William H. F. Warthen was born in Baltimore and was the son
of a Methodist minister who rode the circuit in Western Maryland and Harford
County. He graduated from City College in 1915, Johns Hopkins University in
1919 and its medical school in 1922. He received a masters degree from Hopkins
School of Hygiene and Public Health (now the Bloomberg School) in 1940. During WWI,
Warthen served as a private in the Army.
He began his medical career as a house officer at the
Harriet Lane Home at Johns Hopkins for a year after his graduation. He moved to
Children’s Hospital in Akron, Ohio for another year. When he returned to
Baltimore, he began work at the Baltimore City Health Department. He served as
the Director of the Bureau of Child Hygiene from 1924 to 1934, when he became
the Assistant Commissioner of Health for the City.
During this time, Dr. Warthen also served as associate
professor of hygiene and public health at the University of Maryland School of
Medicine, and as a lecturer at the Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health,
as well as at the Union Memorial School of Nursing.
In 1940, Dr. Warthen was appointed as the Baltimore County
Health Officer, a position he held until 1964. He was the second person to hold
the post and he saw the department’s staff grow from eight to 200 full- and
part-time workers. It was during this time that he established a board of
health in the county and campaigned for polio inoculations.
Dr. Warten served as the President of the Medical &
Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland in 1956, and as President of the Baltimore
County Medical Association and the Baltimore County Health Association. In 1946,
while President of BCMA, he established the tradition of handing down the “Golden-Headed Cane” to the incoming President of the organization. He was also a medical official
in the Civil Defense and was chair of the County’s Commission on Aging.
He died after a long illness on March 25, 1974.
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