William Crosby Jr., 90; Helped Create a Device for Biopsies of the Bowel

Dr. William H. Crosby Jr., 90, a hematologist who developed an early device to allow for biopsies of the bowel, died Jan. 15 at a nursing center in Joplin, Mo. The cause of death was not reported.

Born in Wheeling, W.Va., Crosby was raised in Oil City, Pa., and earned his undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of Pennsylvania. He had a 30-year career as an Army doctor, attaining the rank of colonel. He retired from active duty in 1965.

While serving at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., Crosby and a colleague, Heinz Kugler, came up with a device to remove small tissue samples from the small bowel, or intestine. The device carried their names, and they held the patent.

After leaving the Army, Crosby became chief of hematology at Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston.

After leaving Tufts, he worked at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in San Diego, where he started a training program in hematology and oncology.

In 1974, he became the fifth U.S. hematologist to be elected to the Italian Society of Hematology.