Joseph C. Aub papers

Joseph Charles Aub (JCA),1890-1973, BS, 1911, Harvard University, MD, 1914, Harvard Medical School (HMS), was Professor of Research Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the medical laboratories at Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital (CPHMH) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He was an endocrinologist whose research focused on cancer and industrial toxicity.

JCA was born on 13 May 1890 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Samuel and Clara Shohl Aub; he married Elizabeth Frances Cope in 1925. During World War I, JCA was part of an MGH unit that spent 20 months in France and treated soldiers with pneumonia at base hospitals. He also collaborated in France with HMS physiologist Walter Cannon to study the effects of traumatic shock on the recently wounded.

JCA returned to MGH in 1919 and was appointed Instructor of Physiology and Assistant Professor of Applied Physiology at HMS and then Assistant in Medicine at MGH and Assistant Professor in Medicine at HMS in 1924. JCA was named Physician-in-Chief of the CPHMH in 1928, succeeding George Minot; he also held the position of Senior Associate Physician at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital from 1928 to 1942. During this period, JCA developed the theory that the study of normal cells could lead to an understanding of abnormal cell growth, including cancer. JCA was appointed Physician at MGH in 1942 when the CPHMH closed and its laboratories moved to MGH. In 1956, JCA retired from his administrative positions at MGH and HMS, including his chairmanship of the Department of Medicine at HMS, but continued his research as Professor of Research Medicine, Emeritus, maintaining his laboratory at MGH and serving as a member of the MGH Board of Honorary Physicians. JCA emerged as an early authority on industrial contamination in workers, and collaborated with Harriet Hardy to prevent lead and beryllium poisoning and to promote industrial safety for the World Health Organization. He worked with Manfred Bowditch, a Massachusetts industrial health authority, on industrial hygiene, lead poisoning, and toxicity. JCA also participated in the Shady Hill School Growth Study in Cambridge, Mass. which examined the physical development of elementary school students.

During his career, JCA authored over 300 articles on topics such as lead, metabolism, endocrinology, calcium, and toxicology, and he published the biography of David Edsall,Pioneer in Modern Medicine-David Linn Edsall of Harvard in 1971. JCA was a founder of the American Cancer Society, and was active in Unitarian Service Committee medical missions, the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, and the City of Hope Medical Center. JCA died of pneumonia on 30 December 1973 at age 83.