Louis R. Farley, D.O. collection
Collection Scope and Content
The Louis Farley D.O. collection includes a variety of records dated 1907-1974 and includes items created and collected by Dr. Farley as well as his daughter. The records document his professional and private life. The collection includes several photographs, professional diplomas and certificates, and newspaper clippings.
Biographical/Historical Note
Louis Farley D.O. was born in Syracuse, New York in 1907. Dr. Farley’s father, Riley, was an osteopathic physician for 52 years after completing training at the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville, MO, under Andrew Taylor Still, D.O., osteopathy’s founder. Dr. Farley graduated from Syracuse University in premedical studies receiving his A.B. in 1929. He proceeded to the Philadelphia College of Osteopathy [today, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine] where he graduated in 1933. Lou married Emily Josephine Puder (1908- 2004) on April 15, 1933. From 1933-36, he completed an internship and surgical residency at the Bashline-Rossman Osteopathic Hospital in Grove City, PA. In 1937 he received a junior membership in the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons.
Dr. Farley arrived in Portland in 1939 to join the surgical staff of the Osteopathic Hospital of Maine and began his productive 23-year career, characterized by ceaseless effort to increase his surgical skills. In 1944 the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons conferred upon Dr. Farley Senior Membership in the art and practice of surgery, and by 1946 he had met all the requirements of the Board of Osteopathic Examination for Certification in the Specialty of Surgery. In 1949 he took a postgraduate course in Advanced Surgery under the Austrian surgeon, Dr. Andreas Plenk, given by the Graduate School of College of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons in Los Angeles, California. In 1951 Dr. Farley became a Fellow of the American College of Osteopathic Surgery. As a College fellow he was active on the educational committees concerned with standards and accreditation, and in later years travelled to examine young surgeons’ competency.
In 1954 Dr. Farley’s interest in studying thoracic surgery led him to pursue a postgraduate course in Clinical Surgery under the Foreign Extension Division of the Los Angeles Graduate School. The four-month course entailed working with Dr. Andreas Plenk at the Allgemeines Krankenhaus [General Hospital] in Linz, Austria, where Dr. Plenk was Chief of the Surgical Staff. Prior to the Eisenhower Administration, osteopathic physicians were not accepted for postgraduate courses by U.S. medical schools, thus travelling abroad to study was Dr. Farley’s only option. After returning from the four months’ course abroad, Dr. Farley –in his wife’s words—”pioneer[ed] the legal right in Maine for physicians to be allowed to deduct the expense of courses of study pursued in foreign countries,” in calculating their state taxes.
As head of the surgical department at the Maine Osteopathic Hospital, Dr. Farley was in charge of the surgical training for interns and residents. Dr. Farley had been Chief of Surgery since 1945 at the Osteopathic Hospital of Maine, and from 1959 he was a Diplomate in Surgery of the American Osteopathic Board of Surgery. In 1961 he became a member of the American Osteopathic Board of Surgery, which examines surgeons for specialty certification.
Prior to his death in 1962, his surgical caseload had expanded to the point where he had decided to take another surgeon into his practice. A surgical resident, Milton Redlitz, appeared to him a practitioner in whom he could confidently entrust his patients. Unhappily, before he could carry out this plan to ease the stress and burden of his heavy schedule, he suffered a fatal myocardial infarction on April 5, 1962.