Clarence J. Blake papers

Clarence John Blake (1843-1919), M.D., 1861, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts was an audiologist and otologist.

Clarence John Blake was born in 1843 to John Harrison Blake (1808-1899) and Sarah Ann Howe (1808-1881). He attended the Boston Latin School and the Lawrence Scientific School and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1861.

Immediately after receiving his M.D., Blake travelled to Europe to study medicine. Initially, he began with obstetrics but soon switched to his other major interest, otology, the medical specialty focusing on the ear. His mother and sister, a musician, travelled with him. Blake returned to Boston in 1868 but almost immediately received an invitation from one of his European teachers, Adam Politzer (1835-1920), to come back as his assistant; Blake spent the next nine months with Politzer before finally returning to Boston to set up his own practice.

Blake opened his own office and accepted a position at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (now Mass Eye and Ear) in 1869 but his clinic was almost immediately closed so the space could be used by other physicians. He was later appointed Aural Surgeon at the Infirmary and held the position until 1905. In 1870, he was appointed Lecturer in Otology at Harvard Medical School and, in 1888, he was named the first Professor and Chair of the Department of Otology at Harvard Medical School.

In 1871, Blake met Alexander Graham Bell, who had been invited to Boston to discuss Deaf education and his father’s system of Visible Speech as it might be used in the Boston public schools. Bell and Blake collaborated for the next several years on the development of the telephone with Blake providing medical knowledge of the anatomy of the ear which Bell lacked. During later legal actions against Bell and the Bell Telephone Company, dated drawings and notes in Blake’s possession were used to establish Bell’s claim to precedence in the invention.

Blake was a member of several professional societies, including consecutive positions as the vice-president and president of the American Otological Society between 1873 and 1878. He was one of the founders of the American Journal of Otology in 1879 and, in 1891, was one of the founders of the Vincent Memorial Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts (now the Vincent Memorial Hospital Foundation), a hospital for and staffed by women and named after Boston actress Mary Ann Vincent (1818-1887).

Blake married Frances Hughes (1844-1902) in 1874; the couple had two children, Elizabeth Hughes (1876-1924) and Thomas Barnard (1881-1926). Frances Hughes Blake died in 1902 and Blake married Mary Alice Houghton (1863-1919) in 1907. Clarence John Blake died in 1919.