Daughtry, Dewitt Cornell, M.D.
(Treating phys & expert witness Green v ATC)Biographical Information:
DeWitt Cornell Daughtry was born on February 1, 1914, on a farm in Halls Township, Sampson County, North Carolina, the oldest child of James Guilford Daughtry (1890-1947) and the former Nannie Grantham (1889-1970). The Daughtry family had farmed in the area for several generations, and DeWitt's closest neighbors while growing up were the families of his grandfather and his uncle.
After high school, DeWitt Daughtry enrolled at Barton College in Wilson, North Carolina, where one of his fellow students was a young woman named Lucille Carr from the nearby town of Clinton. The two were married in Richmond, Virginia, on June 3, 1939, after Daughtry had graduated from the Medical College of Virginia and after his new bride had completed her graduate studies in business administration at Texas State University. The outbreak of World War II meant that the first years of their marriage were hectic ones. They spent two years in Detroit, where Daughtry did a surgical residency at Alexander Blain Hospital. This was followed by three years in the military, during which the newlyweds lived in several different states. They also started a family that would include a son and a daughter.
The end of the war brought stability. The Daughtrys returned to Richmond for three years, where DeWitt did additional training in chest surgery and practiced at the VA Hospital. In 1948 they relocated to Miami and remained there for good. According to his obituary, DeWitt Daughtry was the first cardiothoracic surgeon in Miami-Dade County. This distinction, coupled with his specialty in the still-new field of open heart surgery, meant that his services were in great demand. He soon had a thriving private practice and affiliations with several South Florida hospitals, including Veterans and Jackson Memorial.
Soon after his arrival in Miami, efforts began to start the state's first medical school at the University of Miami. Daughtry was involved in the initiative, and joined the staff when the school opened in 1952. Those early years were a struggle, with Daughtry and many other doctors having to volunteer their services. The Daughtrys also opened their home up to young medical students during those early years. Eventually the financial status of the University of Miami Medical School improved and Daughtry remained on its faculty even after he retired from practicing surgery in 1976.
In 1956 Daughtry received a referral named Edwin Green who had been coughing up blood. The diagnosis was a bleak one – the longtime smoker had inoperable lung cancer that had metastasized to his lymph glands. Edwin Green died in 1958 but not before launching a lawsuit against the American Tobacco Company. Thus it was that a man who had grown up on a farm in the heart of tobacco country became an expert witness for the plaintiffs in one of the first major American smoking and health lawsuits.
The tobacco industry took an intense interest in Daughtry’s background that is revealed in internal memos. On October 1, 1958, Chadbourne Park attorney Horace Hitchcock wrote to H. R. Hanmer of the American Tobacco Company to alert him that Daughtry had been quoted in the Homestead Leader-Enterprise of February 17, 1955, stating that cigarette smoking and lung cancer were related and expressing fear that "tobacco manufacturers doing research work on the causes of cancer may have hired workers who are already convinced that smoking is not the cause." In a follow-up letter, Hitchcock disclosed that the industry had approached one of Daughtry's partners to serve as an expert defense witness and closed by drawing attention to "the interesting fact that Dr. Daughtry is a graduate of the Medical College of Virginia." Dr. Daughtry ended up testifying at both Green trials – the first in July 1960 and the second in November 1964. While he admitted that medical understanding of the causes of cancer remained incomplete, he was unequivocal in linking smoking to lung cancer and emphysema.
Throughout his career, Daughtry was involved in many national professional organizations, and in local ones such as the Dade County Medical Association and the Florida Heart Association. The School of Medicine at the University of Miami remained especially close to his heart and in honor of he and his wife's generous support the school's Department of Surgery was named The Daughtry Family Department of Surgery. Daughtry also found time to write two books and many articles.
After sixty-two years of marriage, Lucille Carr passed away on May 25, 2002, at the age of eighty-seven. Dewitt Daughtry celebrated his ninetieth birthday shortly before he died on March 24, 2004, as the result of a stroke.
Sources:
Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
Kathleen Fordyce, "Surgeon Rallied for First Med School in Fla." (obituary), Miami Herald, March 26, 2004, 4B.
Horace Hitchcock, "[Letter from Horace Hitchcock to H.R. Hammer regarding Dr. Daughtry]". 01 Oct 1958. Bates: MNATPRIV00051124-MNATPRIV00051125.
http://tobaccodocuments.org/tplp/MNATPRIV00051124-1125.html.
Horace Hitchcock, "[Letter from Horace Hitchcock to H.R. Hammer regarding Dr. Daughtry and the TIRC]". 28 Aug 1959. Bates: MNATPRIV00051117-MNATPRIV00051118.
http://tobaccodocuments.org/tplp/MNATPRIV00051117-1118.html.
Arthur Johnsey, "Surgeon Testifies Smoking Is Killer," Miami Herald, July 21, 1960, 2B.
Richard Kluger, Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
"Lucille Carr Daughtry" (obituary), Miami Herald, May 30, 2002.
"Trial testimony of DEWITT CORNELL DAUGHTRY, M.D., July 20, 1960 [a.m.], GREEN v. AMERICAN TOBACCO CO."
http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/DAUGHTRYD072060AM.edit.html.
"Trial testimony of DEWITT CORNELL DAUGHTRY, M.D., July 20, 1960 [p.m.], GREEN v. AMERICAN TOBACCO CO."
http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/DAUGHTRYD072060PM.html.
Dan Zegart, Civil Warriors: The Legal Siege on the Tobacco Industry (New York: Delacorte, 2000).