[4] Liebow graduated magnum cum laude from City College of New York, and received his medical degree from Yale School of Medicine in 1935.
[5] During this time, he compiled studies of cutaneous diphtheria that made specific treatment possible for a form of "jungle rot," which was a major problem in the South Pacific theater of the war.
Bronchial artery casting techniques, modified and refined by Liebow and his colleagues, demonstrated the importance of dual circulation in the lung, particularly in inflammatory diseases of the airways.
He described important aspects of vascular pathology in pulmonary emphysema, notably the expansion of the bronchial venous collateral circulation.
[7] With publication in 1952 of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) fascicle Tumors of the Lower Respiratory Tract, Liebow became widely recognized as an authority on surgical lesions of the lung.
Portions of Liebow's original shorthand diary and other records of his time in Japan are archived at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library.
Liebow's commander, Col. Ashley Oughterson, a professor of surgery at Yale, set a goal of examining and interviewing 10,000 patients.
(Liebow's archive includes a translated testimonial by a Japanese pathologist who on Aug. 10, 1945 performed the first autopsy of a bomb victim: a 13-year-old boy.
)[10] While in Tokyo, Liebow was asked to translate a detailed eyewitness account of the bombing of Hiroshima written in German by Johannes Siemes, a Jesuit priest who had been leading a mission just outside the city.
He describes visiting a village three months after the bombing where the residents' faces were still burned a dark-brown color called "the mask of Hiroshima.
[3] As one of his last official acts, Liebow composed a letter under Oughterson's signature recommending the continued study of the medical effects of the atomic bomb.