Solomon Fuller was born in Monrovia, Liberia to Americo-Liberian parents of African American descent. His father, Solomon, had become a coffee planter in Liberia and an official in its government. His mother, Anna Ursala (reported also as Ursilla or Ursula) James, was the daughter of physicians and medical missionaries. His paternal grandparents, John Lewis Fuller and his wife, had been slaves in Virginia. John Fuller bought his and his enslaved wife's freedom and they moved to the city of Norfolk, Virginia. The couple emigrated from there to Liberia in 1852, to a colony set up in West Africa by the American Colonization Society beginning earlier in the century. They helped establish the nation developed by African Americans and liberated African slaves.[1]
Fuller's mother set up a school to teach Solomon and other children in the area. Fuller also studied at the College Preparatory School of Monrovia.[5]
He completed his MD degree in 1897 from Boston University School of Medicine. It was a homeopathic institution open to students of all races and genders. He pursued further research at the Royal Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Munich, Germany, conducting research under Emil Kraepelin and Alois Alzheimer.[6]
Career
Fuller spent the majority of his career practicing as a neuropathologist at Westborough State Hospital in Westborough, Massachusetts.[7] This is where he completed a two-year internship in neuropathology prior to being selected by Alois Alzheimer to conduct novel research at the Royal Psychiatric Hospital at the University of Munich, led by Emil Kraepelin.[7] While there, he performed ground-breaking research on the physical changes that occur in the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients.[8] Approximately one year later, he returned to Westborough State Hospital with his new knowledge. He developed and edited the Westborough State Hospital Papers, a journal that began publishing results of local research.[7]
He worked with Alois Alzheimer,[7] the psychiatrist credited with publishing the first case of presenile dementia.[9] While working as a clinical pathologist, Fuller noted that amyloid plaques[10] and neurofibrillary tangles[11] may be significant biomarkers for the study of Alzheimer's disease, separate from arteriosclerosis, the then-assumed cause of disease.[12]
Fuller worked with patients with chronic alcoholism, noting the neuropathology of the disease.[7] In 1909, Fuller was a speaker at the Clark University Conference organized by G. Stanley Hall, which was attended by such notable scientists and intellectuals as anthropologist Franz Boaz, psychiatrists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, philosopher William James, and Nobel laureatesErnest Rutherford and Albert A. Michelson.[13] Fuller's seminal publications, a two-part review of Alzheimer's disease, came in 1912 and was the first English translation of the first Alzheimer's case.[7] Many of Fuller's contributions to the scientific literature were forgotten for decades, but his discoveries continue to guide research today.[14] One 21st century researcher wrote that Fuller’s discoveries had led to such “a major contribution to the body of clinical knowledge concerning Alzheimer’s disease” that the neurodegenerative disease would have been named for him if Kraepelin hadn’t insisted it be named for Alzheimer, Kraepelin’s student.[15]
In 1919, Fuller left Westborough State Hospital to join the faculty at Boston University School of Medicine. He served as an associate professor until 1933, at which time he left academia after recognizing racial disparities in the salary and promotion processes of his time.[7] Upon retirement from academia, however, he received the title of Emeritus Professor of Neurology at Boston University.[7] He continued in private practice as a physician, neurologist, and psychiatrist for many years.
Fuller Middle School, named after him and his wife, a noted sculptor, is located in Framingham, Massachusetts. The school's history reads:
The Fuller Middle School was established in September of 1994. The school is named in honor of Dr. Solomon Fuller, a psychiatrist, and his wife Meta Fuller, a sculptor. The Fullers, a pioneering African-American family, lived on Warren Road near the current location of the Fuller Middle School during the early part of the twentieth century. Dr. and Mrs. Fuller were leaders in their professions and in the Framingham Community during their lives. The roles they played during their lifetimes serve as models for the students of the school named in their memory.[18]
Dr. Solomon Fuller Way, on the site of the former Westborough State Hospital, is named after him.[19]
with Henry I. Klopp, "Further Observations on Alzheimer's Disease," American Journal of Insanity 69 (1912): 26, 27.
"Anatomic Findings of General Paresis and Multiple Sclerosis in the Same Case." Boston Soc. of Neurology and Psychiatry. Arch. Neurol. and Psychiat 5 (1921): 757-1921.
Carl C. Bell, "Solomon Carter Fuller: Where the Caravan Rested," Journal of the American Medical Association 95:10 (2005)
W. Montague Cobb. "Solomon Carter Fuller (1872-1953)," Journal of the National Medical Association 46(5) (1954).
G. James Fleming and Christian E. Burckel, eds, Who's Who in Colored America (New York: Christian E. Burckel & Associates, 1950).
Jerry M. Kantor, Sane Asylums pp. 164–166, (Rochester, Vermont: Healing Arts Press, 2022).
Mary Kaplan, Solomon Carter Fuller: Where My Caravan Has Rested, University Press of America, 2005.
Mary Kaplan and Alfred R. Henderson, "Solomon Carter Fuller, M.D. (1872-1953): American Pioneer in Alzheimer's Disease Research," Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 9:3 (2000)
Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, eds, Dictionary of American Negro Biography (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1982)
John Potter, "Solomon Carter Fuller." Doctors, Nurses and Medical Practitioners: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook pp. 116–119, Lois N. Magner, ed. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998).
