Charles Homer Wheelon, who was known throughout his life as Homer, was a Seattle-based physiologist, general practitioner, and artist. He was born on June 29, 1888, in Santa Clara, California, and spent much of his early childhood moving from town to town with his brothers, John Clark, Burton, Frank, and George William, and his parents, George Washington and Minerva Clark Wheelon, as they sought to establish permanent Free Methodist congregations. The family ultimately settled in Seattle, where Homer attended the Seattle Seminary, a Methodist school that later became Seattle Pacific University.

One year after his high school graduation, Homer proposed to Lula Meacham, who was two years behind him in school. Lula was born in Theodore, South Dakota on April 7, 1890, to parents Edith Martina Ring and Wallace Chollar Meacham. Lula had seven siblings, Burton Meacham, Mary Meacham Seeley, Esther Meacham, Willis Meacham, Edith Meacham Stillwell Bonner, Henry Meacham, and Simon Meacham. The Meacham family had a silica mine in Roza, near Yakima, and eventually moved to the Tacoma area. Lula and Homer married in 1915.

Homer had a long interest in art and photography, but, at his parents’ urging, attended the University of Washington to study the liberal arts and became interested in biology. Following his graduation, he decided to attend medical school, but lacked many of the prerequisites. In order to complete these qualifications, Homer accepted a teaching and research assistantship at the University of Oregon, where he could also take classes. However, before he completed these courses, Homer was accepted to the medical school at Northwestern University in Chicago. Two years later, he transferred to St. Louis University to continue his studies and his research there.

In 1920, Homer and Lula returned to Seattle, where Homer began a group medical practice partnership with H. J. Davidson and founded Seattle’s Polyclinic. He was also a guest lecturer at the University of Washington and published clinical studies and textbook chapters. Homer also returned to his artwork, and exhibited many of his paintings and photographs. He also wrote poetry, and was particularly inspired by the work of his colleague, Dr. John Lingenfelter, who used rabbits to test for pregnancy in humans. Between 1933 and 1940, Homer wrote and illustrated a poem entitled “Rabbit No. 202,” which combined his interests in culture, science, and medicine. Many of the poem’s illustrations also came to be used as tailpieces in the American Journal of Physiology and the Journal of Applied Physiology.

Homer died in March 1960. Lula died in 1988 at the age of 98.