Body of Work:
Louisville’s Dr. Smock Leads
Country in Living Forensics
Aaron Burch
T
here is only one Dr. Bill Smock in Louisville, Kentucky. For
that matter, there’s only one Dr. Bill Smock in the whole
United States. Louisville lucked out on this one.
William (Bill) Smock, MD, has spent his entire adult life helping
people. Inspired by his grandfather, Spafford Ackerly, MD, who
served as chairman of psychiatry at the University of Louisville,
Dr. Smock has led a life with one foot in medicine and the other in
emergency services since he became a volunteer firefighter at age 17.
The first few steps of his career show an intense interest in understanding the minds and bodies of the everyday human being.
Born and raised here, Dr. Smock took a city job as an Emergency
Medical Technician (EMT) right out of high school.
“I worked the West End from midnight to 8 a.m.,” said Smock.
“That was my first real exposure to the needs of public health. I
delivered babies on bathroom floors. I saw inhumanities, people
shooting, stabbing, stealing from each other, domestic violence,
everything. It was an eye-opening experience for a white boy from
the East End.”
Back in school, Dr. Smock studied at Centre College, earning a
Bachelor’s in Psychobiology before returning home to earn a master’s
degree in Anatomy. During that time, he served as an investigator for
the medical examiner’s office, analyzing motor vehicle collisions and
reconstructing injuries. “This was my first introduction to forensic
medicine,” he said. It was an area of expertise that would continue
to fascinate him for decades.
Dr. Smock began collaborating with Kentucky’s chief medical
examiner, Dr. George Nichols. Together, the two men created the
first clinical forensic medicine program in the country. Louisville
seemed like a fitting location to test the potency of their program.
“There was an article in the Journal of the American Medical
Association in 1986 which talked about the need for physicians
to be specially trained in the practice of living forensics. We had
pathologists, but there were no physicians in the United States
specially trained to address the forensic needs of living patients. If
you were shot, you would have to die for a forensic expert to look
at your wounds,” said Dr. Smock.
June 2014
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