Fitzhugh Mullan: Tell me about where you grew up and how you got into medicine. David Satcher: I was born and reared outside of Anniston, Alabama, on a small farm. More than anything else, my family’s experience with health care, or the lack of it, led me to a medical career. My mother had nine pregnancies and, as far as I know, never saw a physician. Her babies were delivered at home by a midwife—not a nurse-midwife, but a midwife who had been trained by her mother, who had been trained by hers. At the age of two I came down with whooping cough, which became pneumonia. Dr. Jackson, the black physician who came out to the farm to treat me, died when I was very young, but by the time I was six years old I was telling everybody I wanted to be a doctor like him.