# Martin A. Samuels

Martin A. Samuels (June 24, 1945–June 6, 2023) was an American physician, neurologist, and medical educator. His work focused on the intersections between neurology and the health of the entire body conducting research in neurocardiology, neurorheumatology and neurohematology. His investigations into death caused by heart-stopping fear, a phenomenon called voodoo death, have been particularly formative in defining the relationship between the cardiac and nervous systems.

## Early life and education

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, on June 24, 1945, Samuels attended Cleveland Heights High School. He was the president of the student body at the institution where he graduated with honors, and was later elected to the Cleveland Heights High School Hall of Fame.
Samuels credited his childhood pediatrician in Cleveland for inspiring his future career in medicine. He was also exposed to medicine, and specifically the brain-heart connection, before medical school through his cousin, Matthew Levy, a cardiovascular physiologist.
Samuels received his Bachelor of Arts degree in biology from Williams College in 1967, where he was elected class speaker. In 1971 he received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. There he was elected to the Pi Kappa Epsilon Honor Society. The University of Cincinnati later awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree (2005). In 2011, Samuels was asked to deliver the Honors Day Address to mark the 40th anniversary of his 1971 graduation address. Samuels also received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Harvard University in 1993.
During medical school, Samuels was influenced by a number of mentors, including Benjamin Felson, Richard Vilter, Edward Gall, Roger Crafts, Evelyn Hess, Gustav Eckstein, and Charles Aring, the latter of whom drew him into the field of neurology. He spent a period of time in hepatology and immunology research with Sheila Sherlock at the Royal Free Hospital in London. The work resulted in his first scientific publication in Gut, showing that a serum factor present in patients with primary biliary cirrhosis was responsible for the autoimmune nature of the disease.
Following medical school, Samuels completed a residency in internal medicine at the Boston City Hospital, serving as the medical chief resident in 1974–5, as a junior resident in neurology (1973–4), a fellow in neuropathology (1975–76), and a senior resident in neurology (1976–77) at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Samuels was board certified in both internal medicine and neurology.

## Clinical career

Following his training, Samuels was chief of the West Roxbury Veterans Administration Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School-affiliated hospital. After a merger, he was also chief of neurology at the Brockton-West Roxbury VA Medical Center.
In 1988, Samuels was recruited to the Brigham and Women's Hospital to create a Department of Neurology from a small division in the department of medicine. In 1994, the department was formally instituted, with Samuels as its founding chair. The department has grown to include over 250 academic appointments, including 20 full professors at Harvard Medical School, one of the largest programs in basic, translational, and clinical research with over $40,000,000 in annual research support; 15 divisions; an inpatient neurology service; an epilepsy monitoring unit; a 20-bed neurological-neurosurgical intensive care unit; and ambulatory programs in various areas of neurological medicine. Basic and clinical research from the department comprises work on Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, autoimmunity, Parkinson's disease, neuromuscular diseases, epilepsy, stroke, and cancer neurology.

## Major research and publications

Samuels has studied and written extensively on the interface between neurology and the rest of medicine, including neurocardiology, neurohematology, neurohepatology, neuronephrology, neurorheumatology, and the neurological aspects of organ transplantation and acid-base and electrolyte disturbances. His most well-known contributions relate to the mechanisms and prevention of neurogenic cardiac disease.
Samuels studied "voodoo death," or death caused by fright or intense emotion, which triggers a series of neuro-physiological changes through high levels of catecholamines. He articulated a unifying hypothesis that explains the mechanisms whereby the nervous system can produce cardiac arrhythmias and myocardial necrosis in a number of clinical contexts, including subarachnoid hemorrhage, intracerebral hemorrhage, cerebral infarction, brain tumor, epilepsy, and psychological stress. This research, the subject of Samuels' lecture "Voodoo Death Revisited: The Modern Lessons of Neurocardiology," earned Samuels the H. Houston Merritt Award, granted every two years by the American Academy of Neurology for clinically relevant research. Samuels has spoken on his research at the Cleveland Clinic Heart-Brain Summit (2006) and the International Academy of Cardiology's World Congress on Heart Disease, where he delivered the H. Jeremy C. Swan Memorial Lecture in 2010.

## Teaching

Samuels served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School from 1977, where he was promoted to full professor in 1993. He was also the founder and ongoing director of Harvard Medical School postgraduate courses titled “Neurology for the Non-Neurologist” and “Intensive Review of Neurology”. He was the longstanding director of the Harvard Longwood Neurology Residency and was the co-founder of the Harvard Partners Neurology Residency. Samuels was the first recipient of the Harvard Medical School Faculty Prize for Excellence in Teaching.
In July 2013, a Harvard Medical School endowed chair was established in Samuels' name. The Martin A. Samuels Professorship in Neurology will be occupied by the future chairs of the Department of Neurology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Samuels delivered lectures such as the Charles D. Aring lecture and the Distinguished Alumni Lecture at his alma mater, the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. In 2005, he received the College of Medicine’s most prestigious and highest honor, the Daniel Drake Medal. In 2007, he served as the Robert B. Aird Visiting Professor of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. He delivered the J. Norman Allen Lectureship at the Ohio State University Department of Neurology in 2008 and the Dewey Ziegler Lectureship at the University of Kansas in 2010.
In 2012, he served as the Stephens Lecturer and visiting professor at the University of Colorado and as the Charles Rammelkamp Visiting Professor at Metropolitan General Hospital - Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2013, he served as the Donald Baxter Lecturer and visiting professor at the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University, as the Seymour Jotkowitz Visiting Professor and Lecturer at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark, and as the William Chambers Visiting Professor and Lecturer at Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, New Hampshire.
In 2014 he served as the Frank and Joan Rothman Visiting professor at Brown University Alpert Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island and in 2016 and 2017 he served as the Dr. M. Howard Triedman ’52 Visiting Professor and Lecturer in Brain Science. In 2016 he served as Visiting Professor at the Dr. Stanley Robbins Memorial Lectureship at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, as Visiting Professor at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Bridgetown, Barbados and as Visiting Professor at Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Salpetrière Hospital, Paris, France.
Samuels delivered neurology updates at the annual meeting of the American College of Physicians. One of these presentations was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. He was a contributor to the national meetings of the emergency physicians (The American College of Emergency Physicians), the family physicians (The American Academy of Family Physicians) and the American College of Rheumatology. He delivered the Keynote Address at the first Pri-Med conference in Houston, Texas.
Samuels' books, The Manual of Neurological Therapeutics (nine editions), Office Practice of Neurology (two editions), Adams and Victor’s Principles of Neurology, Shared Care in Neurology, and Hospitalist Neurology are standard reading for students, residents and postgraduate physicians.

## Personal life

Samuels lived in Boston with his wife, Susan F. Pioli, a longtime medical publisher. They had two children.
He died on June 6, 2023.