Frederick Creighton Wellman

Frederick Creighton Wellman (January 3, 1873, near Kansas City, Missouri – September 3, 1960, Chapel Hill, North Carolina) was an American physician specialising in tropical medicine, scientist, author, playwright, teacher, artist and engineer. As an author, he wrote under the pseudonyms Cyril Kay-Scott and Richard Irving Carson. His colorful life led to the epithet "the Casanova of Tropical Medicine".

Early life and education Frederick Creighton Wellman was born on January 3, 1873, in Independence, Missouri, his father was Wheeler Montgomery Wellman and his mother was Nellie Jane, née Blake. He attended the Central High School, Kansas City before going on to study medicine at the Medical Department, University of Kansas, Kansas City in 1894, conducting his clinical studies at Rush and Cook County hospitals in Chicago. He also studied natural science and social science at the University of Chicago before moving to England to study clinical pathology at various hospitals, and tropical medicine and hygiene at the London School of Tropical Medicine, where he achieved a diploma in 1904.

Portuguese West Africa and Tulane In 1896 he took up a post in Portuguese West Africa as a medical missionary for a British charity, travelling there with his first wife, Lydia Jeanette Isely (1869-1948). He remained for nine years.

In 1907 Wellman was involved, as a scientist, in the exploration of the route of the Benguela railway. In Africa he undertook research, publishing many papers and he had a correspondence with the American Society of Tropical Medicine.

After leaving Africa, he returned to London, where he studied entomology, and soon he had gained some renown in that field. for the United Fruit Company. Wellman had been appointed chair of tropical medicine and hygiene at Tulane in 1911. The founding of a school of tropical medicine and hygiene at Tulane was largely funded by the American Society of Tropical Medicine and it was largely funded by a donation of US$25,000 by the businessman Samuel Zemurray.

Brazil As Elsie was a minor, and Wellman had travelled over state lines with her, the Dunns reported him to the police, so soon after they got to New York, they fled to London, living for a time in Bloomsbury as husband and wife. At some point Wellman realized that they were about to be recognized, and he was able to persuade the British Museum to send him to South America to collect insect specimens. The couple took a steamer from Southampton to Rio de Janeiro.

While in Brazil Wellman completed the manuscript of his novel Blind Mice, which was not published until 1921. At the shop, helped by his ability to speak Portuguese and his reporting of the manager's embezzlement, The family, now including Elsie's mother, relocated to a sheep ranch located in an isolated rural area, where the couple both began to compose poems and prose for publication at home in the United States. They abandoned the ranch in 1917 to move to Villa Nova, where Wellman had gained a position in a manganese prospecting with the International Ore Corporation, and in 1919 they went back to New York to get medical treatment for Elsie. However the two remained close, and Wellman wrote admiringly of her in his autobiography.

He began to work as an art teacher, establishing an art school in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was taken over by the University of Denver as a summer school in 1931,

Later life Wellman worked for a while on a project for the New Deal era Works Progress Administration with Creighton before he finally retired. In 1943 he published his first autobiography Life is Too Short, which was dedicated to his children and grandchildren. and their daughter Alice Wellman Harris was also an author of children's books and theater director and producer. He had one child with Evelyn Scott, Creighton "Jigg" Scott (1914-1965).