Hermann M. Biggs

The present generation hardly knows what disease and epidemic meant in American cities a generation or two ago, and one of the men to whom the credit for that epoch-making change belongs was Herman Michaels [sic: Hermann Michael] Biggs. There is something of particular fineness about a man whose public achievements are of the largest sort yet whose quiet and self-effacing methods rarely bring him into the public view; who has his way even with New York City public officials because, while they cannot understand the man who relinquishes a career of lucrative medical practice to serve the public at a modest salary, they do not venture to oppose him.

Dr. Biggs organized the pathological and bacteriological department of this city’s health department as long ago as 1892, when he was only 32 years of age, but ten years earlier than that he had already outlined his ideas and purposes in his graduating thesis at Cornell on “The Duty of the State in Regard to Hygiene.” He predicted then, on the basis of Koch’s discoveries of the day, the extermination of tuberculosis. The city laboratories which he established were the first bacteriological work-shops of the kind in the world’s history. They were responsible for the early and general introduction of diphtheria antitoxin. What he individually accomplished in the fight against tuberculosis would largely make up the story of that great advance in medical research.

In social and official relations Dr. Biggs was always cordial, never effusive; in his efforts to overcome ignorance or prejudice he relied on persuasion, example, education, rarely on aggressive methods. Himself an eminently successful diagnostician, he was outspoken in expression of belief that the consultant who considered his work done when he had stated the probable cause of a malady did not understand his duty. What the physician owed the patient, Dr. Biggs repeatedly contended, was not alone information as to what was the matter with him but restoration of health and, if that were not possible, relief from suffering.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1924 Century Association Yearbook