John Cassel's life before joining the UNC faculty

courtesy of Gillian Cassel Wolfe, 1/18/2014 (slightly edited by Vic Schoenbach)

John Cassel was born to Jewish immigrants who escaped persecution during the Bolshevik Revolution in Lithuania and the coming war in Germany (1914).  They were teenagers at the time and had no money. They each found passage to South Africa and worked as they could to earn and save money. His father was later accepted to Dental School at University of Michigan.  His mother was granted a scholarship to become a physician at the Royal Free Hospital in London.  Once qualified and married, she never accepted money from any of her patients, preferring to do pro bono work and live a lesser life style.  His father died of mouth cancer, age 52, during John’s first year of medical school, causing him to drop out because there was no money for tuition.  Only the kindness of family friends, neighboring farmers, who collected money amongst themselves, enabled him to return to medical school. 

Johannesburg at that time was not a wealthy, enclave community. Nor was there the abject racism of the US South and the South African apartheid to come.  South Africa was neither dangerous nor ridden with crime and anarchy.  Those came later, along with the apartheid.

John’s first job as a doctor was in Durban, working with the indigent Indian communities.  He became friends with Mahatma Gandhi’s brother and family and, through knowing them and his medical work, began to take notice of cultural mores, beliefs systems, diets etc.

His second job was through his medical school, University of Witwatersrand, Clinical Outreach Program.  He created clinics among the Bantus to offer medical services to rural communities for the purpose of improving lives.  The clinics were set up very much like the US Public Health Service Clinics.  On the team at Pholela Community Health Center were physicians, nurses, dentists and health educators whose mission was to provide state of the art medical services.  The providers lived and worked in the community full time and reported back to their university program.  John Cassel did not go to Pholela because he was interested in epidemiology but because he was interested in providing medical service to rural communities.

Through his work with the Zulu tribe (some 10,000) living in and around Pholela, John Cassel discovered that the diagnosis and treatments of Western Medicine could only cure a fraction of the medical problems. He made friends with the witch doctor. He was invited to observe the witch doctor as he practiced his trade as healer. The witch doctor shared the belief system and mores with the tribe. Through group meetings, hand clapping and chanting he could discern the nature of the problem, the cause of the problem and then offer his treatment.  His treatment often had to do with changing the social structure within a family unit, finding emotional support within the tribe for the patient, prescribing herbal treatments, or meeting out punishment to a wrongdoing offender.  The patient often recovered.  It appeared that the witch doctor had a clear understanding of the medical maladies and the best practices for remedy of his community.

The effect of this collaborative work with the witch doctor was that John Cassel wanted to explore a broader scope of what causes disease and effects health.  He realized that there were myriads of variables beyond those of pure microbiological science.  He needed to gain the tools for study design that would produce quantifiable and reproducible results for these variables.  This led him to a Fulbright Scholarship to study health administration at the very young School of Public Health at UNC in 1952.

Once he was back in Pholela and ready to apply what he had learned in Chapel Hill, the Nationalist Party gained a full majority in Parliament and instituted the Apartheid Law, the segregation of every race living in South Africa. Pholela Community Health Center was closed, and the staff was immediately terminated.  John and Margaret Cassel found their work was now illegal. They were threatened with arrest, exile, and even death if they continued. They did not want their children growing up under the Apartheid Law.  They soon set sail for England with 3 children and 1 on the way, 1 suitcase each, no money other than passage booked and no job lined up.  During the transatlantic voyage, John Cassel received a wire from then Dean of the School of Public Health, Ed McGavran, offering him an opportunity to start a Department of Epidemiology.