Meldrum Wylder was born in Illinois in 1877. He was the son of a pioneer Methodist minister. He attended Marion College in Indiana and received his M.D. in 1901 from Washington University Medical School. He interned in St. Louis and practiced there for a year. He contracted TB and, as a result, moved to Albuquerque by way of El Paso in 1903. Dr. Wylder had studied under some 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 was the catalyst for the New Mexico Pediatric Society, and served as its first president. He authored many scientific medical papers and wrote a most enlightening and entertaining book, Rio Grande Medicine Man. This is the reason the NMPS's annual event is named after Dr. Meldrum Wylder, who died in 1964.