a Department of Psychiatry at the University of Iowa's College of Medicine. Thus, Dr. Orton was director of the Iowa State Psychopathic Hospital when he started his work with children with specific language disabilities in 1925. One of Dr. Orton's first tasks in his new assignment was to select doctors for his hospital staff. This took him to the Boston Psychopathic Hospital to consult with its director, his old friend Dr. Southard. Among those recommended for him to interview was a young doctor by the name of Lloyd J. Thompson. He did not go to Iowa, but their paths crossed again in later years when Dr. Orton was working in New York and Dr. Thompson was teaching psychiatry at the medical school at Yale University. What was Dr. Orton like in those days? Dr. Thompson has been asked to contribute his memories to the narrative. And so now we have a a a narrative from Dr. Thompson about his knowledge of Dr. Orton and his relationship with him. Okay, so we move away from June Orton to Dr. Thompson. I first met Dr. Orton in 1920 at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, where I was just a plain young resident in training. Fortunately for me, there was some delay about an appointment, so we sat on a bench in the lobby getting acquainted for what was to me a memorable fifteen or twenty minutes. He impressed me as being an exceptionally fine man with a soft voice and kindly features. I was impressed too that he did not talk about his own plans for going to Iowa, although he knew that I was aware of them. Rather, he was interested in what we were doing at our hospital and what I was doing too. I thought that was remarkable. That he should be interested in me. Later on, I learned that he was going to take with him to Iowa in the same capacity our Chief of Staff, Dr. Lawson Lowry. Dr. Lowry and I knew each other well. We had both come from Missouri and he had given me my job. He asked me if I would go with him to Iowa as a resident, but I was unable to do so, for I had promised to return to St. Joseph, Missouri to help my father with his private practice. I must define opportunity, but I've always remembered Dr. Orton very well, our sitting on the bench discussing things as if a youngster like me and his point of view mattered. Also at our hospital at the time were several brilliant and charming girls from the Smiths College School of Social Work working on their field placements in a psychiatric social work program started by Dr. Southard. One of them was June Lyday, who later became part of Dr. Orton's mental hygiene clinic. I didn't go to visit them in Iowa, although I often wanted to. So just as a note, this June Lie Day is will become Dr. Orton's wife, June Orton. All right. So to wrap up Dr. Thompson and his narrative, I met Dr. Orton again in nineteen thirty eight when he gave a talk at the Connecticut Medical Society. It was my privilege to take him to the amphitheater. A storm was raging and it grew worse while he was speaking. Trees were swaying and then blowing down, but he talked right through the famous New England hurricane of 38. With trees down all around, the taxi ride to the railroad station was quite an adventure. After World War II and Dr. Orton died, I was at Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston Salem, North Carolina, where I persuaded June Lyday Orton to join us to form the Orton Language Clinic. With Molly Masland and Roger Saunders already, There is speech therapist and as intern and psychology, respectively, and with some other people, we had a fine nucleus for the new language clinic. Perhaps you think that in mentioning these other people, I'm getting far afield from what I was supposed to say about Dr. Orton, but am I? This is part of the way his spirit and his work were carried on. And I think that's a neat idea that what he's trying to get at if I'm understanding him and interpreting him correctly, is that Dr. Orton's work inspired others to keep spreading that work. And that is something that we even see in the Orton Gillingham Academy today, and how fellows are trained and how fellows do training. And all of those connections are there back to the original methods of Orton and Gillingham. Okay, back to June Orton. So Mrs. Orton is continuing now her narrative. Under Dr. Orton's direction, the Iowa State Psychopathic Hospital became a flourishing institution introducing the newer concepts of early care for psychiatric patients, both in the hospital and through its outpatient department and its consultation services to the other state hospitals and institutions for children. Courses were offered not only to medical students, but those in nursing, psychology, sociology, and other disciplines. Research projects were set up and Dr. Orton's own courses in neuropathology not only provided the medical students with basic training in scientific methodology, but also attracted students to Iowa for the opportunity to work with him. Paul C. Boosey and Loretta Bender were among Dr. Orton's students in the 1920s who remember him well. And now we have some thoughts from Dr. Boosey. To the parched wanderer in the desert, an oasis is both a welcome and an unexpected sight. So was Samuel T. Orton at the University of Iowa in the 1920s. A member of a distinguished family of educators