Dean of the Harvard Medical School and School of Public Health in the 1920's and '30's,David Edsall was one of the leaders in a period of great change and progress in medicine. At the beginning of Edsall's career, a doctor's chief weapons were his informed mind and trained senses. By the end of it, the permanent alliance of the sciences and medicine had profoundly altered the doctor's practice and his education. It was a time of struggle, of conflict, and of enduring accomplishment.

Edsall was at the center of this revolutionary effort in three leading schools of medicine: the University of Pennsylvania, Washington University in St. Louis, and Harvard. He began his career in Pennsylvania as recording clerk to the famous Dr. William Pepper, Jr., at the same time making scientific contributions in metabolism through his work in the Pepper Laboratory of Clinical Medicine. By 1907 he had become Professor of Therapeutics and Pharmacology. In 1910 and '11, for one stormy year, he was the school's Professor of Medicine. This was a key year -in 1910 the publication of Abraham Flexner's Medical Education in the United States and Canada had led to the eradication of one quarter of U. S. medical schools and radical reform of many others.

From Pennsylvania Edsall went to St. Louis as Professor of Preventive Medicine, and his part in the reform of that medical school is both controversial and fascinating.

,Edsall's appointment in 1912 to a double post at Harvard and the Massachusetts General Hospital brought him to Boston -the field of his major contributions. This remarkable period was the day of such people as Harvard's Walter Cannon, Otto Folin, Harvey Cushing, Alice Hamilton, L. J. Henderson. It saw the founding of the School of Public Health, the major endowment of the Medical School. In his ten years at the hospital and his seventeen years as dean, as in his influence as a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, Edsall gave direction to many developments in American medicine which bear his mark to this day.

Dr. Paul Dudley White was the premier heart specialist of this century. He was recognized as an outstanding bedside doctor, a great teacher, and a widely respected investigator. By his optimism, his pioneer message encouraging physical activity, and his emphasis on avoiding unnecessary invalidism, he changed the outlook of thousands of patients with heart disease and changed it for the better. He was the heart specialist called to see President Eisenhower at the time of his heart attack, and by his frank and authoritative discussions with representatives of the media set a precedent for the handling of all future Presidential illnesses. Known around the world, he used his position as a noted scientist and humanitarian to foster international understanding and the quest for world peace.