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Edward "Ted" Mortimer Jr., who was a major contributor to establishing
the medical school's national reputation in the fields of pediatrics
and epidemiology, died in July following a six-year battle with
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
He was 80.
A memorial service for Mortimer, who was the Elisabeth Severance
Prentiss Professor Emeritus in the Department of Epidemiology
and Biostatistics at the School of Medicine, will be at 5:30 p.m.
September 9 in Amasa Stone Chapel. A reception will follow in
the Powell Room of the Allen Memorial Library.
Mortimer joined the CWRU medical school faculty in 1952. During
his tenure he helped established the pediatrics department at
the CWRU-affiliated City Hospital (today MetroHealth Medical Center)
and the medical school's Department of Epidemiology and Community
Health Department (today Epidemiology and Biostatistics).
From 1966 to 1975, he served as pediatrics chair at the New
Mexico School of Medicine in Albuquerque.
In Albuquerque, he was one of the three professionals who fought
for fluoridation and won. Also, at the instigation of his wife,
Joan R. Mortimer, now assistant professor emerita of psychology
in the CWRU Department of Psychiatry, he initiated in a rural
New Mexico community what may have been the first primary care
nurse practitioner program in the United States.
After returning to Cleveland in 1975, Mortimer developed the
first Area Health Education Center that was based in an urban,
rather than rural, setting. Also, he was instrumental in bringing
to fulfillment the cancer registry for the Cleveland area.
After retiring in 1992 as chief of epidemiology and community
health, Mortimer continued doing research at CWRU for nearly 10
years
Among his findings, Mortimer discovered a link between aspirin
and the potentially fatal Reye's syndrome, which causes severe
swelling in the brain and liver. In 1966 he was part of a team
that demonstrated that unclean hands of medical personnel were
the major sources of hospital staphylococcus infections, and in
1985 he and a colleague determined that tight jeans might be a
cause of back pain for teen-agers.
Mortimer also helped develop a groundbreaking method for treating
ear infections and a mail-in throat culture program to detect
and prevent rheumatic fever in the Cleveland area.
In the 1980s, when parents feared that DTP, the diphtheria, tetanus
and pertussis vaccine, could cause brain damage in children, Mortimer
publicly supported its use, saying the benefits outweighed any
dangers.
A native of Chicago, Mortimer graduated from Dartmouth College
in 1943. He earned a bachelor of medicine degree in 1946 and a
medical degree in 1947 from Northwestern University.
He served in the Navy in the late 1940s and then trained at St.
Luke's Hospital in Chicago and Childrens' Medical Center in Boston.
He also was a pediatrics teaching fellow at Harvard University.
Nationally, Mortimer served for 16 years on both the Committee
on Infectious Diseases of the American Academy of Pediatrics and
the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. He has
served as a member of various advisory committees for the National
Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the
armed forces, as well as on national, regional and local committees
of the American Heart Association. He served six years as a board
member of the Academy of Medicine of Cleveland. He is a senior
member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of
Sciences and also belongs to the Society for Pediatric Research
and the American Pediatric Society. He is a member and past president
of the American Epidemiological Society.
Mortimer received an alumni Merit Award from Northwestern University
in 1991, the Distinguished Membership Award from the Academy of
Medicine of Cleveland in 1992, the Distinguished Physician Award
from the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society in 1994 and the
2000 Special Medical Alumni Board of Trustees Award from CWRU.
He was a member of the Cleveland Medical Hall of Fame.
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