BOLT, RICHARD ARTHUR

BOLT, RICHARD ARTHUR (12 Mar. 1880-3 Aug. 1959), a physician and director of the CLEVELAND CHILD HEALTH ASSOCIATION, was born in St. Louis to Richard Orchard and Mary Virginia Belt Bolt. He studied at Washington University before transferring to the University of Michigan, earning his A.B. in 1904 and his Ph.D. in 1906; afterward doing post-graduate work. Bolt came to Cleveland in 1907 to St. Vincent's Charity Hospital as an intern, then pathologist, and later visiting physician in the Gynecological Out-Patient Department. During 1909-1910, he was acting medical director of the Babies' Dispensary and Hospital. From 1911-1916, Bolt was medical director of the U.S. Indemnity College of the Tsing Hua College at Peking, China; returning to Cleveland in 1917 as chief of the city's bureau of child hygiene and instructor of pediatrics at Western Reserve University Medical School. From 1918-1920 he served public health organizations in Italy and California, and from 1920-1925 lectured at Johns Hopkins. Bolt returned to Cleveland in 1929 as Director of the Child Health Association and associate in hygiene, public health, and pediatrics at Western Reserve. Bolt pioneered expectant mother classes and maintained the babies' dispensaries' free milk program and the CLEVELAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS' dental program. As early as 1944, he advocated using fluoride in the city's water. Bolt retired in 1945 to organize the University of California's public health school. He married Rebecca Beatrice French on 21 July 1908 and had 4 children, Elizabeth, Richard, Marrion, and Robert. Bolt died in California.


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