 |
 May 11, 1902 in Ukraine
 June 14, 1999
 American
 pediatrician
Louis K. Diamond (May 11, 1902 - June 14, 1999), pediatrician, was born
in the Ukraine, Russian Empire, the son of Eleazor Diamond, occupation
unknown, and Lena Klein Diamond. After emigrating to the United States
with his parents at age two, he grew up in Manhattan. He entered Harvard
University in 1919 and worked his way through school, always holding at
least two jobs. Although he was initially interested in chemistry, the summers
he spent working as a camp counselor in New England helped to foster an
interest in the field of pediatrics. On graduating in 1923, he entered
Harvard's medical school, receiving his M.D. in 1927.
Shortly after finishing medical school, Diamond studied briefly with Florence
Sabin at the Rockefeller Institute before returning to New England, where he
spent the next several years studying pediatrics at Children's Hospital under
the guidance of Dr. Kenneth Blackfan. On 2 July 1929 he married Flora
Kaplan; they had two children.
Although just out of medical school, Diamond set up one of the first pediatric
hematology research centers in the United States at Children's. Focusing on
anemias, by 1930 he had succeeded in identifying thalassemia, a hereditary
anemia that affected children of Italian and Greek ancestry.
His most important discovery, however, came when he and Dr. Blackfan
found that what seemed to be four separate infant diseases were actually
variations on a single syndrome, erythroblastosis fetalis, otherwise known as
Rh disease (because it was originally identified in Rhesus monkeys).
Diamond and Blackfan, along with Dr. J. M. Baty, presented their findings in
a landmark paper published in the JOURNAL OF PEDIATRICS in 1932. Several
years later Dr. Philip Levine identified the source of infant mortality as being
the mother's Rh-negative blood adversely reacting with the Rh-positive
blood of her newborn infant. Although doctors experimented with complete
blood transfusions to save the lives of newborn infants, the process was both
difficult and dangerous. In response to the new information, Diamond
prevailed on a group of Boston area hospitals to collaborate and found the
Blood Grouping Laboratory in 1942, where pregnant women could receive
blood screenings that would alert their physicians to possible postpartum
complications.
Diamond continued to work on the problem of blood transfusions in
newborns with a variety of colleagues until 1946, when he and Dr. F. H.
Allen, Jr., developed a technique that allowed the transference to take place
through the infant's umbilical cord vein. Regular transfusions were difficult
owing to the small size of blood vessels in newborns, and there was a further
complication due to the use of steel needles and rubber catheters. Diamond
used plastic tubing on the umbilical vein, which was larger than average and
remained open for several days after birth. For his work Diamond received
the Mead Johnson Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics in
1946; the results were published in the NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE
in 1951.
Diamond had remained on the staff of Children's Hospital following the
completion of his residency and remained there until retiring in 1968,
eventually rising to the rank of associate physician-in-chief of the
Hematology Division. He concurrently served on the faculty of the Harvard
University Medical School, where he became a full professor in 1963. His
most important outside assignment came between 1948 and 1950, when he
was picked to head the American Red Cross's transfusion services. Despite
having to deal with issues such as postwar apathy, resentment on the part of
local blood banks against an American organization, and difficulties in
southern states over the use of racially nonsegregated blood, Diamond by all
accounts made a major contribution toward establishing the Red Cross as a
permanent medical entity in a number of communities nationwide.
Despite his position on the cutting edge of medical technology, Diamond
often deplored the trend toward what he perceived to be an overreliance on
technology among medical students; while conducting rounds, he often
startled residents who had just recited a litany of patient test results by
asking them about the color of the child's cheeks. In addition to his role in
training many future leading pediatricians, Diamond also participated in a
number of medical associations, including the American Pediatric Society,
which he served as president.
In his later years Diamond continued to be an active researcher; for his work
in preventing kernicterus (a condition associated with rhesus incompatibility
and leading to brain damage) he received the Award for Scientific Research
in Mental Retardation from the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., International
Foundation in 1966. During his long career Diamond also received the
Carlos J. Finlay Gold Medal, Cuba (1951), the Award of Merit from the
Netherlands Red Cross (1959), and the Theodore Roosevelt Medal for
Distinguished Public Service in Science (1964). He also participated in
producing treatments for kwashiorkor, a disease caused by protein
deprivation that ravaged Third World children, and was among the first to
use chemotherapy in treating childhood leukemia. During his career he
published some 200 scholarly articles, the most widely cited of which was
ATLAS OF THE BLOOD OF CHILDREN (with Kenneth Blackfan, 1944).
After retiring from Harvard in 1968, Diamond moved to the University of
California at San Francisco, where he served as an adjunct professor of
pediatrics and had a chair named in his honor. He again retired in 1987 and
moved to UCLA, where he remained active into his nineties. He died at his
home in Los Angeles.
Although his field of research encompassed many areas and his techniques
for overcoming Rh blood rejection were later supplanted by advancing
technology, Louis Diamond earned the title "father of pediatric hematology"
for his ground-breaking work that greatly reduced mortality rates among
newborn infants.
Bibliography
No collection of Diamond's papers has been located, but his reminiscences
can be found within the Oral History Collection at Columbia University in
New York. Diamond's career receives its most thorough overview in
Charles A. Janeway, "Presentation of the Howland Award to Louis K.
Diamond," PEDIATRICS RESEARCH 7 (1973): 853-57, while his role with the national Red Cross receives attention in Douglas Starr, BLOOD: AN EPIC HISTORY OF MEDICINE AND COMMERCE (1998). Obituaries are in the LOS ANGELES TIMES and the NEW YORK TIMES, 25 June 1999.
-- Edward L. Lach, Jr.
Photo: Courtesy of the Harvard Medical Library.
|
|
