Q: What is it about rheumatology that drew you to such a young specialty?
A: First of all, I liked the challenge of the patients and the dependency upon history and physical exam as the major diagnostic tool. But, moreover, as a medical resident, I came to the realization that patients who had a condition that could not be cured probably needed a physician more than patients with a condition that is easily corrected. I was also convinced at that time that there would be significant improvements in the care of these patients over my career. Fortunately, this has occurred.
ACR Presidential Gold Medal
Herbert Kaplan, MD
Retired private practice rheumatologist, Denver
Background: Dr. Kaplan is among the first rheumatologists. He passed the first board examination in the specialty in 1972, after having first worked under Charley Smyth, MD, one of the field’s founders. Dr. Kaplan graduated from Albany Medical College in Albany, N.Y., in 1955 and later served as assistant chief of the medical service at the U.S. Army Hospital in Munich, Germany, from 1959–1962 before opening his private practice in Denver.
He has worked on 48 published papers, is one of the founders of the Denver Arthritis Clinic and the Rocky Mountain Rheumatism Society, served as ACR president from 1993–1994, and has won the ACR’s Paulding Phelps Award. He is the first community-based practitioner to receive this award.
Q: As the ACR’s representative to the American Society of Internal Medicine (ASIM) in the early 1980s, you persuaded them to include rheumatology as a subspecialty. Why is that important?
A: For me, 1972 is not that long ago and, up until then, rheumatology did not have board exams.
People didn’t realize rheumatology was a specialty to itself … it may sound difficult to understand in the modern day, when we have thousands of people attending the [annual] meeting.
