New York City's innovative epidemiologist: the life and career of Morris Greenberg.

Dr Morris Greenberg was an eminent American epidemiologist who served with the New York City Department of Health for a 40 year period, from 1920 until his passing in 1960. In 1946, he became Director of the department's Bureau of Preventable Diseases. In this role, he set very high standards for outbreak and epidemic investigations joined with a commitment to scholarly research and collaboration with the city's medical centers. He received his medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and then interned at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. He later trained in pediatrics in Vienna, Austria and received a Master of Science in Public Health degree from Columbia University School of Public Health. In 1942, he became a member of the teaching staff at the School of Public Health. During his years with the New York City Department of Health he led efforts to control outbreaks of smallpox and rickettsialpox, and initiated important studies of poliomyelitis, hepatitis, trichinosis, congenital cardiac anomalies in children, and the embryopathic effects of rubella in pregnancy. Dr. Greenberg's outbreak and epidemic investigations were popularized by The New Yorker writer, Berton Roueché, whose most widely read book remains, Eleven Blue Men and other Narratives of Medical Detection. The book's title is based on Greenberg's investigation of accidental sodium nitrite poisoning among eleven elderly men in Manhattan who as a result, became cyanotic. A pioneer in epidemiology and the prevention and control of communicable disease, Greenberg established very high performance standards for the discipline before there was a Center for Disease Control and Prevention and an Epidemic Intelligence Service in the United States.