- A dictionary of medical eponyms

George Blumer

Born  1872
Died  1962

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American physician, born March 16, 1872, Darlington, England; died May 6, 1962, Balboa Island, California.

Biography of George Blumer

George Blumer was the son of John George Blumer and Julia Edith, née Walford. His family emigrated and settled in California when he was 14 years old. He graduated from Cooper Medical College in San Francisco in 1891 and interned at the City and County Hospital in San Francisco. He was a surgical house officer in Johns Hopkins Hospital and worked under William Stewart Halsted (1852-1922), William Osler (1849-1919), William Sydney Thayer (1864-1932), William Henry Welch (1850-1934) and Simon Flexner (1863-1946). In 1896 he was appointed Director of the Bender Hygienic Laboratory in Albany, New York and worked there until 1903. He then had a series of faculty appointments at Albany Medical College, Cooper Medical College, the University of California Medical School, and Yale University.

Blumer witnessed the earthquake in San Francisco in 1906 and wrote an eyewitness account of the disaster. Tha year he married Ann Evans.

He was Dean of the Medical Faculty at Yale from 1910 to 1920 at which time he was named the David P. Saith Professor of Clinical Medicine. In 1939 he retired from his administrative duties and returned to clinical teaching and consulting. He was a prolific writer.

George Blumer died at his home on Balboa Island, California May 6, 1962 at the age of 90.

We thank Professor Robert P. Turk, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, and Patrick Jucker-Kupper, Switzerland, for information submitted.

Bibliography

  • William Sydney Thayer (1864-1932) and George Albert Blumer:
    Ulcerative endocarditis due to the gonorrheal septicemia.
    The Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, baltimore, 1896, 7: 57-63.
    Thayer and Blumer found the gonococcus in cases of gonorrhoeal endocarditis.
  • M. L. Corman:
    Classic articles in colonic and rectal surgery. George Blumer, M.D.: The rectal shelf.
    Diseases of Colon and Rectum, september 1980, 23 (6): 445-448. Biographical information:
  • Who's Who in America. Chicago, etc. 1908-1909.
  • L. H. Nathan, in Connecticut Medicine, New Haven, 1962, 26: 442-444.

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