Edward H. Kass

Edward Harold Kass (December 20, 1917, New York City – January 17, 1990, Lincoln, Massachusetts) was an American physician, medical school professor, medical researcher in infectious diseases, medical journal editor, and historian of medicine.

He is known for his research on toxic shock syndrome and urinary tract infections.

His parents were Jewish emigrants from Russia to New York City.

He grew up in Manhattan's Lower East Side, where his family struggled financially.

Edward H. Kass was an outstanding student, skipped several grades in public school, and graduated from high school at age 15.

He supported himself at City College of New York, and later after transferring to the University of Kentucky, by selling Fuller brushes door-to-door and by washing dishes in restaurants.

Lawrence P. Garrod wrote that Edward H. Kass and Thomas A. Stamey (1928–2015) in the U.S.A. and William Ross Cattell (1928–2020), Francis William O'Grady (1925–2015), and William Brumfitt (1927–2020) in the U.K. were leading experts in the medical speciality of urology.

At the University of Kentucky he graduated in 1939 with an A.B. and in 1941 with an M.S. in bacteriology.

He married Fae Golden in 1943.

He graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with a Ph.D. in bacteriology in 1943.

At the University of Wisconsin he worked in 1944 as an immunologist in the department of physical chemistry and in 1944–1945 as a graduate assistant in department of pathology.

In 1947 he received his M.D. from the UCSF School of Medicine, where he was president of his graduating class.

From 1947 to 1949 he was an intern at the Boston City Hospital, where he was mentored by Maxwell Finland.

From 1949 to 1952 he was a research fellow at the Boston City Hospital.

At Harvard Medical School he was an instructor from 1951 to 1952, an associate from 1952 to 1955, an assistant professor from 1955 to 1958, an associate professor from 1958 to 1969, a full professor from 1969 to 1973, and William Ellery Channing Professor of Medicine from 1973 until he retired due to his final illness.

Kass received in 1958 an honorary M.A. from Harvard and in 1962 an honorary D.Sc.

from the University of Kentucky.

"Kass was the author or co-author of seven books and about 400 scientific papers. ... He made laboratory and clinical studies of renal tract infections and in 1962 he published his first paper, with W E Miall, on epidemiological studies of hypertension in Jamaica. This was followed later by studies of bacteriuria in pregnancy and longitundial studies on the natural history of bacteriuria and of hypertension in children. He also published experimental studies on such topics as the role of alveolar macrophages in lung infections, the effects of endotoxins and the value, or otherwise, of fever. He analysed the effects of antibodies on mycoplasmas and of mycoplasmas on the genital tract of women, and he wrote of the value of β carotine and photosensitivity."

He was elected in 1962 a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1982 a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

Dr. Kass died from lung cancer, although he was a non-smoker.

Not long before his death he launched a project to create a multi-volume Handbook of Infectious Diseases.

In 1963 Kass was a founding member, as well as secretary and treasurer, of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).

From 1967 to 1977 he was the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

In 1970 he was the president of the IDSA.

In October 1970 he gave the IDSA presidential address.

In the mid 1970s he established the Fae Golden Kass Lectureship in honor of his first wife, who died in 1973.

The Lectureship is sponsored jointly by Harvard Medical School and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

He chaired from 1971 to 1973 the committee in space medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, served on the editorial boards of eight medical journals, and received a variety of honors.

Kass spent his career in Boston with a sabbatical year in 1974–1975 and with many lectures given at foreign medical schools.

For the academic year 1974–1975 he was a Macy Faculty Scholar in Sir Richard Doll's department in the University of Oxford.

At Oxford, Kass started writing a biography of the physician Thomas Hodgkin and was given access to the family papers by Hodgkin's descendants.

In 1975 Kass married his second wife, Amalie Moses Hecht Kass.

He had three children from his first marriage and five stepchildren from his second marriage.

From 1977 was the director of Harvard Medical School's Channing Laboratory, as well as a physician at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, which in 1980 was merged into Brigham and Women's Hospital.

In 1979 he became the editor-in-chief of a new journal, Reviews of Infectious Diseases, which he edited until 1989, shortly before his death.

"In 1985 Dr. Kass led a team of scientists who found that certain fibers contained in some tampons had a powerful ability to absorb magnesium, enhancing production in the body of a bacterial toxin that causes toxic shock syndrome, a rare but sometimes fatal illness."

In 1988 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich published a biography of the physician Thomas Hodgkin by Amalie and Edward Kass.

(In 1992 the journal was renamed Clinical Infectious Diseases. )

"... Ed Kass resolved to find a way of making a diagnosis of significant urinary tract infection using an uncatherised specimen of urine. He accomplished this after much painstaking work and showed that a critical count of 100,000 or more organisms per ml of urine was associated with significant infection. This has become the basis of many simple bacteriological tests suitable for use in general medical practice."

Kass did a great deal of committee work and served as a consultant to many Boston hospitals.