1927-1961
Medical Missionary to Southeast Asia

A Vow to Help the Disadvantaged.

To Americans in the 1950s Dr. Thomas A. Dooley was a "secular saint," risking his life to take the benefits of the Golden Age of Medicine to the neediest people in the world. During his service as a U.S. Navy ship's doctor in 1954 he treated refugees from North Vietnam to South Vietnam, tending as best he could to their cholera, leprosy, many tropical diseases, and war and torture injuries. Moved by their poverty and poor health, Dooley vowed that when his navy service was over he would return to help the people of Laos, a small neighbor of Vietnam. He provided many people in Southeast Asia with the first medical treatment they had ever received.

Medico.

In the United States Dooley and several other doctors formed Medico, a nonprofit organization created to...