Eugene F. DuBois

Along with the progress of aviation and submarine activity and with the spread of world war, more and more dark corners of the earth have been revealed as places where man could, and sometimes must, live. The unique capacity of the human animal to create his own environment has led many men into the fascinating study of the supposed uninhabitable.

One of these explorers in the field of physiology was Doctor Gene Dubois. What the human body could endure in extremes of heat and cold, starvation and thirst, altitude and ocean depth became his special interest and the subject of constant experiment not only in laboratory and hospital but in arctic exploration and two world wars as well.

Eugene Dubois was educated at Harvard College and Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. After his internship at Presbyterian Hospital in New York he specialized in pathology. In the First World War, he served in the navy medical corps and was assigned to a submarine. Here came his first opportunity to study physiological reactions under uncommon pressures. For his work he was awarded the Navy Cross.

In 1928 he began to work closely with Centurion Vilhjalmur Stefansson on dietary experiments. He was at that time director of the Russell Sage Institute of Pathology. Stefansson himself was the subject of some of these tests in which, among other things, it was found that a man could live for several weeks on meat and water alone without suffering any damage. Doctor Dubois also aroused much interest and discussion in the medical profession by his studies of the effects of heat and cold. As a result of these he held that although the body adapted easily to extremes of heat, it was ill-fitted to withstand severe cold. When Doctor Stefansson published his book Not By Bread Alone, Dubois wrote the Introduction.

A Centurion who was his close associate and friend writes that Eugene Dubois was “a many-sided man, a really great scientist, a good teacher and leader, a cultured man with unusual charm, a tremendous worker. His work for the army and navy in the matter of physiology of the human in high flying and in submarines was extremely valuable to our country. He was widely known for his investigations of metabolism and established the first real scientific foundation for standards of basal metabolism, so helpful to the technician in diagnosing toxic goiter. With all his learning and wide knowledge he was most modest and approachable to the students and fellow workers under his guidance, provided he was convinced of their sincerity and real desire to learn.”

In the Second World War, Dubois attained the rank of captain in the navy. At his death he was professor emeritus of the Cornell Medical Center.

He was a Centurion for just under forty years.

Roger Burlingame
1960 Century Association Yearbook