who had been associated with Iowa State University, Orton had come to Iowa from Pennsylvania to set up a comprehensive psychiatric service at the university's medical school, and later Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to carry out innovative research. During his tenure, he was one of the few members of the medical school faculty who had a clear idea of what constituted research. As a result, he attracted and stimulated a small group of students with similar interests. These included Loretta Bender, the late William V. Cohn, Lauren Smith, myself, and some others. I just want to circle back to that statement. About Dr. Orton having a clear idea of what constituted research. And I just made a connection to how that is deeply connected to the concept of being diagnostic and prescriptive in Orton Gillingham practice. That that is the research we're doing as practitioners. We are looking at students, observing their errors, diagnosing what they know, what has been mastered, what they don't know. We're prescribing next teaching steps. So we're we're having this research brain as practitioners to apply that to our students to ensure we're supporting them with their learning. Okay, carrying on. I should like to tell you how Dr. Orton influenced me, which may give you some idea of the kind of man he was. During the summer vacation between my freshman and sophomore years in medical school, I decided that I would become a brain surgeon. Although there was no neurological surgeon in Iowa at the time. When I called upon Dr. Orton, he encouraged me and suggested that if I intended to operate on the brain, I should learn something about the diseases which affected it. To this end, he offered me an undergraduate assistantship in neuropathology. I worked in the research laboratories at the Iowa Psychopathic Hospital with Loretta Bender, also a medical student. I lived in the hospital and paid for my keep by doing physical examinations of the patients and running the clinical laboratory. I'm sure that Dr. Orton was not surprised when the quote research which I did was of little significance, for its product was not his primary interest, my education was. His objective, in which he succeeded, was to give me an insight into the difficulties of research, the need for care and advocacy, and the importance of purposeful observation. Again, all hallmarks of the Orton Gillingham approach that we still carry out today. And I think we're seeing threads through these narratives of how much care Dr. Orton had for the development of other people. And from these narratives and what we're learning was keen to support others in their development and growth. A few years later, I had another typical encounter with Dr. Orton. Almost simultaneously, I had been offered two opportunities for training in neurosurgery. One was with an outstanding neurosurgeon at the University of California, and the other was with Percival Bailey at the University of Chicago. I was torn between the two offers and I went to Columbus to consult my old friend and teacher Sam Orton. Without hesitation he advised me to go with Bailey, which I did, and this proved to be one of the wisest decisions of my career. Dr. Orton was professor of both psychiatry and neuropathology at Iowa, as well as director of the Iowa State Psychopathic Hospital. He was a biological psychiatrist. He was no psychoanalyst. He believed that the mind was related intimately to the functions of its brain. During this period, he was attempting to formulate his idea that there were people, particularly children, who appeared to be mentally unable, although they often were not, because the verbal symbols used to convey meaning meant little to them. He spoke of this as a symbolia. Unable to convince his colleagues, despite the soundness of his ideas and his careful presentations, he left Iowa frustrated and discouraged. However, he continued to move toward the conclusions on the nature of the language function and its disorders to which his work at Iowa had led, from which the Orton Society had took its start. I am deeply indebted to Samuel Tory Orton. He gave me opportunities, but most of all he gave me wise counsel. His ideas were far in advance of his time, and in some respects they are still ahead of our own, waiting out there for the newer trends in scientific research to catch up with them. As one by one they seem to be doing. Okay, we will end on that note as we know that Dr. Orton's ideas in many ways were ahead of his time in terms of his his emotional care for his students, in terms of his connection to brain understanding and what is happening in the brains of children when they read and knowing that it's a physiological concern. It's not, an ability issue. And we see in this biographical sketch, his care and concern for developing others and sharing knowledge. So we will continue with reading this and reviewing this biographical sketch in the next session. So keep tuning in. And if you are interested in learn literacy, please go to my website, learnliteracy.com. And you can learn about the Orton Gillingham trainings and other things that I do there. And I appreciate you being here and promoting the cause of Language for Life by teaching literacy through language and structure. Thank you.