Creating Country Doctors: Mercer’s Mission Vital To Georgia

Dr. Jean Sumner likes to tell the story of how she once raised a woman “from the dead.” It happened years ago on a Thanksgiving Day when she was still working as a rural physician in the central Georgia town of Sandersville.

“I was already dressed for dinner at my mother’s” when the call came in, says Sumner, now dean of Mercer University’s School of Medicine in Macon. The sheriff drove her to the woman’s house so that as a doctor she could make the official declaration of death. Neighbors had gathered in the woman’s front yard.

Sumner found the stricken lady lying in a recliner, and quickly determined that despite appearances, she was not dead.