Meldrum Wylder was born in Illinois in 1877. The son of a pioneer Methodist minister, he attended Marion College in Indiana and received his medical degree in 1901 from Washington University Medical School. He interned in St. Louis and practiced there for a year. Dr. Wylder contracted tuberculosis and, as a result, moved to Albuquerque by way of El Paso in 1903. He had studied under pediatric specialists at both St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital and was accepted into the newly formed American Academy of Pediatrics in 1930.

 

Over the years, Dr. Wylder delivered and cared for more than 15,000 babies. He was instrumental in the formation of the New Mexico Department of Public Health and introduced legislation to require immunization against diphtheria in order to be enrolled in public school.

 

Dr. Wylder, who died in 1964, was the catalyst for the New Mexico Pediatric Society and served as its first president. He authored many scientific medical papers and wrote an enlightening and entertaining book, Rio Grande Medicine Man.