The Memphis medical community mourned the death of Gene H. Stollerman, MD, former chair of the Department of Medicine at what is now the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), who died peacefully at his home in Hanover, New Hampshire, August 1. He was 93.
University officials noted his contributions to medical education, the fields of infectious diseases, rheumatic diseases and immunology, geriatrics, the compassionate care of the elderly and palliative care as an enduring legacy. He will also be remembered for his stand in 1969 when, as a member of a blue-ribbon advisory panel of physicians, he was a strong voice in opposition to the decades-long Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.
Born in New York City in 1920, Stollerman graduated from Dartmouth College in 1941, and received his medical education at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Following residency at Mount Sinai Hospital, he was inducted into the United States Army Medical Corps.
His research training at NYU set the stage for a lifelong passion to understand the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of streptococcal infections, acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease, which were rampant during and after World War II.
After the war, Stollerman became medical director of Irvington House in New York City, one of three prominent medical facilities in the country dedicated to caring for children with rheumatic heart disease.
While at Irvington House, he proved that monthly injections of a new long-acting formulation of penicillin could prevent recurrences of rheumatic fever in children, and thus, ameliorate the long-term consequences of rheumatic heart disease. This so-called “secondary prevention” strategy remains the most effective method for controlling rheumatic heart disease around the world.
As an advisor to the Naval Medical Research Unit at the Great Lakes Naval Station, Stollerman established himself as an international figure in medicine and research when he advocated mass penicillin prevention of streptococcal infections in new recruits, which halted the epidemics of rheumatic fever. The practice was later extended to all military recruits and is still in use today.
Stollerman seized an opportunity to more broadly impact medical education, practice and research by assuming the position of chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Tennessee in Memphis in 1964. He recruited some of the top researchers, clinicians and educators to head the new subspecialty divisions, thereby enhancing the stature of the university. He influenced the careers of thousands of medical students and residents during his 17 years as chair. He also continued his intense interest in the development of vaccines designed to prevent streptococcal infections and rheumatic fever.
Stollerman continued to serve as a member of the Commission on Streptococcal and Staphylococcal Diseases of the United States Armed Forces Epidemiological Board. He also later served on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which provides expert guidance on the use of childhood and adult vaccines.
While attending a meeting of the ACIP at the CDC in 1969, Stollerman was invited to participate in a blue-ribbon panel to advise on the fate of the long-running “experiment” on the natural history of untreated advanced syphilis in hundreds of black men in a town near Tuskegee, Alabama.
After his successful tenure at the University of Tennessee, he accepted a position in the general medicine division of Boston University School of Medicine. In 1992, Stollerman retired to Hanover, where he had spent his days at Dartmouth.
Stollerman’s unfinished work aimed at vaccine prevention of streptococcal infections and acute rheumatic fever continues at UTHSC, conducted by his students and their students. His teaching and counsel were recognized in 2004 when the Infectious Diseases Society of America presented him with its Mentor Award.
