Harold Wolff

Harold George Wolff (New York, 26 May 1898 - Washington D.C., 21 February 1962) was an American doctor, neurologist and scientist.
He is generally considered the father of modern headache research, and a pioneer in the study of psychosomatic illness.

Biography

Harold Wolff was born on May 26, 1898 in New York City, the only child of Louis Wolff, a catholic illustrator, and Emma Recknagel Wolff, Lutheran. He was educated at City College, from which he graduated in 1918, aged 20.
After graduating, he worked in a government-supported fishery trying to improve drying fish.
He considered becoming a priest before deciding to take up medicine at Harvard Medical School, where he received his M.D. in 1923.

After medical training at New York’s Roosevelt Hospital and Bellevue Hospital Center, he started to study neuropathology with Harry Forbes and Stanley Cobb.

In 1928 he travelled abroad, spending a year in Graz, in Austria, with Otto Loewi, and then with Ivan Pavlov in Leningrad, in Russia.

Returning to America, he moved to the Psychiatry ward at Phipps Clinic of Johns Hopkins University, working with Adolf Meyer (psychiatrist).

In 1932 he finally decided to come back in Boston and became the head of Neurology ward, supervised by Eugene Dubois. He later became also Professor of Medicine and Chief Neurologist at New York Hospital – Cornell Medical Center (NYH-CMC).

In 1934 Dr. Wolff married the well-known painter Isabel Bishop, and had a son, Remsen N. Wolff.
In 1958 he was named the first occupant of the “''Anne Parrish Titzel Chair''” in Medicine at Cornell University.

During his last years he devoted much of his energy to the work of the “''Academy of Religion and Mental Health''” and, after a lifelong agnosticism, became a member of “''Christ Church (Episcopal)''” in Riverdale, New York.

Harold Wolff died on February 21, 1962 in Washington D.C., of a cerebral vascular disease.

Personality

He was defined a “combination of administrator and investigator”.

Wolff’s pupils described him as a superb clinician, a wise man who exercised vigorously and competitively, sometimes highly obsessive. He used to teach by example, in fact his motto was: "''No day without its experiment''".

Field of research

Harold Wolff’s first major contribution was the elucidation of the mechanism of migraine and other headaches of vascular origin. He was the first neurologist that supported the hypothesis that the aura arises from a vasoconstriction and the headache from a vasodilatation.
In fact, vasodilators ( amylnitrite, carbon dioxide) abolished the aura temporarily or persistently, and vasoconstrictors (norepinephrine, ergotamine tartrate, caffeine) induced the aura.

Dr. Wolff was also interested in understanding the mind – body relationship, and established a separate category of illness to be defined as psychosomatic

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