Morris A. Wessel

Male, Person

1917 –

41

Who is Morris A. Wessel?

Morris Arthur Wessel practiced pediatrics in New Haven, Conn., from 1951 to 1993. He was a clinical professor of pediatrics at Yale Medical School. He was known as the Yale Medical School alumni magazine put it, as “a pediatrician who treated not just the children but the whole family.”

In 1954, he offered a widely accepted definition of “colic” as a healthy baby with periods of intense, unexplained fussing/crying lasting more than 3 hours a day, more than 3 days a week for more than 3 weeks.

Together with Anthony Dominski, Ph.D, he investigated lead levels in children in the 1970s and recommended a level then thought to be unrealistically low. Eventually the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended an even lower level. With former Yale School of Nursing Dean Florence Wald he studied the treatment of terminally ill patients, which Wald believed was often futile and dehumanizing. Wald told Wessel his role would be to help her understand doctors’ thinking. “I can’t explain why doctors do what they do,” he told her. But he agreed to help. Their work led to the opening of the nation’s first hospice, in Connecticut, in 1974.

In 1997, Wessel was awarded the American Academic of Pediatrics’ C. Anderson Aldrich Award, which recognizes achievement by a physician in the field of child development. “My goal was to use my relationship to families to enhance the capacities of parents and children to meet as effectively as possible stresses in their lives,” he said in his acceptance speech. “I feel very much a part of a timeless continuity of values that binds pediatricians together as we care for children and families.” The Morris Wessel Fund, a donor advised fund of the New Haven Community Foundation, makes an award to an "unsung hero" in New Haven each year.

We need you!

Help us build the largest biographies collection on the web!

Born
Nov 1, 1917
Also known as
  • Morris Wessel

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

Use the citation below to add to a bibliography:

Style:MLAChicagoAPA

"Morris A. Wessel." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/biography/morris-a.-wessel/m/0cz8lss>.

Discuss this Morris A. Wessel biography with the community:

0 Comments

    Browse Biographies.net