He served as dean of the Yale University School of Medicine, president of the American Association of Immunologists, and physician-in-chief of the Yale–New Haven Hospital.
He spent much of his childhood in Massachusetts, where he was an enthusiastic observer of nature; at the age of 15, along with one of his brothers, he submitted an ornithological paper which was published in The Auk in 1902.
While completing his medical internship at Peter Bent Brigham, he met Dorothy P. Dewey, a nurse; they married in 1916 and had three sons.
[2] During his time at Harvard, he acquired a deep interest in infectious diseases and applied microbiology, reflecting the influence of Theobald Smith, who Blake much admired.
He spent 20 months working with Major Russell Cecil at the Army Medical School, primarily on the production and prevention of bacterial pneumonia in monkeys, the end result being a series of ten papers in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
He did not hold the position long; at the end of that month he was admitted to Walter Reed Hospital for the treatment of a coronary occlusion, and on 1 February, he died.