Harry P. Loomer

Born:	05-15-1909
Faculty:	Medical School | Medical University Vienna
Category:	Expelled student

Harry P. LOOMER, born on May 15^th, 1909 in New York City/USA (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for New York City, Citizenship: USA), son of Pincus Loomer (laundry owner in Manhattan), lived in Vienna's 9^th district, Gruenetorgasse 18/3. He had graduated from City College in New York in 1932, then went to Europe to study medicine, first studied at the Humboldt University in Berlin/Germany, and then transferred to the University of Vienna in the fall term of 1935/36, where he last enrolled in the 5^th year at the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna in the fall term of 1936/37, and was then in the final examinations stage ("Rigorosen") in 1938. He was able, after a long period of uncertainty, to complete his studies after all, and on July 21^st, 1938, under numerous symbolic discriminations, to obtain his doctorate in the context of a "non-Aryan graduation," while at the same time being banned from practicing in the entire German Reich.
He specialized in psychiatry and then completed his training at the Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland.
He then went back to the USA and became a pioneer in the treatment of depression with medication. He worked as a senior psychiatrist at the Rockland Psychiatric Center in Orangeburg, N.Y., where he began a study in 1957 on the effects of iproniazid as a "psychic energizer" (gem. m. John C. Saunders and Nathan S. Kline (1916-1983)) for the treatment of depression. However, he and Saunders then had to take legal action against him for recognition of the scientific achievement, which Kline later claimed alone. He was married to Renate Druks (1921-2007), a Viennese girl he helped to emigrate to the USA and with whom he had a son Peter who died in California at age 21, he was then married to Doris Rosenberg of Brooklyn, NY, with whom he had 2 children, Jeffrey (rheumatologist in Tucson, Arizona), Valerie Capeille (Grignan, France) and was married in third marriage to Bo Williams Loomer who brought children, Joshua Williams (Knoxville, Tenn.) and Daniel Williams (Rego Park, Queens) into the marriage. Later, Harry Dr. Loomer worked at Montefiore Hospital and Gracie Square Hospital and had a medical practice in Manhattan. He retired in the 1970s, still working as a consultant at the Columbia County Department of Mental Health. He last lived in Taghkanic, N.Y., and died at age 86 on June 15^th, 1995, at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson, New York.
Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") MED 1936-1938, graduation registry ("Promotionsprotokoll") MED 1929-1941, Nr. 4105, POSCH 2009, 370; REITER-ZALTOUKAL/REITER 2021; information from Dr. Barbara Sauer, Vienna 09/2019 and from his son Jeffrey B. Loomer, MD, Tucson/USA 09/2021; Loomer, H. P.,  J. C. Saunders and N. S. Kline. 1957. "A clinical and  pharmacodynamic evaluation of iproniazid as a psychic energizer." Psychiatr Res Rep Am Psychiatr Assoc no. 8:129-41; obituary New York Times.

Katharina Kniefacz, Herbert Posch