DR. ERNEST ROBBINS KIMBALL, 

Promoted breast-feeding

By Meg McSherry Breslin
Tribune staff reporter 
January 2, 2003

Dr. Ernest Robbins Kimball made a simple observation as a doctor in World War 
II. As he watched malnourished Jewish mothers who had survived concentration 
camps, he was surprised to see many of their infants thriving. He concluded 
that was largely because they had been breast-fed.

Returning to the U.S. to begin a pediatric practice on Chicago's North Shore, 
Dr. Kimball persuaded many of his patients' mothers to take the 
then-unpopular path of nursing their infants.  His efforts led to an Evanston 
Hospital breast milk bank in the 1950s and years of research on the benefits 
of nursing, which transformed scores of his patients' views on the practice.

Dr. Kimball, 93, who had lived for years on Chicago's North Shore before 
moving to Florida in 1982 after his retirement, died Friday, Dec. 27, of 
aplastic anemia.

In the 1950s when only 5 percent of mothers nursed their infants in the U.S., 
66 percent of Evanston Hospital patients breast-fed their babies when they 
returned home."Breast-feeding was not really a popular thing back in 1952, 
but I sort of longed to do that and he was the right guy for me and for a lot 
of other women at that time," said former patient Nancy Bodeen of 
Winnetka.Bodeen remembers a time in the 1950s when Dr. Kimball asked if she 
had breast milk she might donate to another patient whose infant was 
sick.Bodeen and other mothers agreed to pump extra milk, which was then 
sterilizedand delivered to the sick infant.

 That success led to the Junior League of Evanston creating the Evanston 
Hospital Milk Bank, which received worldwide recognition for transporting 
breast milk from healthy mothers to infants whose mother could not breast-fee
d.

Dr. Kimball received two awards from La Leche League, for which he was a 
medical adviser. The milk bank was just one of Dr. Kimball's many projects. 
He also made house calls and established a corral in the back of his Glenview 
pediatrician's office--a rambling farmhouse with a horse and donkey.

He and his wife established a not-for-profit ranch in Arkansas for physical 
and recreational therapy for disabled children. A native of Massachusetts, 
Dr. Kimball graduated from Harvard University and Yale Medical School. Dr. 
Kimball is survived by his daughter, Alicia Wilson Kimball; sons Ernest III 
and David; eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild. A memorial service 
will be held in Ponte Vedra, Fla.

Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune 


    



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