Dr. William Lorenzo Moss Birthplace

William Lorenzo Moss, medical researcher and physician, was born in this house at 479 Cobb Street in Cobbham on August 23, 1876. Crawford W. Long was the attending physician. Dr. Moss received his B.S. degree from the University of Georgia in 1897 and the M.D. degree from the Johns Hopkins University in 1905. He taught at the latter school, at Yale, and at Harvard. In 1926 Dr. Moss was Acting Dean at Harvard's School of Public Health Medicine. In 1931 he was named Dean of the Medical Department of the University of Georgia (now the Medical College of Georgia). It is as a researcher in the fields of immunology, blood types, and tropical diseases that Dr. Moss is best remembered. His most noted single contribution lay in the development of the Moss System, a classification of blood groupings which he labeled I through IV. This system was widely used throughout the world until modified during World War II. Dr. Moss headed numerous international medical research expeditions in the Caribbean, South America, and the South Pacific from 1914 to 1937. Dr. Moss died in Athens on August 12, 1957.