Dr. Helen Martin, a pioneer in diabetes care and a longtime professor of medicine at the University of Southern California, has died. She was 100.
Dr. Martin died June 3 of natural causes at an assisted-living community in Pasadena.
Dr. Martin used a cane after contracting polio as a child, and said she developed an early interest in medicine because she spent lots of time in hospitals while growing up. She graduated from the USC School of Medicine in 1934.
During World War II, she ended up being the only full-time faculty member at USC's clinical teaching program after the entire faculty was shipped to the India-Burma theater.
“For about 3½ years, she held that whole department together. How she did it I don't know, but she did,” said Dr. Robert Tranquada, a former colleague who became the Los Angeles County Hospital's medical director in 1969 and later dean of the USC School of Medicine.
She also made important contributions to early diabetes research, but Tranquada said he best remembers Dr. Martin's work as a teacher and mentor.
“The ethic that she taught to everybody was that the only reason the physician was there was to serve the patient; she would accept nothing less,” he said.
After retiring in 1968, Dr. Martin, who never married, spent more than six years compiling a 548-page history of Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.
