Theodore Kenneth (T.K.) Lawless (December 6, 1892 – May 1, 1971) was an American dermatologist, medical researcher, and philanthropist. He was a skin specialist, and is known for work related to leprosy and syphilis.
Lawless was also involved in various charitable causes, including Jewish causes. Related to the latter, he created the Lawless Department of Dermatology in Beilinson Hospital, Tel Aviv, Israel. He received his M.D. degree from Northwestern University Medical School, and was a self-made millionaire. In 1954, he won the NAACP Spingarn Medal, presented annually to an African American of distinguished achievement.
Early life
Lawless was born December 6, 1892, in Thibodeaux, Louisiana, to Alfred Lawless Jr., (a Congregational minister, instructor at Straight University, and American Missionary Association district superintendent of churches) and Harriet Dunn Lawless (a school teacher). Soon after his birth, his father moved the family to New Orleans, Louisiana. He earned $1-a-day as a boy in his first job, in a New Orleans market.
Education
Lawless attended Straight College (now, Dillard University) in New Orleans for secondary school and went from there to Talladega College in Alabama where he received an A.B. in 1914. He then attended the University of Kansas School of Medicine and Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, from which he received his MD in 1919 and an MS in 1920.
In 1920 he was named a Rosenwald Fellow in Medicine—an award targeting top black medical students—and thereby received $1,200 ($ in current dollar terms). Lawless engaged in graduate studies at the Vanderbilt Clinic of Columbia Medical School and at Harvard Medical School. He held a fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. He received further postgraduate training outside the United States at the University of Paris's premier dermatology program at L'Hôpital St. Louis, as well as at the University of Freiburg in Germany, and the University of Vienna in Austria. He noted later that "it was a noteworthy fact in my own life experience that of the twelve letters [of recommendation for study abroad] that I received, eleven were from Jewish physicians."
Career
After graduating in 1924, Lawless returned to Chicago to open his dermatology practice on Chicago's South Side in a poor, black neighborhood. He became an instructor and research fellow at Northwestern University Medical School the same year, and taught there as a professor of dermatology and syphilology until 1941. He helped establish the university's first medical laboratories, and established the first clinical laboratory for dermatology.
Lawless performed research on syphilis, leprosy, sporotrichosis, and other skin diseases. In 1936, he helped devise a new treatment for early stage syphilis (electropyrexia, which artificially raised a patient's temperature, and then injected the patient with therapeutic drugs). He also developed special treatments for skin damaged by arsenical preparations, which were commonly used during the 1920s against syphilis, and was one of the first doctors to use radium to treat cancer. Between 1921 and 1941 he published ten papers on dermatology, which including studies on warts, sporotrichosis, the use of colloidal mercuric sulphide, arsenicals, the treatment of early syphilis with electrically induced fever, tinea sycosis of the upper lip, tularemia, and congenital ichthyosiform erythroderma.
In 1957 Lawless was the first Black member of Chicago's Board of Health. His professional memberships included the American Medical Association, the National Medical Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 1935 he became a diplomate of the American Board of Dermatology and Syphilology. He served as an associate examiner in Dermatology for the National Board of Medical Examiners and as a consultant for the United States Chemical Warfare Board.
A shrewd investor and businessman, he became a multi-millionaire, and had a remarkable business career. Lawless was director of both the Supreme Life Insurance Company and Marina City Bank. He was also a charter member, associate founder, and President of Service Federal Savings and Loan Association in Chicago.