Sidney Valentine Haas, M.D. (February 14, 1870 - November 30, 1964) was a U.S. pediatrician whose research determined a dietary means of combating celiac disease.
He was born in Chicago and moved ...ver maisSidney Valentine Haas, M.D. (February 14, 1870 - November 30, 1964) was a U.S. pediatrician whose research determined a dietary means of combating celiac disease.
He was born in Chicago and moved to New York City when he was six years old. He attended New York University Medical School and received his medical degree from the Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1895. He interned at Mount Sinai Hospital and became assistant to Dr. Abraham Jacobi, a pioneer pediatrician, at the Vanderbilt Clinic. Later Dr. Haas was attending pediatrician at Lebanon and Riverside Hospitals and the Home for Hebrew Infants in New York.
He was professor and director of pediatrics at New York Polyclinic Hospital and Medical School (1934-1959) and also served as an attending physician to the City Health Department and as consulting pediatrician to Harlem Hospital.
In 1918 he introduced the beneficial effects of belladonna, or its extract, atropine, in relieving severe colic in infants. Atropine therapy became a widely and successfully used treatment for gastrointestinal spasms.
In 1924, he achieved notice when he published a medical paper detailing his use of a banana diet for the treatment of children diagnosed with celiac disease. He concluded that bananas enabled the breaking up of starches and the conversion of cane sugar into fruit sugar, which prevented the debilitating diarrhea of celiac disease.
Haas’ research led to the development of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, a nutritional regimen that restricted the use of complex carbohydrates (disaccharides and polysaccharides) and eliminated refined sugar, gluten and starch from the diet.
During his career, Haas treated over 600 cases of celiac disease. In 1951, he joined his son, Dr. Merrill P. Haas, in publishing the medical textbook The Management of Celiac Disease.
He died at St. Mary’s Hospital in Orange, NJ in 1964 at the age of 94.ver menos