Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/411

FITZ 389 FITZ FiU, Reginald Heber (1843-1913). Reginald Heber Fitz, clinician, teacher and contributor to the art and science of medicine, was born at Chelsea, Massachusetts, May 5, 1843. His lather, Albert Fitz, was a consul of the national government, his mother was Eliza R. Nye ; both being of Eilglish stock. He received his preliminary education in the Chauncy Hall School, Boston, graduated A. B. at Harvard in 1864, and M. D. in 1868, and received an LL. D. in 1905. During his last year in medicine he was house surgeon in the Boston City Hospital. He then spent two years abroad with Rokitansky Oppolzer and Skoda in Vienna, and with Cornil in Paris ; but the master spirit nearest akin to his own was Rudolph Virchow in Berlin, whose creation of a cellular pathology Fitz introduced to America, thus becoming our pioneer scientific pathologist. While in Berlin he wrote a paper on the changes in the cartilages of the bronchi in bronchiectasis in the fifty-first volume of I'ir chow's Archives. On his return home in 1870 he settled down to practise in Boston, and at once entered upon duties as a teacher which extended through his whole life, until his age rclirement. From 1S70 to 1873 he was instructor in pathological anatomy in the Harvard Medi- cal School and from 1873 to 1878 he was assistant professor of pathology. In 1878 he was selected to succeed J. B. S. Jackson (q. v.) in the chair of palliological anatomy, the title being changed in 1879 to that of Shattuck Pro- fessor of Pathological Anatomy. He retained this position until 1892, when he was succeeded by W. T. Councilman, and when he himself became Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic in the Harvard Medical School. His pathological lectures, exponents of the new and quickening doctrine of the "cel- lular pathology," were thronged with interested students and were remarkable "in form and in substance, models of clear and precise ex- position, admirably delivered in language, every facetted word of which seemed to have been chosen so that it and it alone could have filled the place." In 1887 he was made a visit- ing physician to the Massachusetts Genera! Hospital. Fitz entered upon his career as a teacher at the critical time when the faculty had just adopted a progressive course of instruction to cover a term of three full years with examina- tions in writing, and with the resolution that no student should graduate without passing in every department. In the year in which he became an instructor, and before he be- came a member of the faculty, in 1871, the services of H. P. Bowditch (q. v.), were se- cured as assistant professor of physiology, and the faculty engaged to do its utmost to provide the latter with a laboratory. The same plans were entered upon in chemistr, and thus two definite policies were adopted of far-reaching significance for the future of American scien- tific medicine— namely, the teaching of the sciences upon which medicine depends by the laboratory method, and the employment as teachers of these sciences of men not harassed by the practice of medicine. For twenty-eight years Fitz was on the im- portant committee of courses of medical studies and for seventeen years guided its de- liberations. His influence upon the develop- ment of scientific medicine in America in this way was perhaps more important than his two brilliant medical discoveries. That the Harvard School did much to inspire and help mould the Johns Hopkins course, I well know. In taking up his general medical and con- sulting practice Fitz bad the rare advantage of a background of thorough training in pa- thology ; in cultivating his diagnostic powers, he had a habit of examining carefully the cases in the surgical ward before operation. Also he required that a clinical diagnosis should be made known before an autopsy. In 1894 he was president of the American Medical .'ssociation, and in 1897 president of the Congress of American Physicians and Sur- geons. In 1908 he retired from his chair as emeritus professor. He gave up his hospital position at the age limit of sixty-five years, and devoted himself for the remaining five years to private practice. On his sixty-fifth birthday his former pupils and assistants issued a volume in his honor entitled, "Medi- cal Papers Dedicated to Reginald Fitz." It was due to Fitz that Dr. Henry Francis Sears made his noble gift of the "Sears Path- ological Laboratory" to the Harvard Medi- cal School, the first laboratory in America used exclusively for the study and teaching of pa- thology. Fitz's writings are sharp, critical and lucid. The titles to his papers number about thirty- eight. His best-known claims to fame are vested in two theses, ".Appendicitis" and "Acute Pancreatitis." The classical article on appendicitis was pre- sented at the Association of American Physi- cians in 1886, with the title, "Perforating In- flammation of the Vermiform Appendix," and he gave there, for the first time, a clear picture of the clinical course and diagnostic signs of the disease together with its pathologic changes, advocating a radical operation as tlie