MUSC endocrinologist John Buse diesby Jonathon Mazeof The Post and Courier staff Dr. John Frederick Buse Jr., a longtime professor at the Medical University of South Carolina who some say had a hand in teaching as many as three-quarters of the state’s doctors, died Sunday. He was 79. Buse has been teaching and practicing at the university since 1956. He was the university’s first endocrinologist. Friends and family remembered Buse Monday for his sense of humor and dedication to students and patients. “If you didn’t know him, he was a regular old shoe, a great fellow,” said Dr. Kelly McKee, professor emeritus in the Department of Medicine and a longtime friend. “Nobody looked at John as being ostentatious or particularly proud of himself.” A Charleston native, Buse enrolled at what is now MUSC after serving in the Navy during World War II. He received his medical degree in 1950. He met his wife, Maria, also an endocrinologist, while on a two-year fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. The couple moved to Charleston in 1956, and both have worked at the university since. He helped pioneer a number of clinical techniques - he was part of the team who performed the state’s first hemodialysis, or kidney replacement treatment. Dr. Layton McCurdy, the outgoing medical school dean, said Buse understood early what led to diabetes. “He understood how behavior caused diabetes before anyone would talk about it,” McCurdy said. “He was a superior clinician.” Buse’s children remember taking messages at home from diabetic patients giving their blood sugar count for its time, said eldest son Dr. John B. Buse, also an endocrinologist and director of the Diabetes Center at the University of North Carolina. Patient self-management is now commonplace today. Maria Buse said that practice only made sense. “He did that so the patient doesn’t have to come in, make an appointment and wait, when he can answer their question in one minute,” she said. The patients were grateful - some of them even came to visit Buse when he became sick with cancer in recent months. For the past 37 years Buse lived only a couple blocks from the university, in a white house on Bennett Street. He worked until he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last August - he saw a patient the day before seeing the doctor. Buse’s greatest love was teaching. He established the first federally funded training program for endocrinologists in South Carolina. He received several “Golden Apple” awards, which recognize excellence in teaching. McCurdy said that for a long time Buse was the main professor teaching endocrinology. McCurdy estimates that Buse had a hand in teaching three-fourths of the state’s physicians. Others agree. “Everybody loved John. He will be missed a lot,” McCurdy said. “He had
the most colorful language. He had little names to describe people that
everybody remembered. He called me in later years ‘Fuzzy Head’ because
I didn’t have any hair.”
A memorial service will be held at St. Luke’s on the university grounds at 2 p.m. on Wednesday. A private burial service will be held later in the day at Bethany Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, the John Buse Memorial Scholarship Fund has been
established at the MUSC Health Sciences Foundation, P.O. Box 250450, 18
Bee St., Charleston, S.C., 29425.
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