Edith Louise Potter

Edith Louise Potter (1901 – March 22, 1993) was an American physician and scientist who established the field of perinatal pathology. Potter made early contributions to the understanding of Rh disease. She established the link between a characteristic facial appearance and the absence of fetal kidneys, an association that became known as Potter sequence.

A native of Iowa, Potter received a medical degree and a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. She practiced pathology at the Chicago Lying-in Hospital for more than 30 years. After retiring from medical practice, Potter became known for her involvement in horticulture.

Early life Potter was born on September 26, 1901, in Clinton, Iowa, to William Harvey Potter and the former Edna Rugg Holmes.

In 1940, Potter co-wrote Fetal and Neonatal Death with her department chair, Fred Lyman Adair; the pair analyzed the causes of death of more than 500 infants who had died in the 1930s. The University of South Florida later awarded her an honorary Doctor of Science.

Personal life In the summer of 1944, Potter married architectural sculptor Alvin Meyer, who had one daughter. Meyer was the sculpture department director for the architectural firm Holabird & Root, and his work was featured on the Chicago Board of Trade Building, which had been completed in 1930. Meyer served as the illustrator for one of Potter's books, Fundamentals of Human Reproduction (1948).

Potter retired in the mid-1960s and moved to Fort Myers, Florida, with Meyer. Meyer died in 1976.

Shortly thereafter, Potter married Frank Deats, an architectural coordinator and watercolorist who had retired to Fort Myers several years earlier. Deats, who was the godson of inventor J. Frank Duryea, helped in designing the National Gallery of Art and expanding the National Archives Building. Deats died in 1983.

Later life After her retirement from medicine, Potter became interested in horticulture, especially the cultivation of indoor plants. Potter grew bromeliads, and she donated 122 cultivars to the University of Minnesota in 1980 to establish the Meyer-Deats Conservatory at the school's arboretum. The conservatory was named in honor of Potter's husbands.

Potter was diagnosed with colon cancer late in life and she died while on a 1993 cruise in the Caribbean. She is also honored by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists with a lectureship in her name.

Publications Fetal and neonatal death (1939, with Fred L. Adair) Rh, its relation to congenital hemolytic disease & to intragroup transfusion reactions (1947) Fundamentals of Human Reproduction (1948) Pathology of the Fetus and Infant (1953)