Samuel J. Crumbine, of Topeka, is one of the talented physicians of Kansas whose business ability and professional skill have been apparent during his fourteen years of service as a member of the State Board of Health, the last eight years of which service have been spent as its secretary. Dr. Crumbine was born at Emlenton, Pa., Sept. 17, 1862, and is a son of Samuel D. Crumbine and Sarah (Mull) Crumbine, both natives of Pennsylvania and both now deceased. The mother was of German and English descent; the father, who was of German descent and a mechanic, served the Union during the Civil war as a member of the One Hundred and Third Pennsylvania infantry, being first sergeant of Company H. He was captured by the Confederates and confined in Libby prison, where he died of sickness, his death occurring prior to the birth of his son, Samuel. The mother of Dr. Crumbine died in Pennsylvania, in 1902, aged sixty-two years.

Dr. Crumbine was reared on a farm in Venango county, Pennsylvania, and received his primary education in the public schools of that locality. At the age of sixteen he became a clerk in a drug store in Sugar Grove, Pa., with the intention of becoming a practical pharmacist, and was thus engaged several years, studying during the while, whenever opportunity afforded, not only pharmacy but medicine as well. In the meantime he had removed to Cincinnati, Ohio, and at the time of his removal to that city was licensed prescription clerk. At the age of twenty-one he entered the Cincinnati College of Medicine and Surgery, where he worked his way through the college and was graduated as a physician in 1888. In 1885, before graduating from the medical college, he had come to Kansas and had become one of the owners of a drug store at Spearville, Ford county, and upon receiving his diploma, in 1888, he returned to Kansas and engaged in the practice of his profession at Dodge City. He applied himself diligently to his profession and soon built up a reputation as a skilled physician with a large and lucrative practice. While engaged thus in active and successful practice at Dodge City, he was appointed a member of the State Board of Health, by Gov. W. E. Stanley. In 1904, after having been a member of the board six years, he was elected by the board to be its secretary, the position coming to him wholly without any solicitation upon his part whatsoever. In fact, after the position was tendered him, he considered it a long while before finally accepting the position. He has now served eight years as secretary and his fourteen years of continuous service on the board speaks for itself as to his efficiency. During his service as secretary of the board, he has broadened the scope of the office to such an extent that, instead of but one stenographer, which was the secretary's sole help when he took charge of the service, twenty-five people are now required to perform all the duties belonging to the work of the State Board of Health. On Sept. 1, 1911, he assumed the duties of Dean of the School of Medicine of the University of Kansas, to which position he was elected by the board of regents. The wide interest which Dr. Crumbine has in his office and in his profession is indicated by his membership in numerous medical societies. He is a member of the Shawnee County Medical Society; the Golden Belt Medical Society, the Kansas State Medical Society, and the American Medical Association. He is also a member of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, the Association of State and National Food & Dairy Departments and belongs to its executive committee, is a member of the State & Provincial Board of Health of North America, the American Public Health Association, and the International Chemical Society. He is a Mason and a Knight Templar and is a past master and a past high priest of the respective Masonic orders. He is an elder in the First Presbyterian Church of Topeka, and for twenty years has been a teacher in the Sunday school.

Dr. Crumbine was married Sept. 17, 1890, his twenty-eighth birthday, to Miss Catharine Zuercher, of Cincinnati, Ohio. They have two children: Warren, born Jan. 29, 1892, and Violet, born March 5, 1896.