DR. NAYLOR - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• History of H.W. Naylor Co

It was in 1888 that Howard Wing Naylor was born in Morris, New York. After Howard graduated high school, his father, a farmer, didn't see the sense in his son wanting to go to college. So, against his father's wishes, H.W. Naylor set out to Cornell University with plans to become an engineer. But, he couldn't get into the program and veterinary science was the school he enrolled in. In the early 1920s, animal care was quite crude, compared to modern medicine. According to Dr. Jerome Payton, a veterinarian and 30-year associate of Dr. Naylor, "There was little preventive medicine. It was more [of] a fire engine process. You'd go and treat the diseases as they occurred." When work of Naylor's invention spread, customers' orders for the dilators increased. What was originally a husband and wife operation expanded into a village industry. Although Dr. Naylor's wife Dorothy challenged him that she could make as many dilators as he could sell, the demand quickly outstripped her capacity.