Document 4Ro6BJOEYZEOkZy4L3vkEgjR

FILE NAME: Metropolitan Life (ML) DATE: 1946 Nov 7 DOC#: ML049 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION: Dr. Lanza's Tribute to Dr. Gardner after his Death TRANSACTIONS ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING of INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE FOUNDATION OF AMERICA, INC. NOVEMBER 7, 1946 .rs warn mphasize :it illdUS- or induslie-ability on made of dust Meeting, ,,vements silicosis m. It is not, the ive more nas been .mey and css spec- .ring the sroach is reducing 1 hazard, .-clmiques ioeedure, ii others .standing silicosis mint up .Intensive r a l State -cries are .dements research member- DR. LEROY U. GARDNER A. J. LANZA, M. D.* Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: My associates in the Industrial Hygiene Foundation have asked that I pay a tribute to Dr. Gardner. He was only 57 years old when he died. He was a native of New Britain, Connecticut, and graduated from the Yale Medical School in 1914. During World War I, he was an officer in the Army Medical Corps. For two years he was an instructor in Pathology in the Harvard Medical School. He then went to his Alma Mater as Assistant Professor of Pathology for several years; while there he broke down and went to Saranac. He became Director of the Saranac Laboratory in 1927 and later was made head of the Trudeau Foundation and the Sanitarium. He was also active in civic affairs. He was a Trustee of the Village of Saranac Lake, and a member of the Village Planning Commission. In 1935 he received the Trudeau Medal for his work in the pathology of pulmonary disease and in 1940 he received the Knudsen Award from the Association of Industrial Physicians and Surgeons for his outstanding work in industrial medicine, and also in 1940 he received an honorary degree of Master of Science from Yale. So much for the record, which does not tell us very much about this extraordinary man. I have known Dr. Gardner for over 20 years and was not only very closely associated with him in various projects in which we had mutual interest, but also I was a very close friend of his. He was a very versatile person and a brilliant figure in the medical research world. Early in his Saranac Laboratory career he became interested in the possible connection or relationship between occupation and tuberculosis, and from that stemmed his world-famous studies in silicosis and other pneumoconioses. At the same time he became more and more identified with industry, which was most fortunate and fitting, because all of us who were interested in the industrial field as far as health was concerned felt that industry merited the very best kind of service, technical and profes sional, that it could get in order to help it solve the problems that faced it in dealing with occupational hazards. And out of that necessity there grew up the really very unusual work of the Saranac Laboratory, which has not been duplicated anywhere in this country. Dr. Gardner brought to his work an unusual character as well as ability. He followed and was associated with a remarkable group of men. I don't know how many of you have ever been to Saranac; those of you who have been there have always been impressed by the earnestness, the sin cerity, the honesty, of the group of men who have made Saranac possible. They were a remarkable group, starting out of course with Edward Trudeau who initiated in this country the outdoor treatment of tuberculosis, followed by Dr. Baldwin who, though retired, is still alive and active at the age of 82 in Saranac, Dr. Lawrason Brown and Don Cummings, now dead, and their associates. These men were pioneers. They had enormous courage as well as * C hairm an, M edical Com m ittee, Industrial H ygiene Foundation. 33 m i ! >l II m s S S S B S H B W *^ sound medical education and good technical ability. They had the courage that it takes to fight a long uphill battle against not only the circumstances surrounding them but against their own disabilities, their own ill health. They all had certain qualities in common, qualities of leadership and devo tion to their work. I made the comment the other day in Saranac that having known Dr. Gardner for 20 years, 20 years of a fairly active lifetime, my summary of his character I thought could best be expressed by saying that he was the most unselfish man that I have ever known. He never gave thought to himself or his own troubles and handicaps; always he was working for the project in hand, aiming at the target ahead of him, and driving himself with unsparing energy and enthusiasm. I won't attempt to go into his technical accomplishments; there isn't time enough to even detaij them. Suffice it to say that he was the first one' who was able to induce silicosis in experimental animals by dusting processes, and thereby helped to take the clinical knowledge of silicosis and its pathology out of the realm of speculation and bring it within the confines of fact; and for that alone he was universally recognized both in this coun try and abroad. I could go on for an indefinite period on his professional accomplishments. He had a laboratory there, the Saranac Laboratory, where the roent genologists and the pathologists and the chemists and laboratory technicians and nearly all the staff that was necessary to carry out the large amount of work that that laboratory turned out, were ex-patients of the Sanitarium. As far as I know from my dealing with them, there were but few excep tions and all of them were actuated by the same motives and by the same high purpose. I just want in closing to read a couple of quotations--one from an editorial in the New York Herald-Tribune; it is quite long and I am going to read only one paragraph. The Herald-Tribune editorial writer said this: "The gallantry that can transform a personal affliction into a benefit for mankind has seldom been more dramatically exemplified than by the career of Dr. Leroy Upson Gardner. Stricken by tuberculosis as he was planning to resume his position as Assistant Professor of Pathology at Yale after service in the First World War, Dr. Gardner established himself at Saranac Lake, New York, and began to study the part played by the inhalation of dust, a hazard in many occupations, in diseases of the lungs. He cured himself and in the process laid the foundation for a lifetime of work devoted to the prevention and cure of similar illnesses in others." And then the local paper at Saranac Lake: ". . . for Dr. Gardner, like Dr. Trudeau, brought unusual gifts to the work of fighting the good fight to free humanity from need less pain and waste and loss. Each was a pioneer, a sufferer, a victor. Each was a great man among men, a great spirit in the battle for a better race." 34 SUMr C. RICH A Foundation): following topic 1. A discu 2. A discu 3. Selcctiv f 4. Specific j The conic j from member j prepared papc 1 Beryllium points were n ; of the late 1/ a toxic subslw lighting, as a tubes, etc. (2 painful expei i j question of e' scrutiny in If might be min reproduced in ^ The secoi: of this paper The thin1 training, wen out under th< seemed to rim standards, nv considered at. SUMM ^ prof, r m ittee): This was held last general give ; ! The first convectional 1 those there, . we lacked and we all want. Then gcu * Held Novcm! t See page s:> ISjR* pr*