ERIC CASSELL

CASSELL--Eric, MD, MACP An illustrious internist, teacher, mentor, author, and pioneer in palliative care, died at home in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, on September 24, 2021, age 93. Dr. Cassell focused on clinical medicine's theory and practice and developing new ideas for its practice and teaching. Before closing his office in 1998, he treated New Yorkers from labor unionists to celebrities. Subsequently, he continued to write, teach, and lecture extensively. Dr. Cassell and his wife Patricia Owens, an expert in disability policy, kept a second home in Brooklyn. An amateur chef, he loved everything food-related. Dr. Cassell wrote prolifically on medicine's moral issues, the nature of suffering, and the care of the dying. His books include: The Healer's Art (1976); Changing Values in Medicine (1979); the two- volume Talking with Patients (1984); The Place of the Humanities in Medicine (1984); The Nature of Suffering and The Goals of Medicine (1991, 2004), particularly influential; Doctoring: The Nature of Primary Care Medicine (1997); The Nature of Healing: The Modern Practice of Medicine (2013); The Nature of Clinical Medicine (2014); and Professionalism and the Rebirth of Medical Education (2018), with J Donald Boudreau and Abraham Fuks, colleagues in innovating a new curriculum at McGill University's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. At his death, Dr. Cassell and Baylor University's Dr. Lauren Barron were coauthoring a book on the humanities in medicine. Dr. Cassell traced his early insights into pain, suffering, and the doctor's proper role in their treatment to his participation in the Task Force on Dying at The Hastings Center, now America's premier interdisciplinary bioethics research institute, in 1971. He later became a founding Fellow and member of its Board of Directors. Dr. Cassell served on the President's National Bioethics Advisory Board from 1997-2001. Elected in 1984 to today's National Academy of Medicine, he was a Master of the American College of Physicians. His honors include the American Society of Humanities and Bioethics' Lifetime Achievement Award and a Doctor of Humane Letters from the Medical College of Pennsylvania. Dr. Cassell received his BA from Queens College and MA from Columbia University in 1950, and his MD from New York University College of Medicine in 1954. After training at Bellevue Hospital and two years in France as a captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, he became a U.S. Public Health Service Fellow in Cornell University Medical College's Department of Public Health. Brief stints at NYU and Mount Sinai led to his decades-long post as Clinical Professor of Public Health at Cornell's Weill Medical College, where he directed the Program for the Study of Ethics and Medicine. In addition to his wife, Dr. Cassell is survived by Justine and Stephen Cassell (Alexa Mulvihill), children from his first marriage to Joan Cassell; his stepchildren, Margaret Owens (Al Knauber), Theresa Owens (Al Krueger), Shirley Owens (Robert Whitall), James Owens (Jesse), and Rebecca Owens, his primary caregiver during his last days; one grandchild, Julia Cassell; two step-grandchildren; and a step-great-grandchild. A memorial service will follow. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to The Hastings Center.