Herman Kalman Gold, MD

Dr Herman K. Gold, Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass, died on March 1, 2008, at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) of complications related to acute myelogenous leukemia. He was 67 years old. Dr Gold served for 37 years as staff physician and interventional cardiologist in the Department of Cardiology at MGH and was responsible for groundbreaking research in the use of fibrinolytic agents and subsequently glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitors in the treatment of myocardial infarction.Dr Gold was born in Newport News, Va, the son of Jonah and Miriam Gold. His life was from early childhood shaped by medicine, a recognition of the role it played in saving his own life, which drove his passion, hope, and tireless energy in the pursuit of medical advances and clinical excellence to save others. Two indelible childhood events fueled his desire to become a physician. As a child, he contracted scarlet fever. During wartime, penicillin was rationed, and the family was only able to obtain enough for a few doses. He recalled that every night, his parents would boil his urine to collect enough penicillin for the next day’s treatment. Later, at the age of 9, he contracted bulbar polio, which prevented him from swallowing properly for nearly 2 years. These two experiences imprinted in him an appreciation for good health and a feeling of personal obligation as a physician to try sometimes unconventional treatments in an effort to cure patients’ ills.Dr Gold received his BS from the College of William and Mary in 1961. It was there he …