Blood Picture: L. W. Diggs, Sickle Cell Anemia, and the South's First Blood Bank

"L. W. Diggs was a pioneer in sickle cell disease research. He was there almost from the beginning when SCD was introduced to Western medicine in 1910, and Diggs’s contributions to SCD knowledge and the insights into SCD history through his life story merit recognition.”
—Todd L. Savitt, author of Medicine and Slavery: The Diseases and Health Care of Blacks in Antebellum Virginia

In 1929, Lemuel Whitley Diggs arrived in Memphis as a newly minted physician from the Johns Hopkins University ...