BALTIMORE (AP) — Dr. Theodore E. Woodward, a University of Maryland medical educator nominated for the Nobel Prize for his work on typhoid fever, died July 11 of heart failure at his home. He was 91.
Dr. Woodward was credited with helping reduce typhus infection among U.S. forces in World War II. His work after the war with the new class of drugs known as antibiotics led to his Nobel nomination.
“Nationally and internationally, he is considered one of the fathers of the subspecialty of infectious diseases,” said Dr. Philip A. Mackowiak, a friend and chairman of medical service at the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Hospital.
Dr. Woodward was studying a new drug known as chloramphenicol in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1948 when he found a man with typhoid who was cured by a dose of the drug, he said in a 1990 interview with the Baltimore Sun.
The case was the first documented, effective medical cure of typhoid, and Dr. Woodward and his fellow researchers were nominated for the Nobel Prize after reporting their findings in a 1948 scientific article.
He later served as chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Maryland’s medical school from 1954 to 1981.
“He was internationally revered as an investigator and was a master clinician. His work had a humanitarian flavor to it. He tried to keep large populations healthy in endemic conditions,” said Dr. William L. Henrich, current chairman of the Department of Medicine.
Born and raised in Westminster, Md., the son and grandson of Carroll County physicians, Dr. Woodward was a 1930 graduate of Westminster High School.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., and received his medical education at the University of Maryland.
He entered the Army in 1941 and studied dengue fever in Bermuda and rickets in Jamaica before being sent to North Africa, where he found a typhus epidemic.
French scientists from the Pasteur Institute invited Dr. Woodward to help them, and he was credited with controlling typhus among Allied troops in North Africa, Italy and the Pacific as a member of the U.S. Typhus Commission.
In 1945, President Roosevelt awarded him the Typhus Commission Medal.
“He was one of the first people I know who used the practical relationship with the military to study infectious disease questions,” Dr. Henrich said. “He studied how you keep an Army in the field by preventing infectious diseases.”
After leaving the Army in 1946, Dr. Woodward became an assistant professor at Maryland. However, his wartime work continued to be recognized throughout his life.
In 1961, he was awarded the Louis Pasteur Medal by the French institute, and in 1973 he was given the Army’s Outstanding Civilian Award. In 1990, he received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service to the armed forces.
Although he retired in 1981, Dr. Woodward continued to teach until last year.
“I believe a doctor should be well trained, interested and dedicated in what he is doing,” Dr. Woodward said in the 1990 interview. “If he is well trained and well rounded, he’ll order fewer tests and give fewer drugs.”
He is survived by his wife of 67 years, the former Celeste Constance Lauve, a physician and Maryland medical school classmate; two sons, Dr. William E. Woodward of Oxford and Westminster, who researches tropical infectious diseases, and Dr. R. Craig Woodward of Atlanta, an internist; a daughter, Dr. Celeste Woodward Applefeld of Baltimore, a pediatrician; nine grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. A son, Lewis O. Woodward, died in 1955.
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