[2] After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, Howland attended Yale University, where he rowed, played tennis, and was a member of the Skull and Bones secret society.

He then spent two years studying in Europe, spending time in Vienna and Berlin, and upon his return to New York he joined Holt in private pediatric practice.

He and William McKim Marriott demonstrated that acidosis in diarrheal illnesses was caused by the excretion of bicarbonate in the stools rather than by a toxin, and with Edwards A.

[2] Many of the physicians he mentored at Johns Hopkins went on to become leaders in the field of pediatrics: these include Kenneth Blackfan, Edwards A.

Park, Ethel Collins Dunham, L. Emmett Holt Jr., Grover Powers, Wilburt C. Davison, James L. Gamble, and William McKim Marriott.