Samuel A. Levine papers

Samuel A. Levine (1891-1966), A.B., 1911, Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, M.D., 1914, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts was Clinical Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a staff physician at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now Brigham and Women’s Hospital), Boston, Massachusetts from 1919 to 1957. Levine was recognized during and after his life for his work as a cardiologist, which included influencing a change in the medical standard for treating patients recovering from heart attacks. He was also known for being the first person to diagnose pernicious anemia and the second person to diagnoses coronary thrombosis, and for his role in diagnosing Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) with poliomyelitis.

Samuel Albert Levine was born on 01 January 1891 in Lomza, Poland to Abram Levine and Anna Sheinkopf. The family immigrated to the United States in 1894, where they lived in Boston’s North End and West End neighborhoods. The 1940 U.S. Census identified Levine’s race as white. Levine began working at age nine, first as a newsboy. After attending Boston English High School, he got a Newsboys’ Union Scholarship to attend Harvard College. He graduated with an A.B. in 1911, and went on to earn an M.D. in 1914 at Harvard Medical School, where Henry Christian (1876-1951) was his mentor. He spent two years at the newly-opened Peter Bent Brigham Hospital learning electrocardiography and then serving as an intern. In 1916, he worked at the Rockefeller Institute with Alfred Einstein Cohn (1879-1957), focusing on electrocardiography and techniques for animal experimentation. At the onset of World War I, Levine joined the war effort in Europe. He was among a group of US Army Medical Corps officers sent to England to support the British Royal Army Medical Corps. He served at the British Military Heart Hospital in Colchester, England, where he met physicians William Osler (1849-1919), Sir James Mackenzie (1853-1925), Clifford Allbutt (1836-1925), and Sir Thomas Lewis (1881-1945). During his service (1917-1919), he was also stationed in London, England and in France. After the war, Levine returned to Harvard Medical School as Clinical Professor of Medicine, a position he held from 1919 until 1957 when he became Professor, Emeritus. For thirty-six years (1921-1956), he taught a summer postgraduate course in cardiology. During the years 1919 to 1957, Levine was a staff physician (and later a consultant) at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. He also consulted for other hospitals around the country and the world. When treating cardiac patients, Levine championed chair recovery rather than the strict bedrest recovery period that was typical at the time but could lead to pulmonary congestion. He was the first to diagnose pernicious anemia (a condition in which low red blood cells are caused by the intestines’ inability to absorb Vitamin B12); he did so at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1915. His clinical observation and study led to the discovery that pernicious anemia is connected to gastric anacidity. He made the second diagnosis of coronary thrombosis, which he wrote about in a 1916 publication. He also described the condition in a 1936 monograph: Clinical Heart Disease. As an appointee to the Harvard Infantile Paralysis Commission in 1916, supporting the Boston Department of Public Health during an epidemic, Levine gained experience that taught him to make early diagnoses of poliomyelitis, before paralysis had set in; in 1921, he was consulted in the case of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and made the diagnosis of polio.

Levine engaged in many professional activities, by serving on boards of directors, editing cardiology journals, and participating as a member in medical societies. He wrote more than 180 articles for medical journals, in addition to four books: Coronary Thrombosis: Its Various Clinical Features (1929), Clinical Heart Disease (1936), Clinical Auscultation of the Heart (1949, with W. Proctor Harvey), and Current Concepts in Digitalis Therapy (1954, with Bernard Lown (1921-2021)). He served as President of the New England Heart Association (1935-1937). He sat on the board of directors at several medical institutions, as well as at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, and the Hillel Foundation. In 1942, he was honored with fellowship in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Levine was honored in 1954 when Charles Merrill (1885-1956), his patient, endowed the Samuel A. Levine Professorship at Harvard Medical School. In 1965, the Samuel A. Levine Coronary Monitoring Center (now the Levine Cardiac Intensive Care Unit) was established at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.

Levine married Rosalind Weinberg on 20 June 1926. They had three children: Carol (circa 1928-2015), Herbert (circa 1929-2014, also a cardiologist), and Joan (born circa 1931). Levine died in 1966 at his home in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, following gastrectomy (surgical removal of part or all of the stomach) due to gastric carcinoma (stomach cancer).