Krumbhaar, E. B. (Edward Bell), 1882-1966

Edward Bell Krumbhaar (1882-1966) was a distinguished pathologist and cardiac physician, as well as one of Philadelphia’s leading historians of medicine. A founder of both the Section on Medical History of the College of Physicians and the American Association of the History of Medicine (AAHM), Krumbhaar also served as president of the College and of the AAHM.

Krumbhaar was born on August 1, 1882 in Philadelphia. He graduated from the Groton School in Massachusetts; from Harvard University in 1904; and the School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, earning his MD in 1908 and his PhD in 1916. Immediately after obtaining his medical degree, Krumbhaar served as the resident pathologist at the Pennsylvania Hospital where he learned from Winfield T. Longscope, the Director of the Ayer Clinical Laboratory at Pennsylvania Hospital. It was because of Longscope that Krumbhaar began studying “the physiology and pathology of the heart, for which Krumbhaar became famous” (Long, page 121).

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