| Doris Howell |
 Doris Howell grew up near New York, and went to study medicine as a working student in the Midwest, and then at McGill University
in Montreal. At first Doris Howell was interested in psychiatry, but after a violent episode with an adult psychiatric patient,
preferred to work with children, and found she enjoyed the open and human relationships that paediatrics engendered. Entering
this field in the 1940s/1950s when mortality rates from childhood leukaemia were still very high, Doris Howell found herself
working with dying children and unsupported parents. Eventually overwork and depression forced her to leave her haematology/oncology
paediatric work, and Doris Howell reluctantly accepted a Chair of Paediatrics at the Women's Medical School in Philadelphia.
Here she included 'care of the family' in the medical curriculum, and also met John Fryer and his thanatological society,
Ars Moriendi. At this time two close friends were diagnosed with terminal illness, and when a Lutheran Minister friend asked
her to shepherd Cicely Saunders during her visit to Philadelphia, Doris Howell found herself pouring out her own grief, and
was converted to the philosophy of hospice. Thus began many years of planning to implement hospice care: first in Philadelphia
where the founding group's confusion over whether to implement hospice care as a philosophy or a building finally caused the
project to fold; and secondly in San Diego, where Doris Howell had taken an Assistant Chairmanship/Professorship at the University.
The hospice planned for San Diego also had a traumatic history, although it finally came to fruition in 1977 as a specialty
hospital through monies donated by Joan Crock [ph], heiress to the McDonald's fortune.
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| Interview conducted by Neil Small, 25 October 1997 |
| Interview Duration: 1 hour, 54 minutes |
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