Rheumatologist Arthur Grayzel, MD, excelled as a teacher, researcher and clinician, and he excelled in all three areas while also having a zest for life, according to his family. Dr. Grayzel, an ACR Master, died this past August, living until age 92. He leaves behind a lifetime of helping patients, fellow physicians and students.
Following his graduation from Harvard Medical School in 1957, Dr. Grayzel completed a medical internship at Albert Merritt Billings Hospital of the University of Chicago Medical Center and a residency in internal medicine at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, New York. He went on to do research at the National Institutes of Health and then completed a rheumatology fellowship at the Manchester Royal Infirmary in Manchester, U.K.
Dr. Grayzel in 1964.
In 1964, he returned to the U.S. to work as a rheumatologist and researcher at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, where he eventually became a professor of medicine. His research at Einstein focused mostly on the immunology of systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Dr. Grayzel also had a strong interest in work that would help improve patients and their quality of life, which led him to become senior vice president for medical affairs at the Arthritis Foundation. He then went on to work in a similar position at the Sjögren’s Foundation. Throughout that time, Dr. Grayzel maintained longstanding participation on the Institutional Review Board at Einstein.
Dr. Grayzel retired in the mid-2000s.
A Family Inspiration
In addition to inspiring patients, students and his peers, Dr. Grayzel also inspired his children’s career paths.
Dr. Grayzel had three children—David, Jonathan and Sue—and his two sons also became physicians. Sue is a professor of modern European history at Utah State University. Their mother, Estherann, also became a physician in the 1950s, when there were not many women in the profession. She specialized in primary care and endocrinology.
David Grayzel, MD, a partner with Atlas Venture, a biotech venture capital firm in Boston, recalls being at the kitchen table and listening to his parents discuss medical cases. “It just always struck me as nothing odd about it. I grew up with it,” he says. He says his interest in medicine follows that of many other future physicians, including wanting to follow intellectual passions while also having a career that could improve the lives of others.
“[Our father] definitely wanted his children to go into medicine,” says Jonathan Grayzel, MD, FAAEM, a senior deputy editor with UpToDate based in Concord, Mass. Initially, none of the siblings expressed an interest in medicine, although both he and David ended up getting their medical degrees.
“We could see that [Dad] really enjoyed medicine and was very dedicated to it and found it endlessly fascinating. That’s probably something that caught the fancy of myself and my brother,” Jonathan Grayzel says. “If you had an interest in science and caring for patients, there were a lot of opportunities. That came through clearly with his career and our mom’s career.”
Enjoying the Detective Work
Dr. Arthur Grayzel always had a long-standing interest in the biology of the immune system (his father had been a pathologist at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in New York), and rheumatology was a field that allowed him to “indulge that interest,” Jonathan Grayzel says.
“I remember once asking him about the things he really enjoyed about rheumatology. It was often the case that when no one could really figure out what was going on with a patient they would consult rheumatology. That sort of complex problem solving was something he really enjoyed,” Jonathan Grayzel says.
Yet teaching fellows and residents also gave him a lot of satisfaction. David Grayzel recalls coming home from school one day at age 11 or 12 as his father was getting ready to work at the Arthritis Foundation, where he mostly worked in Atlanta instead of New York. There were more than a couple dozen fellows in his house to say farewell, and that surprised him.
“I know now as a member of the medical community that the people you train with and the people who trained you have a special place in your heart. It always struck me that rheumatologists are such teachers and care quite a lot about the next generation of folks,” David Grayzel says.
Dr. Grayzel with patients.
David Grayzel also recalls seeing a picture that embodies the caring nature of his father and his work. In the picture, his father is in a suit, tie and suspenders, sitting at a chair poolside talking with six RA patients who are doing water exercises. “I think you recognize that there’s a chronic nature of rheumatologic conditions that people really struggle with for a lifetime. The acute interventions are, of course, important, but it’s how they live with their disease over time,” he says. This is a balance he says his father was very aware of and eager to help address.
Vanessa Caceres is a medical writer in Bradenton, Florida.
