Dr. Reginald Heber Fitz '64, of 18 Arlington street, Boston, professor emeritus at the Harvard Medical School, died Tuesday evening at the Corey Hill Hospital. The cause of the death was ulcer of the stomach. Dr. Fitz had long been in ill health, and went to the hospital several days ago to undergo an operation. He was seventy years old.

Dr. Fitz practically discovered appendicitis as a definite disease. He was graduated from the Harvard Medical School with the class of '64, and was actively engaged in medical duties from that time to his death. In 1905 Harvard conferred the honorary degree of LL.D. on him. He was president of the Association of American Physicians in 1894, and in 1907 of the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons.

A Great Pathologist

The Transcript comments on Dr. Fitz's career as follows:

It was only last July that Dr. Moynihan, president of the surgical division of the British Medical Association, was referring to the late Dr. R. H. Fitz as "that incomparable clinician." The remark denotes a reputation that was international. And deservedly so. In their general outline, the scientific achievements of Dr. Fitz are fairly well known. He gave its name to the disorder we now know as "appendicitis," and, so to say, brought the fight against it into the open.

There is no guessing how many of us cherish the lives of those who mean much to us--lives that have been preserved, directly or indirectly, through the researches of this rather reserved, conservative-minded physician. He was a pioneer among pioneers. When he returned from Europe in the early seventies, comparatively little was known about the scientific study of pathology by microscope. The powers of the young man were very speedily recognized by Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, and a way was cleared for him. In fact, the beginnings of the pathological building at the Massachusetts General Hospital were made to give Dr. Fitz space for his work. His was one of those minds which, to do its best work, must be allowed to work alone. He never belonged to a great "team-play"; nor was he the type of leader in scientific matters who organizes the working of a whole-department. His achievement was individual. Yet he had, to a remarkable degree, the faculty of fertilizing other minds--his pupils, for example, in honor of his retirement in 1908, published a volume of scientific studies dedicated to him as the inspirer of them. In the lecture room he radiated vitality; he always seemed to have more to say than could be crammed into an hour, and sometimes the lecture would begin before he entered the room--the class heard his voice as he came towards the open door.

It is curious to note that the man who named appendicitis--a disease which has led to so much criticism for alleged reckless operating--was a physician very conservative himself in the matter of operations. This conservatism was a dominant mental trait, of a piece with his rather reserved personality, under which, however, for those who know him well, flowed a vein of genial humor. It was often remarked that he and the late Dr. Maurice Richardson were the close friends they were "by the law of opposites."

It was not in the nature of things that Dr. Fitz should have built up an exceptionally lucrative practice. His contributions were more in the individual and the scientific order. Nor did the material things of his profession attract him. His manner of life remained throughout, simple, with just a dash of Puritan austerity. He was so much more interested in his profession than in the outward shows of life that he apparently gave them little thought or none. His quiet, sober achievement and its great contribution to the sum of human happiness prompts once more to acknowledgment of that sturdy quality in the New England families which placed the conscientious discharge of duties above all titles or rewards