Dr. Mary Fowkes, a neuropathologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan whose autopsies of Covid-19 victims early within the pandemic found critical injury in a number of organs — a discovering that led to the profitable use of upper doses of blood thinners to deal with sufferers — died on Nov. 15 at her house in Katonah, N.Y., in Westchester County. She was 66.

Her daughter, Jackie Treatman, stated the trigger was a coronary heart assault.

When Dr. Fowkes (rhymes with “pokes”) and her workforce started their autopsies, little was recognized concerning the novel coronavirus, which was believed to be largely a respiratory illness. The primary few dozen autopsies revealed that Covid-19 affected the lungs and different important organs, and that the virus most likely traveled by means of the physique within the endothelial cells, which line the inside of blood vessels.

“We noticed very small and really microscopic blood clots within the lungs, the guts, the liver — and vital blood clots within the mind,” Dr. Fowkes stated in an interview on the CBS Information program “60 Minutes” for a segment, broadcast on Nov. 22, on the long-term effects of Covid-19. She had been interviewed by the correspondent Anderson Cooper on Oct. 30, somewhat greater than two weeks earlier than her dying.

The clots within the mind urged that there had been strokes, she advised Mr. Cooper.

Mr. Cooper requested if she had anticipated to see the breadth of injury in so many organs.

“No, under no circumstances,” Dr. Fowkes stated. “No person’s seen it like this.”

Dr. Fowkes “had a curious scientific thoughts and an uncompromising angle to doing as many autopsies as potential to provide one thing that was distinctive,” Dr. Carlos Cordon-Cardo, chairman of the division of pathology, molecular and cell-based medication on the Icahn College of Medication at Mount Sinai, stated in a cellphone interview.

Dr. Cordon-Cardo stated that the findings from the autopsies of Covid sufferers finished by Dr. Fowkes’s workforce had led to an aggressive enhance in the usage of blood thinners, leading to a marked enchancment within the well being of some sufferers. The drugs have been adjusted to account for the elevated response to Covid by sufferers’ immune programs, he stated.

Dr. Fowkes and others concerned within the Covid autopsies wrote a paper on their findings and launched it in Might, nevertheless it has not been peer-reviewed and printed.

Mary Elizabeth Fowkes was born on Nov. 1, 1954, in Clayton, a village in northern New York, and grew up in Syracuse. Her mom, Isabel (Walroth) Fowkes, was a social employee. Her father, Glen, wrote insurance coverage insurance policies.

Dr. Fowkes graduated from the SUNY Faculty of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse in 1977 after which labored as a doctor assistant.

Seeking to enhance her possibilities of stepping into medical college, she grew to become a technician at a cell and developmental biology laboratory, then enrolled in a doctoral program in anatomy and cell biology at SUNY Upstate Medical College, additionally in Syracuse. She finally entered a mixed Ph.D.-M.D. program on the college and graduated with each levels in 1999.

Dr. Fowkes accomplished her residency in pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Heart in Boston in 2003. She then had fellowships in neuropathology at New York College Medical Heart and in forensic pathology on the workplace of New York Metropolis’s chief medical examiner, the place she was mentored by Dr. Barbara Sampson, who was on the workers on the time, in 2006, and is right this moment the town’s chief medical expert.

“What she actually realized from us is what may be realized in an post-mortem, the significance of giving households closure and the significance of an post-mortem to public well being and understanding illness,” Dr. Sampson stated in a cellphone interview.

After her metropolis fellowship, Dr. Fowkes joined the Icahn College as an assistant professor of pathology and remained on the college till her dying. She was named Mount Sinai’s director of neuropathology in 2012 and its director of post-mortem service two years later. She inspired the hospital to carry out extra autopsies, citing their academic worth, and pushed for an enlargement of the hospital’s mind financial institution.

Her wide-ranging analysis included a current concentrate on recurrent meningiomas, slow-growing benign mind tumors.

She additionally mentored many younger docs, together with Nadia Tsankova, a neuropathologist.

“I used to be very enthusiastic about combining analysis and medical service,” Dr. Tsankova stated in an interview. “And Mary was very enthusiastic about analysis. Generally you’re taking a job and also you aspire for one thing and your boss says, ‘No, you need to do that.’ However she would say, ‘I perceive what you need to do and we’ll make it work.”

Dr. Fowkes considered autopsies as important to understanding illness and felt obligated to carry out them on Covid victims regardless of her being in a susceptible age group.

When performing autopsies, that are finished on the hospital’s predominant ground, she used an oscillating noticed to open the cranium cavity to take away the mind, which probably uncovered her to the virus by means of aerosolized bits of bone and blood.

“There have been solely 4 pathologists who have been prepared to probably threat their lives to start out doing autopsies on these instances,” Dr. Fowkes advised the BBC in June. However, she added, “I thought of it critically necessary to finish up doing this work so we might get some solutions to know the way to deal with the sufferers appropriately. So we did use all of the protecting tools, however we have been nonetheless very scared, to be completely trustworthy.”

With protecting tools in brief provide in the course of the late winter and early spring, Dr. Fowkes would put on an N95 masks for per week at a time.

Along with her daughter, she is survived by her mom; a son, Derek Treatman; and her brothers, Mark (her twin) and John. Her marriage to Scott Treatman led to divorce.

Through the “60 Minutes” section, Dr. Fowkes held a slice of a Covid sufferer’s cerebellum in her left hand. Mr. Cooper pointed to a brown indentation on the mind matter.

“That’s a stroke?” he requested.

“That’s a stroke,” she stated.

On the finish of the report, Mr. Cooper advised the viewers that Dr. Fowkes had died.