Pierre Viole, Grandson of Pioneer Doctor, Dies

Pierre Paul Viole, descendant of one of the first English-speaking health-care providers in Los Angeles and a noted ear, nose and throat specialist in his own right, died Friday at age 90.

Viole, a 1919 graduate of what was then Los Angeles College of Physicians and Surgeons on East Washington Boulevard (later to become the USC School of Medicine), was the grandson of a Belgian physician who established a practice in the Plaza in 1881 and son of a French druggist who owned a group of pharmacies that catered to the Anglo population of this then-small community.

Viole was a 1914 graduate of Los Angeles High School. He served with the Army Medical Corps during World War I and then completed his formal medical studies.

He interned at Los Angeles County Hospital and took his surgical residency in otolaryngology at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, returning to open a practice in Los Angeles in 1924.

USC historical documents reflect that World War I had decimated the ranks of prospective physicians, and the medical school was forced to close in 1920. Viole and a few other key alumni were credited with efforts that reopened the medical school in 1928.

Viole had been a professor at his alma mater, head of neck and head surgery at Childrens Hospital and chief of staff at French Hospital, named in honor of the French-speaking vintners of old Los Angeles who had donated the buildings for the city’s original medical school that opened in 1885 and was also administered by USC.

Viole also founded and was president of the Research Study Club of Los Angeles and president of the Los Angeles Otological Society.

In 1960 he was made an honorary member of the Salerni Collegium, the USC Medical School support group.

His survivors include his wife, Edith Taix Viole, a member of another pioneering Los Angeles family; a son, Armand, also a physician; a daughter, Ynez Viole O’Neill, a UCLA medical history professor; and a sister, Andree Viole Floyd.