Victor G. Heiser

On February 27, 1972, at the age of ninety-nine years, Victor G. Heiser died in the New York Hospital. His remarkable career spanned the development of modern medicine. Victor Heiser entered public health when communicable diseases, fevers, and plagues decimated millions and was a leader in their control on a world-wide scale; he was a world-wide man. Victor Heiser’s place in life may have been influenced by the day in May, 1889, when he was swept along on the roof of a barn by the Johnstown flood, in which he lost both his parents. From 1903, when he was appointed chief quarantine officer for the Philippines in the Taft Administration, until he retired from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1934, his life continued at full flood. As director of the East for the International Health Board he held sway over health and medical problems in the world’s most fascinating and most disease-ridden region.

Among his scientific contributions Victor Heiser was proudest of his work on chaulmoogra oil, then the world’s only effective agent against leprosy. The drug was almost impossible to tolerate when taken by mouth; Heiser prepared a chemical congener that could be injected with effects that were at least as equally beneficial as those produced by the oral form.

Heiser was remembered by his colleagues as a suave man of the world. They admired and enjoyed his eccentricities. One of these was to carry his dress shirts and linen suits with him on the steamer from New York to China so that they could be laundered by the best Peking tailors while he was making his annual visit to the famed Peking Union Medical College. Another was his reliance on a little black book which he would consult before a dinner party to select anecdotes suitable for the occasion. He was a physical fitness buff and carried a tennis racket on all his travels. And as soon as his steamer docked he insisted that his deputies join him for a long tramp.

In the battle for public health, his colleagues respected his ability to select good people and then give them their head to develop their own programs.

Victor Heiser loved to recall his verbal joust with Rabindranath Tagore when the Hindu philosopher went to China in 1924. Firm in his faith in the effectiveness of the traditional systems of medicine followed in India and in China, Tagore disdained the efforts that were being made to establish Western scientific medicine in China. In Peking, Heiser challenged him to submit the Ayur-Vedic medicine practiced in India to a scientific verification of his claims. Heiser felt that his challenge was successful because Tagore never spoke out again in criticism of scientific medicine. (It was at this time that Tagore visited the Peking Union Medical College at Heiser’s invitation and was deeply impressed with the research on the Chinese medicinal, ma huang, that introduced the drug ephedrine to Western medicine.)

One of the responsibilities of a staff member of the Rockefeller Foundation is to maintain detailed diaries and references on his daily activities. In 1936, Victor Heiser’s famed An American Doctor’s Odyssey was published. This work was based on his diaries and his remarkable memory for names, places, and events—a memory which remained keen until the last days of his life. Heiser’s Odyssey was translated into fourteen languages. It would be interesting to know how many young men and women were influenced to enter careers in medicine, nursing, and public health by reading An American Doctor’s Odyssey.

Victor Heiser became a member of The Century Association in 1917. After the death of his wife in 1965, he would come to the Ordinary, and his booming voice, hearty laugh, and remarkable memory of his experiences in public health made him a delightful companion. He lived alone in Manhattan, but was surrounded by mementos of that part of the world he loved the best, the Orient—teak and rosewood furniture, pottery, delicate carvings, and exquisite screens and silks.

John Z. Bowers
1973 Century Association Yearbook