Elizabeth Rose te Groen, M.D.

Elizabeth Frances Rose was born in 1924 in Germiston, South Africa. She spent much of her early childhood near what is now Addo Elephant National Park in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, where it was not uncommon to see elephant tracks on her many jaunts through the bush near her family’s farm.

 

Dr. Rose was the youngest of four children whose parents insisted upon university educations for their daughters as well as sons. An innately curious and determined child, Dr. Rose was just four years old when she announced to her family that she intended to become a doctor—despite the fact that only a handful of women had ever practiced as registered physicians in South Africa’s history. “My parents thought it was such a joke, that a girl would want to be a doctor,” she later recalled. “But it was a calling for me.”

 

She enrolled at the age of 16 at Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape, where she obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology and zoology. She received her medical training at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg as one of about five women in a class of 120 medical students. Shortly after graduation she married classmate and fellow physician Lutherus te Groen, with whom she went on to have five children.

 

After scrapping her initial plans to pursue psychology—women at that time were discouraged from working in the country’s mental hospitals—Dr. Rose practiced first as a surgeon in Johannesburg and then later as an outpatient and emergency medicine doctor in Pretoria. When the family moved to East London, she took a job in a pathology laboratory. 

 

It was there that she noticed an alarming spike in local rates of esophageal cancer, then a little-understood and relatively rare disease. Intriguingly, the cases appeared to cluster in parts of the city with high levels of bootlegging activity. Investigation revealed that a local unlicensed brewer was using barrels containing tar and other carcinogenic compounds. It was the beginning of Dr. Rose’s long and productive interest in the link between cancer, diet and nutrition. 

 

Further research revealed an unusually high incidence of esophageal cancer in some communities of Xhosa descent. With a grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Dr. Rose undertook an epidemiological survey of cancer rates and nutritional patterns. Communities dependent on a single staple crop, her research found, also tended to have higher rates of esophageal cancer. In areas where the diet was varied and contained high proportions of antioxidant foods, cancer rates were extremely low. It was some of the earliest modern research on the relationship between nutrition and cancer.    

 

Upon their retirement Dr. Rose and her husband spent several years sailing around the world before emigrating to the United States, where all five of their children eventually moved as well. The couple settled in Newburg, Missouri, a rural community that Dr. Rose found pleasantly similar to the landscape of her childhood. Dr. Lutherus te Groen passed away in 2005. 

 

Dr. Rose became an enthusiastic member of her adopted hometown, and was an active participant in Newburg’s revitalization efforts. In 2008, she founded the Newburg Children’s Museum in the annex of Houston House, an 1884 colonial revival hotel in the town’s historic center. Consisting initially of Dr. Rose’s personal collection of specimens and artifacts gathered during research and travels, this natural history museum and educational facility continues to grow and expand. With Dr. Rose as curator and the assistance of a dedicated corps of volunteers, the museum offers hands-on educational opportunities for the children of Newburg and its surrounding communities.