VORWALD, Arthur J.

VORWALD, Arthur J. (Dubuque, IA, Apr. 12, 1904--Green Bay, WI, Nov. 29, 1974). Medical researcher. Arthur Vorwald earned his M.D. and Ph.D. in pathology at the University of Chicago while working as instructional assistant. After an internship at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and a National Research Council fellowship at Cambridge, England, he received an appointment in 1934 as staff pathologist of the Saranac Laboratory in New York, a leading research institution of lung disorders at the time. At first interested in tuberculosis, he soon became intrigued by the link between tubercle bacilli and silica and came under the professional influence of Leroy U. Gardner, leading authority on dust diseases of the lung and director of the laboratory. He later served as professor of pathology at the University of Chicago Medical Medical School.

During WORLD WAR II, Vorwald served as a medical attache to General Dwight Eisenhower and the United States Embassy in London. He was appointed head of the Navy's medical sciences division and established the department of pathology at the Naval Academy in Annapolis before serving in the Navy Department's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.

After returning from the war, Vorwald continued his research as the director of the Edward L. Trudeau Foundation Laboratories in New York state.

In 1947 after the death of Dr. Gardner, Vorwald became the Director of Laboratories at Saranac. He held this position until 1954. In that year, he was invited to organize a new department in the medical school of Wayne State University in Detroit: the Department of Industrial Medicine and Hygiene. This was soon renamed the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, and later (under successor David Bassett) the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences. With Vorwald's direction, his department became one of the largest grant-receivers of the university. Soon after arriving, Vorwald received a grant of $71,000 for lung cancer research from the American Cancer Society.

In 1955, Vorwald made medical history with the artificial production of lung cancer in rats. At the time, Vorwald felt that his work suggested the possibility not only of resolving the possible link between cigarette smoking and cancer but for also testing various industrial and other chemicals as cancer-causing agents.

Vorwald served as a professor and chairman of Wayne State's Departent of Occupational (Industrial) Medicine. In 1957 he was one of three U. S. delegates to an international conference on dust-causing lung disease in Johannesburg, South Africa. In 1960 he was honored by the Wayne County Medical Society and presented the 39th annual Beaumont Lecture, an honor for Detroit-area medical professionals. He retired from Wayne State in 1968 due to ill health.