Remembering Frederick Holmes, Distinguished Professor of Medicine and World War I Historian

By James Patton

Frederick F. Holmes, MD, MA (Hist.) (1932–2025) Hashinger Distinguished Professor of Medicine, editor of and contributor to Medicine in the First World War, University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC).

Fred and I worked together for two years on his website; I contributed five articles. When Fred stepped back from full-time medical practice, he indulged a long-standing avocation and achieved a master’s degree in history, concentrating on British history. Given his familiarity with exotic diseases, he wrote his dissertation on the illnesses of the Stuart dynasty.

Although my background isn’t in medicine, we did share a keen interest in historiography. He was a great editor to work with, frequently suggesting more concise ways to say something. He helped me solve a medical puzzle that I had encountered in my biographical series on Edward Tinkham: did he have pneumopnia or meningitis, and why did he linger so long before death? Long enough for the news of his illness to get back to America and for his father to sail over to Italy?

This was right in Fred’s wheelhouse. He figured  out that the same bacillus could cause both, ergo Tinkham beat meningitis but died from pneumonia. Fred liked to reinterpret historical events by examining the medical evidence. Another example—he had a theory about the demise of the Red Baron based on his medical assessment of the German ace’s previous injury that he was thought to have, but Fred never finished this article.

I  was one of a few who knew that Fred used a pseudonym when he wrote comments on other people's blogs (he was Anne Johnson, MD).

It was also my great pleasure to know his wife, Grace (1932–2023), a pediatrician at KUMC, and to publicize her monumental work North Dakota Nurses in the First World War.

I know that his family and friends will miss him more than I will, but his passing leaves a hole in my life too.

Ambulances from Base Hospital #28

Please read the obituary below to learn more about Fred’s amazing career.

https://johnsoncountypost.com/2025/02/03/frederick-f-holmes-m-d-252362/

Although Medicine in the First World War is no longer an active website, it is still open to view at KUMC’s Department of the History and Philosophy of Medicine Archives. It’s full of interesting material, especially the complete history of Base Hospital No. 28, the Kansas unit.

https://www.kumc.edu/school-of-medicine/academics/departments/history-and-philosophy-of-medicine/archives/wwi.html