Opie, Eugene L. (Eugene Lindsay), 1873-1971

Eugene Lindsay Opie was a pathologist.

The pathologist Eugene Lindsay Opie specialized in the pathologic physiology of viral and bacterial diseases, including tuberculosis, influenza, and poliomyelitis. His career can conveniently be divided into roughly ten year increments. From 1894-1904 he was a graduate student and faculty member at Johns Hopkins; from 1904 to 1910, he was at Rockefeller Institute; from 1910 to 1923 at the medical school of Washington University; from 1923 to 1932 at the Henry Phipps Institute and University of Pennsylvania; and from 1932-1938 at Cornell.

A graduate of the first class of Johns Hopkins' medical school in 1897, Opie developed an interest in medical research while still a student. Under the wing of William Henry Welch, Opie began to investigate sections of pancreatic tissue, discovering that the Islands of Langerhans were absent in diabetics, thus opening the door for an understanding of the origins of the disease. After graduation, he served with the army during the Spanish American War, but returned to Hopkins to take up a faculty appointment as assistant in bacteriology under Welch and pursued his promising work in diabetes. Growing out of his brief military experience, he conducted research into the life cycle of malarial parasites in birds. He married Gertrude Lovat Simpson (d. 1909) in 1902, with whom he had four children. Following her death, he married her sister, Margaret Elizabeth.

Opie's stint at the fledgling Rockefeller Institute (1904-1910) saw his research in tuberculosis begin to gel, and when he moved to the medical school at Washington University (1910-1923), he was actively engaged in studying the pathological physiology of tuberculosis. His career was once again diverted by war, when Opie volunteered for medical duty in France, but as he had during the Spanish American War, Opie made extensive use of his exposure to the extreme disease environment of warfare. In addition to his continuing studies on tuberculosis, Opie worked on largely epidemiological studies of pneumonia and trench foot, and while at Camp Pike, Ark., he performed autopsies on hundreds of soldiers who had died in the flu epidemic of 1918.

In 1923, Opie assumed the directorship of the Henry Phipps Institute in Philadelphia and began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, continuing work on the epidemiology of tuberculosis. He is particularly noted for his study of tuberculosis in Jamaica, determining that Jamaicans of African descent were more susceptible to the disease than African Americans. During this period, too, he developed a close working relationship with the Peking Union Medical School in Peking, China, and

Opie left Philadelphia for New York City to assume the chair of pathology at Cornell Medical School and to be come chief pathologist at New York Hospital. He "retired" in 1938, but attached himself to the Rockefeller Institute where he continued working until 1970. His research in immunology and carcinogenesis continued well into his nineties. He received the laurels of his profession, including the Weber-Parkes Prize from the Royal College of Physicians (1945), the Banting Medal from the American Diabetes Association (1946), and the Gold Headed Cane from the Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists (1960).