Charles Franklin Hoover was an American physician and educator. He served as a professor of medicine at Harvard.
Background
Charles Franklin Hoover was born on August 2, 1865 in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. His father, Abel, of German-Swiss extraction, was a wealthy manufacturer of farming machinery. His mother, Clara Elizabeth (Hoff) Hoover, came of Dutch stock.
Charles, reared as a Methodist, had originally planned to enter the ministry; but subsequent contacts with relatives in the medical profession probably influenced his final choice of a career. In his later life, however, this adolescent interest in theology was revived and his library grew to contain an unusual collection of theological and philosophical treatises.
Education
Hoover attended Ohio Wesleyan University from 1882 to 1885 and received from Harvard in 1887 the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and in 1892, the degree of Doctor of Medicine. From 1890 to 1894 he worked with Prof. Edmund von Neusser at the University of Vienna and with Professor Frederick Kraus at the University of Strassburg.
Career
In 1907 Hoover was made professor of medicine in the Medical College of Western Reserve University and visiting physician to the Lakeside Hospital. During the World War he served as a major in the Medical Reserve Corps and was with Base Hospital Unit No. 4 in France from May to September 1917. He then resumed his duties as teacher and medical consultant in Cleveland until an obscure pulmonary malady, which remained a mystery even after autopsy, terminated his career in 1927 after a half year's invalidism.
From the time of his German apprenticeship his approach to clinical problems was that of a physiologist. His reputation rested on his skill as a diagnostician rather than on his ability as a therapeutist. Though fully aware of the value of laboratory methods, he prided himself on being a bedside rather than a laboratory diagnostician, and he relied largely on his own highly trained special senses aided only by pocket instruments. His diagnoses were the result of the careful bedside observation of disease symptomatology interpreted in terms of pathological physiology. "When convinced of the soundness of his ideas he expressed them with forcible, often aggressive, decision.
He believed thoroughly in the possibilities of internal medicine, and did not easily seek surgical intervention for his patients. His diagnoses once given were rarely shaken. He was the author of "General Considerations in Cardiovascular Diseases" and "Functional Diseases of the Heart" (1908); "Inflammatory Disease of the Skeletal Muscle" ; "Respiratory Excursion of the Thorax" and "Diseases of the Bronchi" (1920); "Respiratory Symptomatology. "
Achievements
Hoover's original contributions dealt with the physiology of the diaphragm and the ventilatory function of the lung as well as with the examination of the nervous system; and he became a prominent consultant in cardiorespiratory, neurological, and hepatic diseases. The bulk of his observations is well reflected in his contributions to standard systems of medicine.
Religion
Hoover was a Methodist.
Connections
On August 9, 1900, Hoover was married to Katherine Fraser of Kincardine, Ontario. They had one daughter.
