[3] He supported himself at City College of New York, and later after transferring to the University of Kentucky, by selling Fuller brushes door-to-door and by washing dishes in restaurants.
[3] Kass spent his career in Boston[2] with a sabbatical year in 1974–1975[3] and with many lectures given at foreign medical schools.
In 1963 Kass was a founding member, as well as secretary and treasurer, of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).
[2] He chaired from 1971 to 1973 the committee in space medicine of the National Academy of Sciences,[4] served on the editorial boards of eight medical journals, and received a variety of honors.
[9] For the academic year 1974–1975[3] he was a Macy Faculty Scholar in Sir Richard Doll's department in the University of Oxford.
[2] In 1988 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich published a biography of the physician Thomas Hodgkin by Amalie and Edward Kass.
[2] Upon his death he was survived by two sons, Robert and James, a daughter, Nancy, four grandchildren, as well as his second wife and his stepchildren.
[1] As a memorial, the Infectious Diseases Society of America established the annual Edward H. Kass Lectureship.