Remembering Howard Mofenson By Neal E. Flomenbaum, MD, Editor-in-Chief

Over the years, emergency medicine has benefited from the contributions of talented physicians from other disciplines. One such extraordinarily gifted physician-educator was Howard Mofenson, MD, who died last month at the age of 82. A professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, director of the Long Island Regional Poison Control Center (LIRPCC) from 1963 to 2001, and a frequent contributor to these pages in the 1980s, Howard is probably best known to emergency physicians for developing the concept of toxicologic syndromes, which he called “toxidromes.”

I first met Howard in the late 1970s when he and his colleagues were welcoming emergency physicians into the field of medical toxicology. One evening during a national toxicology conference in 1982, I found myself sharing the backseat of a rental car with him and two other toxicologists, about to leave for a restaurant. Another colleague slammed the door shut. I was wedged tightly between the door and Howard, but Howard’s lower extremities seemed to take the brunt of the force—and I winced for him. Howard just smiled, so I said, “Hey, Howard, you have a wooden leg or what?”

To which he replied, “Yes, I do—and once in a while it even turns out to be useful.”
Embarrassed and assuming that he had lost his leg from a medical illness or in a car accident, I never asked and never knew how it happened until Howard retired from the LIRPCC and a Long Island newspaper ran an article about him. As an 18-year-old combat medic, Howard Mofenson landed at Omaha Beach after D-Day while there were still body parts lying around. During the next four months, his heroism as a medic earned him a Combat Medical Badge, two Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, and an American Theater Medal, among other commendations. However, only four months after it began, his career as a combat medic ended when the Jeep he was riding in hit a mine and he lost his left leg and a portion of his skull.

When he returned to the United States, Howard finished college and medical school, married, and returned to his Long Island hometown of Mineola, where he spent the rest of his life practicing, teaching, writing about pediatric emergencies and medical toxicology, and running the tenth largest poison center in the country.

The New York Academy of Medicine’s Section on Emergency Medicine planned to honor Howard with its first lifetime achievement award on September 20, 2001. Tom Brokaw, then anchor of NBC Nightly News, agreed to present the award to this outstanding member of the “Greatest Generation,” barring an unforeseen major news event. Then came 9/11.

A few weeks later, as we prepared to reschedule the award ceremony, Mr. Brokaw’s assistant, who had been arranging for his participation, became one of that fall’s anthrax victims. Although she recovered from her illness, she never returned to her position, we never rescheduled the event, and Howard returned to the LIRPCC to spend much of his remaining years introducing yet another generation of young physicians to the toxicology of terrorism and other more mundane types of poisonings and overdoses.

In the 28 years I knew Howard Mofenson, I learned a great deal about toxicology and medicine from him. But I learned something even more valuable to an emergency physician from his good humor, upbeat manner, determination, and spirit. And that was, to quote another World War II hero, Winston Churchill, “Never give in—never, never, never.”

Emerg Med 39(05):7, 2007