Thursday, April 2, 2009
Harold L. Hirsh, 91, a physician and lawyer who taught medical law and ethics at American University, George
Washington University and other area schools, died March 25 of congestive heart failure at the Community Hospice of
Washington.
Dr. Hirsh, who taught from 1972 until several years ago, also was an editor of medical and legal journals, including Legal
Aspects of Medical Practice.
Harold Lester Hirsh, a Washington native, graduated from McKinley Technology High School in 1935. He attended
the University of Maryland for three years before entering medical school at Georgetown University, where he received
his medical degree in 1942.
From 1942 to 1971 he ran a medical practice in the District, specializing in infectious disease. He conducted research
on antibiotics and in 1958 co-authored a textbook, "Penicillin," with Lawrence E. Putnam. In the 1960s, he taught clinical
medicine at Howard University's medical and dental schools.
In 1972, he received a law degree from American University and started to teach medical ethics courses there.
He was a volunteer medical director of the Hebrew Home of Greater Washington from 1953 to 1973 and, with his wife,
endowed the Hirsh Health Center in 1991, an outpatient geriatric medical center at the Hebrew Home's location in
Rockville.
He and his wife also endowed the Hirsh Health Law and Policy Program at the School of Public Health and Health
Services at GWU and the Hirsh Professorship in Health Law and Policy at GWU.
Survivors include his wife of 68 years, Jane Kirsch Hirsh of Washington; three children, Evelyn Auerbach of Bethesda,
Ann Greenhill of Portland, Ore., and Paul Hirsh of Cincinnati; six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
-- Lauren Wiseman