Dr. Worth Bagley Daniels Jr., a retired prominent internist and Baltimore philanthropist, died of congestive heart failure July 9 at his Roland Park home. He was 84.
Dr. Daniels, the son of physician parents who both graduated from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1924, was born in New York City and raised in Washington.
He was the grandson of Josephus Daniels, publisher of the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer, who was secretary of the Navy during World War I.
A 1942 graduate of St. Albans School in Washington, Dr. Daniels attended Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"He was accepted to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine early because of a shortage of doctors during World War II," said a daughter, Jane D. J. Daniels of Roland Park.
After graduating in 1948, Dr. Daniels spent three years at Vanderbilt Hospital and Thayer Veterans Hospital in Nashville, Tenn., completing his internship and first-year residency in medicine.
After completing an internship in pathology at Duke Hospital in Durham, N.C., he served as a physician in the Army Medical Corps at hospitals in Germany from 1951 to 1953.
He returned to Baltimore and was working as a physician for the Social Security Administration and the outpatient clinic at the Johns Hopkins University's McCoy College, when in 1954, he was appointed chief resident of the chronic disease ward at the old Baltimore City Hospitals at Bayview.
After completing a fellowship in endocrinology at Hopkins, Dr. Daniels established a private practice in 1958 at 11 E. Chase St., where he remained until retiring in 1989.
"We were cadaver mates at medical school because of the alphabet. Dandy and Daniels," recalled Dr. Walter E. Dandy Jr., a retired Union Memorial Hospital anesthesiologist and longtime friend. "Throughout his career, Worth was highly regarded and well-loved."
Dr. Daniels was a member of the Johns Hopkins Medical School faculty and was an attending physician at Keswick Multi-Care Center for 20 years until his retirement. He also had served as medical director of the Union Memorial Hospice.
"Charm, good sense, a deep concern for people and an engaging bedside manner distinguish Dr. Daniels," said Dr. Isabelle MacGregor, medical director at Keswick. "His insistence that quality medical treatment be an integral part of nursing home care is part of his legacy to Keswick because it defines what we are today."
