Glasscock, Samuel S., M. D.

The following data is extracted from A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans.

Samuel S. Glasscock, M. D. That "an institution is but the lengthened shadow of a man" has an unusual and more than nominal application in the case of the Grand View Sanitarium of Kansas City, Kansas. For thirteen years this Institution has realized the highest standards and ideals of a real sanitarium because it has been permeated by the personality and the ability of Dr. S. S. Glasscock, whose reputation as an authority on mental and nervous diseases is accepted and credited among the leaders of the profession all over the Middle West.

In 1898, at 26th and Ridge Avenue, F. M. Bidwell began what is now the Grand View Sanitarium. Originally it was designed merely to take care of county cases. At first its capacity was for about eighteen or twenty cases. In 1903 Dr. George M. Gray, S. S. Glasscock and F. M. Tracy, all prominent members of the medical profession of Kansas City, Kansas, leased the property for two years, and converted it into a sanitarium. In 1905 Doctors Glasscock and Tracy bought the property and made a number of changes in the physical structure and equipment. In 1910 Doctor Glasscock became proprietor of the institution and has since held the majority of the stock, the principal minor stockholder being Dr. A. L. Ludwig. In 1911 an addition of twenty rooms with private baths was added, and the institution now has a capacity for fifty patients. The sanitarium is devoted primarily to the care of persons suffering from mental and nervous diseases and drug addicts. The Grand View Sanitarium is a corporation with a capital of $25,000. It occupies a magnificent site, on an elevation near the city, surrounded with grounds of twenty acres, and it is one of the noblest institutions of its kind in the entire Missouri Valley.

From the days when he was a farm boy in Missouri Doctor Glasscock has been constantly under the urge of a great ambition to be of service to humanity through the profession of medicine. His birth occurred on a farm near Excelsior Springs, in Clay County, Missouri, April 13, 1862. He was one of the five children of Archibald and Rachel (Yancey) Glasscock, his father a native of Tennessee and his mother of North Carolina. Both were born in 1822 and both died in the year 1898. Archibald Glasscock was brought to Northwestern Missouri in 1832 and spent the rest of his life as a farmer.

Though all his mature years have been devoted to a profession, Doctor Glasscock knows the practical details of farming, since he became well acquainted with them as a boy. He also attended district schools, spent two years in the University of Missouri, and after obtaining a teacher's license taught a district school. His mind had already been made up as to the profession he would follow. While teaching he read medicine under Dr. S. R. Keith of Excelsior Springs, and later he secured means to enter the Rush Medical College of Chicago, where he was graduated M. D. in 1887. He returned to begin his practice at Excelsior Springs. After two years, in 1889, he went abroad and took post-graduate work in one of the greatest medical centers of the world, the University of Vienna in Austria. While there he specialized in mental and nervous disorders.

On returning to America in 1890 Doctor Glasscock located in Kansas City, Kansas, and has now been an honored member of the profession in that city for over a quarter of a century. For some years his practice was of a general nature, but since 1903, at which time he acquired his active interest in the Grand View Sanitarium, he has been specializing in mental and nervous diseases, and now confines his entire attention to that branch of the profession.

For five years Doctor Glasscock was a member of the staff of St. Margaret's Hospital, and for fourteen years has been on the staff of Bethany Hospital and is now consulting neurologist. He is professor of mental and nervous diseases in the medical department of the Kansas State University. His name is also well known in medical literature, especially along the lines in which he specializes.

Doctor Glasscock at one time was president of the Kansas City, Missouri, Academy of Medicine and in 1915 was president of the Medical Association of the Southwest. He is also a member of the Wyandotte County and the Kansas State Medical societies and the American Medical Association. He belongs to the Medical College fraternity Phi Beta Pi, and is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and a member of the Mystic Shrine. In politics a republican, it has always been his steadfast desire to serve the public through his professional activities, though in 1904 he was elected and served one term in the state legislature from Wyandotte County, and has also been connected with some of the important civic and municipal movements in Kansas City, Kansas. Since 1880 he has been a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in 1915 was president of the Laymen's Association of the Kansas Conference, and in 1916 was a delegate to the general conference at Saratoga Springs.

November 29, 1888, he married Miss Ollie Hunter, who was born in Illinois, daughter of Milton B. and Sallie (Reed) Hunter. Her father was a carriage manufacturer and spent his last years in Kansas City, Missouri. Doctor and Mrs. Glasscock have three daughters: Edith, Rachel and Catherine.

Source: A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans

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