Louis Weinstein

Louis Weinstein (February 26, 1908 – March 16, 2000) was an American infectious diseases physician, microbiologist, and educator. He was a pioneer in the modern field of infectious disease treatment, having started his career before antibiotics and vaccines became widely available. During his lifetime, he wrote or co-wrote more than 400 articles published in professional journals. He graduated from Boston University School of Medicine in 1943, and was appointed chief of infectious disease at the university in 1947. He concurrently served as a visiting professor in infectious diseases to Harvard Medical School from 1975 to 1993. Fellow Boston infectious diseases physician Morton N. Swartz described Weinstein as "a bridge between the eras before and after the introduction of antibiotics". He played a significant role in the New England polio epidemics of 1949 and 1955; when obstetricians refused to see polio-infected pregnant women because they feared viral transmission, Weinstein delivered the babies. He traveled across New England to make house calls, and on one occasion was summoned to Paris to treat Aristotle Onassis for pneumonia. He chaired a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee on the Legionnaires' disease outbreak in Philadelphia in 1976.