Reuben Straus; Founded L.A. Doctors Symphony

Reuben Straus, a pathologist and violinist who founded Los Angeles’ 37-year-old Doctors Symphony Orchestra, has died in Lake Oswego, Ore. He was 84.

Dr. Straus died Friday in his sleep of congestive heart failure.

Although medical practitioners tried to organize a permanent symphony before World War II, the war thwarted their efforts.

In 1954, Straus created the still-flourishing orchestra, and served as its first president. The group rehearses weekly and plays concerts to benefit medical charities.

When Straus moved to Oregon, he served as president and violinist for the Portland Chamber Orchestra Assn.

In 1987, Straus wrote a book combining his interests in music and medicine, titled “Illnesses and Mortality of Famous Composers.”

He also linked doctors and music in a lecture in 1986 to the Barlow Society for the History of Medicine. The Greeks worshiped Apollo as both the god of music and the god of medicine, he noted, and Homer wrote that the sound of music stopped the blood flowing from Ulysses’ wounds.

Primitive societies, he said, tried to heal the sick with religious rites including “rhythmic sound, dancing, chanting, singing, playing music.”

A Vienna doctor developed a diagnostic method involving percussion-like thumpings of the chest 200 years ago that is still used for diagnosis today, he added.

As a physician, Straus, who earned his bachelor’s and medical degrees at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, founded the College of American Pathologists. He earned the gold award of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists in 1960 for his “original investigations.”

From 1950 to 1971 he was director of laboratories at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, where he organized the hospital’s research program.

He did the same research start-up for Providence Hospital in Portland, Ore., from 1971 to 1976, and the Soroka Medical Center at the University of Ben-Gurion in Beer-Sheva, Israel, from 1976 to 1980.

While living in Southern California, Straus taught at USC. He published research papers in more than 70 journals, and wrote several textbooks. Among them was “Comparative Atherosclerosis” which followed his five-year study of Navajo Indians.

Straus is survived by his wife, Miriam, a son, a daughter, a sister, a brother, three grandchildren and one great-grandchild.