PHYSICIAN WHO DONATED INVENTION PAPERS TO MUSEUM DIES IN BOSTON NURSING HOME
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Isadore Levin, a local physician and medical equipment inventor who donated his personal papers to the National Museum of Health and Medicine in the late 1970s, died on Jan. 17 in a Boston nursing home.

He was 98.

He held a patent for a flushing bedpan he called the Lavoilet, which was first displayed at the American Hospital Association meeting in September 1949. He had worked on the idea, on and off, for 11 years.

According to an article in "Journals," published by the American Hospital Association, "the new invention, according to Dr. Levin, is easier to handle than a conventional bedpan as it eliminates all carrying. Likewise, it lessens embarrassment to the patient."

At the time of the article's publication, the flushing bedpan had been in use at Doctors Hospital in Washington, D.C. for about a year. Levin's papers included a letter from the district inspector of plumbing commending the portable toilet as a "sanitary fixture with beneficial aid to all hospitals." Levin specialized in physical therapy and rehabilitation and was chief of physical medicine at Doctors Hospital from its opening in 1940 until it closed in 1979. He also was a consultant in physical medicine from 1937 to 1945 at St. Elizabeth's Hospital. He was chief of the physical medicine department at Georgetown University Hospital and an associate professor at Georgetown University medical school. Also, he was chief of physical medicine at Suburban Hospital from 1967 to 1977.

Levin was a graduate of George Washington University and a 1929 graduate of its medical school. He was in private practice in the area before he joined the staff at Doctors Hospital.

Born in Russia, Levin lived in the Washington, D.C. area most of his life. He was a Chevy Chase, Md. resident until moving to the Boston area in 1984. Levin's papers, now in the collection of the museum's Otis Historical Archives, include notebooks filled with his hand-written notes as well as marketing material and articles about his invention. The museum's Otis Historical Archives holds manuscripts, documents, archives, films, prints, slides, paintings, photographs, illustrations, and institutional records related to health and medicine. Material includes the records of the Army Medical Museum and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, but all material is not necessarily institutionally related.

There is a small reference library with journals and monographs. The archival collections consist of more than 400 collections that are about 3,000 linear feet and if laid end to end would stretch for over a mile. Of this, there are about 1,000 films and about 300,000 photographs in all media dating from the 1850s.The collections are strongest in the late 19th and early 20th century periods.

More information about the Otis Historical Archives.