Simeon Burt Wolbach

Simeon Burt Wolbach (July 3, 1880 – March 19, 1954) was an American pathologist, researcher, teacher, and journal editor who elucidated the infection vectors for Rocky Mountain spotted fever and epidemic typhus.^[1] He was president of the American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists and the American Society for Experimental Pathology.^[2]

Wolbach was born in 1880 in Grand Island, Nebraska. He was the son of banker Samuel N. Wolbach and Rosa Stein. He was raised Jewish.^[3]

Wolbach attended the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard for his undergraduate degree. He received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1903.

Wolbach's early research was into the effects of radiation on skin. Later fieldwork in Africa got him interested in tropical parasitology.^[2] From 1903 to 1905, he completed his postgraduate studies in pathology at the Boston City Hospital under Frank Burr Mallory and William T. Councilman.

In 1905, Wolbach returned to Harvard Medical School and worked as a pathology assistant under Councilman. At the same time, he was the pathologist at the Boston Lying-In Hospital and the Long Island chronic care hospital. In 1908, he became the director of Bender Hygienic Laboratory (today part of St. Peter's Healthcare) in Albany, New York and an adjunct professor and department head of pathology and bacteriology at Albany Medical College.

He spent 1909 at Montreal General Hospital and McGill University. Working with McGill parasitologist John L. Todd, he carried uninfected lice (feeding them on their persons) to Poland in 1920 to demonstrate that lice transmit Rickettsia prowazekii, the organism which causes epidemic typhus. For this work, he received the rank of Commander in the Order of Polonia Restituta.

In 1910, he returned to Harvard Medical School's Department of Bacteriology. In 1914, he became an associate professor of pathology and bacteriology there. In 1922, he became the head of pathology, occupying the chair as Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy. From 1922 to 1947, he was at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Children's Hospital of Boston as chief of pathology.^[1] Wolbach focused on childhood development and vitamin deficiencies. With J. M. Coppoletta at Brigham and Children's Hospitals, he developed tables of weights of vital organs for different ages and body lengths that became a definitive reference for pediatric pathology.

In 1938, Wolbach was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.^[4]

Wolbach married Anna F. Wellington in 1914 and had three children. He died in Sudbury, Massachusetts on March 19, 1954.

• Wolbach, S. B.; Ernst, H. (December 1903). "Observations on the morphology of bacillus tuberculosis from human and bovine sources". Journal of Medical Research. 10 (3): 313–33. PMC 2105968. PMID 19971576.
• Wolbach, S. B. (November 1919). "Studies on Rocky Mountain spotted fever". Journal of Medical Research. 41 (1): 1–198.41. PMC 2104421. PMID 19972499.
• Wolbach, S. Burt; Todd, John L.; Palfrey, Francis W. (1922). The Etiology and Pathology of Typhus Being the Main Report of the Typhus Research Commission of the League of Red Cross Societies to Poland. OCLC 697755728. OL 7135227M.
• Hertig, M; Wolbach, S. Burt (March 1924). "Studies on Rickettsia-Like Micro-Organisms in Insects". Journal of Medical Research. 44 (3): 329–374.7. PMC 2041761. PMID 19972605.
• Wolbach, S. Burt (March 7, 1925). "The Rickettsiae and their Relationship to Disease". Journal of the American Medical Association. 84 (10): 723–28. doi:10.1001/jama.1925.02660360005002.
• Wolbach, S. B.; Howe, P. R. (1926). "Intercellular substances in experimental scorbutus [scurvy, a vitamin C deficiency state]". Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. 1: 1–24. ISSN 0003-9985.
• Blackfan, K. D.; Wolbach, S. B. (1933). "Vitamin A deficiency in infants: a clinical and pathological study". Journal of Pediatrics. 3 (5): 679–706. doi:10.1016/s0022-3476(33)80022-9.
• Coppoletta, J. M.; Wolbach, S. B. (January 1933). "Body length and organ weights of infants and children-a study of the body length and normal weights of the more important vital organs of the body between birth and twelve years of age". American Journal of Pathology. 9 (1): 55–70. PMC 2062747. PMID 19970058.
• Wolbach, S. B. (December 24, 1937). "Vitamin deficiency experimentation as a research method in biology". Science. 86 (2243): 569–76. Bibcode:1937Sci....86..569W. doi:10.1126/science.86.2243.569. PMID 17835435.

• "S. Burt Wolbach, M.D — 1880–1954". The New England Journal of Medicine. 250 (23): 1010. 1954. doi:10.1056/nejm195406102502312.
• Harden, Victoria (July 1987). "Koch's postulates and the etiology of rickettsial diseases". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 42 (3): 277–95. doi:10.1093/jhmas/42.3.277. PMID 3305695.
• Long, Esmond Ray (1962). A History of American Pathology. Springfield, Illinois: Thomas. OCLC 2380295.

• Works by or about Simeon Burt Wolbach at the Internet Archive