Orvan Hess

About Orvan Hess

Who is it?: Physician
Birth Day: June 18, 1906
Birth Place: Lackawaxen Township, United States
Died On: September 6, 2002(2002-09-06) (aged 96)\nNew Haven, Connecticut
Birth Sign: Cancer
Citizenship: United States
Alma mater: Lafayette College, University at Buffalo
Known for: Penicillin Fetal heart monitor
Awards: AMA Scientific Achievement Award
Fields: Medicine (obstetrics and gynaecology)
Institutions: Yale-New Haven Hospital Yale School of Medicine

Orvan Hess Net Worth

Orvan Hess was born on June 18, 1906 in Lackawaxen Township, United States, is Physician. Orvan Walter Hess was an American obstetrician and gynecologist, who developed the first, fetal heart monitor. This device allowed the continuous monitoring of the patient and the baby during labor. Hess, along with a fellow doctor, used penicillin to save the life of a patient who contracted scarlet fever and streptococcal infection. He completed his residency in gynecology and obstetrics before he became a clinical instructor at Yale School of Medicine, New Haven .He served as a frontline surgeon during the World War II. A major contributor to the progress of obstetrics and gynecology, Orvan Walter Hess was known to be an enthusiastic and energetic obstetrician and gynecologist. He spent almost 50 years of his life as an obstetrician at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Orvan Hess is one of the most celebrated medical practitioners in history, who also received the prestigious, ‘Scientific Achievement Award’. He also published many reports throughout his career. Read this biography to find out more about Orvan Walter Hess.
Orvan Hess is a member of Physicians

💰 Net worth: Under Review

Some Orvan Hess images

Famous Quotes:

"Doctors had done everything possible, both surgically and medically," Dr. Hess said in a 1998 interview with Katie Krauss, the editor of Yale-New Haven Magazine and one of the many babies Dr. Hess delivered. "I went to see her and knew she was dying."


Dr. Hess went to talk to her internist, Dr. Bumstead, and found him asleep in the library. "While I was waiting for him to wake up," Dr. Hess said, "I sat and read the latest Reader's Digest, in which there was an article called 'Germ Killers From Earth', about the use of soil bacteria to kill streptococcal infection in animals."


He asked Dr. Bumstead, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had something like this gramicidin mentioned in the Reader's Digest?" This prompted Dr. Bumstead to speak with some colleagues who were studying penicillin and to obtain some for the patient, Anne Miller. The day after her first injection, Mrs. Miller's fever broke. She lived to be 90 years old, dying in 1999.
— New York Times

Biography/Timeline

1927

Hess went to Lafayette College and was graduated in 1927, and received his MD from the University at Buffalo. He completed an internship at Children's Hospital in Buffalo, New York and became an obstetrician and gynecologist.

1930

Hess began working on a fetal heart monitor in the 1930s as a research fellow at Yale University due to his frustration with the limitations of using a stethoscope on a subject with two heartbeats and undergoing contractions.

1942

On March 14, 1942, John Bumstead and Hess became the first doctors in the world to successfully treat a patient (Anne Miller) with penicillin.

1948

For most of his career, Hess practiced at Yale-New Haven Hospital, interrupted by World War II Service as a surgeon in the 48th Armored Medical Battalion attached to the 2nd Armored Division in the invasions of North Africa, Sicily and Normandy.

1949

In 1949, after World War II, Hess returned to Yale and resumed his work, along with postdoctoral fellow Dr. Edward Hon. In 1957, using a six-and-a-half-foot-tall machine, they became the first in the world to continuously monitor electrical cardiac signals from a fetus.

1960

Through the 1960s, working with Wasil Kitvenko, the chief of the medical school's electronics laboratory, Dr. Hess continued to improve on the equipment, introducing telemetry and reducing the monitor's size. The device, which allowed monitoring to continue during labor, became one of the most-used tests in obstetrics.

1979

Hess received the American Medical Association's Scientific Achievement Award in 1979 for his work on this case.

1998

Hess was predeceased by his wife Carol in 1998. He is survived by two daughters, Dr. Katherine Halloran of Lexington, and Carolyn Westerfield of Hamden; five grandchildren; and five great-granddaughters.

2014

Hess was born in Baoba, Pennsylvania. At the age of two, after his mother's death, the family moved to Margaretville, New York where he grew up. Hess was inspired by Doctor Gordon Bostwick Maurer—who started Margaretville's first hospital in 1925— to study Medicine. He married Dr. Maurer's sister, Carol Maurer, in 1928.