DR. CHARLES R. BALL
Dr.
Charles R. Ball died December 19, 1930, while on a winter holiday at San Diego, California,
from sudden heart failure, developed during a mild attack of influenza. He was born at Bryan,
Ohio, October 31st, 1887 and in 1891 received
the degree of A.B. from the Ohio
Wesleyan University. He then entered newspaper work as a reporter
on a Columbus, Ohio,
paper, but was persuaded by his uncle, Dr. G.E. Riggs, to undertake the study
of medicine, and he came west and graduated from the Medical School
of the University in 1894. He entered
general practice but subsequently took special work in nervous and mental
diseases. He became associated with his
uncle, Dr. Riggs, and after 1906 limited his practice strictly to
Neuropsychiatry.
For
several years, Dr. Ball was connected with the Medical School
of the University, serving as instructor, and later as assistant professor, and
was a clear and inspiring teacher.
Throughout his life he maintained an unusually active interest in
medical literature and was as fami1iar with the German as with the English
publications. In 1906, he studied with Nonne at Hamburg, later
translated into English, Nonne’s book on “Syphilis of
the Nervous System,” and introduced to the Northwest, a study of the “four
reactions” in syphilis. For some time he
conducted a laboratory where the tests could be made, until public laboratories
became available. During the course of
his lifetime, he contributed many articles to medical societies and medical
journals, and his interesting and forceful discussions in medical societies are
well remembered.
At the
time of his death, Dr. Ball was a member of the Ramsey County
and Minnesota State Medical Societies, and of the American Medica1
Association. He was a charter member and
a past president of the Minnesota Neurological Society and of the Central Neuropsychiatric Association, and was for years a member of
the American Neurological Society, and of the American Psychiatric
Association. He was also Chief of Staff
of the Mounds Park Sanitarium, and a member of the staff of St. Joseph’s,
Bethesda, Childrens and Midway Hospital, and of the
Gillette State Hospital for Crippled Children,
He was also a 32nd degree Mason, a charter member of the Ohio
Wesleyan Chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, and a member of the Nu
Sigma Mu Medical Fraternity, a member of the Sons of
the American Revolution and of the Minnesota Club, Town and Country Club, and
Midland Hills Country Club.
When
the war came on, Dr. Ball espoused our cause with his usual fervor, and, though
fifty years old, enlisted in the Medical Corps, and served to the end. Unfitted
by age for the strenuous life of a soldier, he, nevertheless, carried on with
his customary vigor and there is no reason to doubt that in his intense
military training, he laid the foundation of a coronary disturbance that
developed while he was still on duty in France, that followed him throughout the remainder of his life. In
his periods of severe illness, he bore his intense pain with equanimity and to
the very last he was full of courage and optimism.
However long and intimate the association may have been, one is never conscious
of entire ability to do justice to one’s friends in a notice of this kind. For twenty-six years, I knew Dr. Ball
intimately as a fellow neurologist and as a personal friend, and many of his
characteristics are firmly fixed in memory.
Along with his great energy and his supreme devotion to the cause in
which he was at the moment interested, Dr. Ball had a keen sense of humor. Aggressive and combative by nature, he
frequently found himself involved in controversies which a less courageous man
would have avoided. By his associates,
he will be remembered as a virile personality, a loyal friend, a man who tried
to see medicine with an open scientific mind.
He was one who gave freely to every cause that met his approval. He was an ideal husband and father, and
leaves behind him, his wife and his daughter, Mrs. Elmer F. Finck. Has professional associates were Dr. Edward Engberg and Dr. Joel C. Hultkrans.
