Hugh S. Cumming

Hugh Smith Cumming (1869 to 1948) was an American physician and soldier who served as the fifth Surgeon General of the United States, holding the office from 1920 to 1936. His time in that post is remembered in particular because the Tuskegee syphilis experiment began under his term in 1932 and then continued for forty years. A collection of his papers is held at the National Library of Medicine. The lead of the source article gives only these outline facts about his life and career, so this entry records his dates, his medical and military background, his long tenure as Surgeon General, and the controversy attached to the experiment that started during that tenure, without adding further detail that the source does not support.