Harrison S. Martland Collection

Dr. Harrison S. Martland (1883-1954), a native of Newark, was a graduate of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons (1905). He interned at the public hospital on Welfare Island in New York City and in 1909 was hired as the first full-time pathologist at Newark City Hospital. Martland was the son of William Henry Martland, a physician, and Ida Carlyle Martland. In 1910 Martland married Myra C. Ferdon; the couple resided at 180 Clinton Avenue, Newark until his death.

During World War I Martland, who achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, served at a hospital in Vichy, France. By 1925 he had become the Essex County Physician, and in 1927 he was appointed Chief Medical Examiner of Essex County, a post he held until his retirement in 1953. From 1933-1948 Martland also taught forensic medicine at New York University.

Martland was an avid researcher with interests in traumatic brain injury, cardiac syphilis, and the effects of gunshot wounds, but he was best known for his work regarding industrial poisoning, in particular the effects of exposure to radioactive material. His first study, published in 1929 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, was on workers' exposure to minute amounts of radioactive material in the luminous paint used to manufacture watch dials at the U.S. Radium Corporation in Orange, NJ. Martland later studied poisoning from beryllium, a toxic material used in the production of non-corrosive metal alloys, aeronautical material, and x-ray equipment.

In recognition of Martland's scholarship and medical acumen, the Essex County Anatomical and Pathological Society instituted annual lectures in his name; in 1954, Newark's new city hospital was dedicated as the Harrison S. Martland Medical Center.