Lamar Soutter, MD (March 9, 1909 – 1996) was an American academic. He was the son of Helen Elizabeth Whiteside and Robert Soutter, a noted Boston orthopaedic surgeon. He graduated from Harvard College in 1931, with an AB in History, and from Harvard Medical School in 1935. He served residencies in Obstetrics and Gynecology and Thoracics. He was awarded the Silver Star for actions at the Battle of Bastogne in World War II, and went on to found the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The Atlantis, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
In July 1931 Soutter signed on to be a crew member on the maiden sail of the Atlantis, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's first research vessel. Doctor Henry Bryant Bigelow, the first director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and professor of zoology at Harvard (and later, Soutter's father-in-law) received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to build this vessel and to embark upon oceanographic and hydrographic investigations.
The Rat and McKenzie Rivers, Yukon Territory
In the summer of 1934 Soutter and a friend, Graham Webster, paddled a canoe 1500-miles through uncharted Yukon wilderness. They experienced several setbacks, including a serious injury for Webster. They arrived safely at Ft. Yukon and traveled home through Fairbanks, Alaska.
Captain Robert A. Bartlett and the Effie M. Morrissey, Summer 1935
The summer after he graduated from Harvard Medical School, Soutter joined a voyage with the famous Captain Robert A. Bartlett (1875–1946), who had been part of Admiral Robert Peary's group that discovered the North Pole in 1909. Bartlett had bought an old schooner, the Effie M. Morrissey, in 1926 and had been conducting oceanographic expeditions in the Arctic for various scientific organizations.
This particular expedition to northwest Greenland in 1935 was sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution, the Field Museum, and the National Museum. Soutter was ship's doctor and chief science officer. Captain Bartlett conducted the hydrographic and mineral studies and Dr Soutter gathered plankton and fish samples. Soutter himself conducted almost 100 plankton experiments, many at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning in the full daylight of the midnight sun. These experiments provided a foundation of knowledge of the sea and its inhabitants in cold climates. The expedition was also commissioned to bring back a live baby walrus for the Bronx Zoo and to make plaster casts of a narwhal, a small Arctic whale, for a future Smithsonian exhibit.
Residency in New York, and the Hindenburg Disaster
On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg, one of the largest zeppelins ever built, exploded in midair over Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey where it was attempting to land. One of the 62 survivors was the Captain of the ship, Max Pruss. He was barely alive and had sustained severe burns that required several operations. Dr Soutter, fluent in German, assisted in many surgical procedures on Hindenburg victims, including Captain Pruss. When Captain Pruss was well enough to travel back to his home in Frankfurt, Germany, Dr Soutter accompanied him. While in Germany, he toured the zeppelin factories in Friedrichshafen near Lake Constance in the southern part of the country.
MGH Blood Bank and the Cocoanut Grove Fire
After Dr Soutter left his residencies in New York City, he settled back in Boston, his hometown.
In 1940 Dr Soutter went to work at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) to assist on the surgical staff. With the outbreak of World War II, Dr Soutter believed that a blood bank was critical for civil defense. He solicited funds to pay for the equipment, and he and his staff created new techniques for blood filtration and purification. Patients were blood typed in advance of their operative procedures. Dr Soutter helped to create an elaborate system for managing blood and began work advertising for volunteer donors. When the Cocoanut Grove fire occurred in Boston in November 1942, large amounts of stored plasma from the MGH blood bank played a major role in the treatment of the 500 injured.
World War II, Bastogne and the Silver Star
In 1943 Dr Soutter was assigned to the Army's Fourth Auxiliary Surgical Unit and commanded a team attached to the First and Third Armies who were fighting in Europe.