Dr. Tom Douglas Spies

Tom Spies did his best-known work in a hospital in Birmingham, Alabama. Wikipedia says James S. McLester, physician-in-chief at Hillman Hospital, invited him there in 1935, and he directed the hospital's nutrition clinic after 1936. He had been an instructor at Western Reserve and then an assistant professor at Cincinnati. In 1945 he and six social workers studied how daily milk affected the growth of malnourished children. Wikipedia adds that Time named him among its 1938 men of the year in science, and in the late 1940s he used folic acid against tropical sprue in Cuba and Puerto Rico.

What the plaque says

Dr. Tom Douglas Spies (Sept. 21, 1902 - Feb. 28, 1960) A native of the Fannin County community of Ravenna, Dr. T. D. Spies was an eminent authority in the study of nutritional diseases. In the 1930s, he led in the discovery of a cure for pellagra, a disorder caused by inadequate diet that once afflicted thousands in the South. He received many honors, including the American Medical Association's Distinguished Service Award in 1957 and citations from Cuba and Puerto Rico for his work in tropical medicine. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

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• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 23 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 28 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.

More markers nearby

• John P. Simpson — steps away
• Military Headquarters Northern Sub-District of Texas, C.S.A. — steps away
• Sam Rayburn — steps away
• Bailey Inglish — 0.5 mi