Great and good FOTB Borepatch tipped me off to the death of Bill Withers. The paper of record has a preliminary obit up, which will probably be replaced with a full one later.
The NYT does have what I think is a fascinating obit for William Frankland. Dr. Frankland was a pioneering allergist.
Dr. Frankland was best known in professional circles for a number of groundbreaking clinical studies. In 1954, he proved that pollen proteins were the parts of plants most useful in preseason allergy inoculations, and in 1955, he debunked the efficacy of treating asthma with bacterial vaccines.
He was an early proponent of using allergen injections to desensitize patients with severe allergies and developed immunotherapy serums for hay fever sufferers with pollen from one of the world’s largest pollen farms, which he operated outside London until the late 1960s.
It was while investigating desensitization to insect bites that Dr. Frankland allowed the South American insect Rhodnius prolixus to bite his arm at weekly intervals. The eighth bite sent him into life-threatening anaphylaxis, from which a nurse revived him with repeated shots of adrenaline.
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He worked with Alexander Flemming, treated Saddam Hussein, and spent time during WWII as a Japanese prisoner of war.
Dr. Frankland was 108 when he died.
Rod Dreher has a nice post up about Terry Teachout and the death of Mr. Teachout’s wife.