Dr. Daniel M. Taylor Sr.

Dr. Daniel M. Taylor died peacefully at home on September 26, 2022, a month shy of his 99th birthday, after a long and distinguished medical and scientific career that led to international recognition and acclaim. His teaching and research resulted in the publications of 103 scientific papers and a thesis on early muscle surgery for the corrections of congenital cross eyes.This led to his election to the Honorary American Ophthalmological Society.

While in the army, prior to his arrival, in CT, he spent two years of military service during the Cold War serving as a captain and board certified ophthalmologist in occupied Germany as Southern Area Command Consultant in ophthalmology. There he helped set up the ophthalmology department at the main U.S. Army Hospital in Landstuhl.

After discharge from the U.S. Army in 1955 he came to New Britain, CT to join the Grove Hill Medical Center where he founded the department of ophthalmology. He was accompanied by his wife, Lola and two sons, Daniel Jr and Dean. He practiced medicine and surgery for 44 years.

Dr. Taylor was born in Butler, Missouri in 1923. He was raised in New Rochelle, NY where he met his future wife, Lola Hawley. He graduated from New Rochelle High School in 1941. With a long history of physicians in the family he began his premedical training at Columbia University shortly before the onset of WWII. He enlisted in the U.S Army Reserves in 1942 and was placed in active duty in 1943 where he was assigned to the army specialized training program. Under this program he received a B.A. degree from Columbia University in 1943 and his MD degree from NYU Medical College in 1946. He was placed on reserve status in 1946. He then completed an additional 6 years of surgical internship and residency training in ophthalmology leading to board certification in June 1953. His last three years were at the renowned Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital that housed the nation’s first eye bank. Here he was trained in corneal transplantation surgery and eye banking. As one of only a few dozen surgeons in the country trained in these disciplines, his move to CT at his wife’s insistence, enabled him to bring these skills to CT where he performed the first corneal transplant procedure in 1956 at the New Britain General Hospital (NBGH). He founded the CT Eye Bank in 1961 at NBGH to make donor tissue available for further transplantation procedures and research. The CT Eye Bank was one of the early eye banks in the country. Other types of organ transplantation became possible, ie: heart, lungs, kidney, liver. CT physicians and hospitals took up these disciplines and developed organ procurement programs. Because of his pioneering efforts, Dr. Taylor is generally considered the ‘father of transplantation surgery in CT.

Dr. Taylor chose to combine his medical and surgical practice with an academic career which enabled him to to engage in clinical research and teach medical students and advanced training of eye surgeons. He became an assistant professor of ophthalmology at Yale in 1956 and in 1961 he joined the clinical faculty at the UCONN Health Center where he was promoted to full clinical professor of surgery in 1976. In 1984 he was awarded a distinguished research chair in ophthalmology, the John and Florence Solomon Professorship in Ophthalmology at the UCONN Health Center, a position he filled through 1995.

His extensive medical, surgical, research and academic experience brought him to the field of International medicine. As a volunteer he operated and lectured under several sponsoring organizations in 19 foreign countries. He drew patients to the NBGH for complicated corneal transplantation from multiple countries in Europe, Asia South America and Canada. He became the Chief Corneal Transplantation Surgeon for the U.S. Eastern Division of the Healing the Children Program that maintains an extensive international outreach. This voluntary program led to the influx of many blind children from around the world for sight restoration surgery at NBGH.

Early in his research career he focused on the neurological complications associated with congenital crossing of eyes. Children born with this condition were incapable of developing normal binocular vision and frequently suffered from severe functional loss of vision in one eye.

Surgical correction was usually deferred until 5 years of age which proved to be much too late. After 17 years of research Dr. Taylor was able to prove that the irreversible neurological complications were indeed reversible through early correction. Surgery performed between 6-18 months of age enabled the visual centers of the brain to develop normally. His observations were subsequently proven to be correct by scientific research performed on kittens and monkeys at the Neurological Dept. of the Harvard Medical School by Drs. Hubel and Wiesel. Working from an opposite approach they demonstrated that kittens and monkeys formed normally would develop irreversible brain changes if they were surgically rendered cross-eyed. Their work led to their being awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1981. The UCONN Health Center held a joint session to honor the Nobel laureate and the pioneering surgical work of Dr. Taylor on human infants. Their combined mutually supportive efforts led to universal acceptance of early effective surgery at 6-18 months of age as the proper management for congenital crossed-eyes. Over the years this had significant worldwide impact. Dr. Taylor had always considered this to be his major contribution to medicine and society.

From the early 1960s he maintained a keen interest in attempting to change the refractive status of the eye through corneal grafting for keratoconus, compression, total lamellar grafts for keratoglobus and corneal incisions to correct astygmatism and near sightedness. By 1987 this led to his pioneering efforts with the newly developed excimer laser. Working with colleagues from the Grove Hill Medical Center and the UCONN Health Center, they installed a prototype excimer laser at NBGH and successfully reshaped the human cornea. Simultaneous studies were being carried out at several other institutions in the country with similar success. These early studies ultimately led to FDA approval and the development of modern day refractive surgery which has eliminated the need for glasses for great numbers of individuals worldwide.

Dr. Taylor retired March 1999 to pursue several non-medical activities that had eluded him. This included near daily golf at the Shuttle Meadow Country Club and numerous travels with his wife, Lola. He also enjoyed the pursuit of knowledge in other fields such as history.

He is predeceased by his loving wife, Lola who passed in January 2001 and his older brother, Bertram Jr who passed in November 1986. He is survived by his two sons, Daniel Morse Taylor Jr and his wife Deborah L Taylor along with their three sons Jason, Zachary and Alexander Taylor of Utah and Southern California and Dean Hawley Taylor of Kensington, CT and his two daughters Mallory and Rebecca of Connecticut and Los Angeles. He also had three great grandchildren from Zachary named Weston, Quinn and Caroline. He is survived by his long time friend and medical colleague of over 60 years, Beth Yannello. Beth later in life became his cherished and devoted companion.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Hospital of Central Connecticut, the former New Britain General Hospital.

Funeral services will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2022 at 11 AM at Kensington Congregational Church, 312 Percival Ave., Kensington. Burial, with military honors, will follow in Maple Cemetery, Berlin.  There are no calling hours.  Erickson-Hansen Funeral Home of Berlin is in charge of arrangements.