- Email: [email protected]
Robert W Wilkins
OBITUARY
Boston University Medical Center
Obituary
Robert W Wilkins Leading hypertension researcher who showed effectiveness of chlorothiazide and the step-care approach to treatment, Lasker Award winner, former president of American Heart Association. Born Dec 4, 1906, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA; died April 9, 2003, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, USA, aged 96 years.
fter World War II, Robert W Wilkins “developed one of the world’s outstanding laboratories devoted to the clinical investigation of cardiovascular function and disease”, wrote Franz Ingelfinger, editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, in the July 6, 1972, issue of the journal. “Blood flows were measured, under almost all conditions, to skin, muscle, kidney, and liver. An obscure (at least to the Western world) Indian folk medicine, rauwolfia, and its pure derivative, reserpine, were shown to possess remarkable therapeutic effectiveness in combination with other drugs, especially the diuretics, for the management of hypertension.” Wilkins published his findings on rauwolfia in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1953, and in 1957 published a study showing that chlorothiazide was an effective antihypertensive. His so-called step-care approach to controlling hypertension—in which medications are gradually added to a regimen—is still in use. Wilkins was a major proponent of drug treatment for hypertension, according to Aram Chobanian, now dean of Boston University’s School of Medicine, where Wilkins was a faculty member, even though at the time it was thought that high blood pressure was necessary to force the blood through narrowed arteries. “No case of hypertension with normal renal function is accepted as impossible to treat medically until so proven”, Wilkins said in 1952. “He predicted early on, in the 1940s, that blood pressure lowering would not be detrimental in most individuals with high blood pressure, but rather would be preventing complications”, Chobanian, who first worked with Wilkins in the 1950s, told The Lancet. “The dogma was that you would do harm because you didn’t have enough of a pressure head to get through narrow blood vessels. It was going against the tide at that point.” Wilkins won the Lasker Award in 1958 “for distinguished contributions to the control of heart and blood vessel diseases through outstanding investigations in the causes, diagnosis, and treatment of hypertension”. From 1957 to 1958, he served as president of the American Heart Association. Wilkins also served as a member of the Advisory Heart Council of the National Institutes of Health and was one of six researchers who represented the USA in a
A
Ivan Oransky e-mail: [email protected]
cultural exchange with the Soviet Union in 1963 at the request of President John F Kennedy. He was co-author, with Chester Keefer and later with Norman Levinsky, of the textbook Essentials of Clinical Practice. Wilkins received his bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1928, and spent the next year teaching science and coaching football and track at Greensboro High School. In 1929, he began studies at the University of North Carolina Medical School, transferring in 1931 to Harvard Medical School, from which he graduated first in his class. He completed his internship, residency, and research training on the Harvard Service of the Boston City Hospital and Thorndike Memorial Laboratories. A yearlong American College of Physicians travelling fellowship sent him to London, where he studied the autonomic nervous system. Returning to the USA in 1938, Wilkins took a position as an instructor in medicine and a research associate in circulation at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1940, he became head of the section on cardiovascular diseases at Evans Memorial Hospital and assistant professor of medicine at Boston University Medical School. During World War II, he and colleagues developed early versions of the G-suits used to prevent blackouts by pilots during combat manoeuvres that created high G-forces. Wilkins would eventually become professor and chief of medicine at Boston University, posts he held until retiring in 1972. “He was a very incisive type of individual, an excellent thinker who could cut right to the core of the problem,” Chobanian said. Wilkins was remembered by The Daily News of Newburyport, Massachusetts, USA, his hometown for 60 years, as “one of the most influential figures in downtown Newburyport’s restoration”. Chobanian said Wilkins was an “excellent writer and editor” who, after his retirement, wrote a book on perennial plants. Wilkins, who also enjoyed sailing, is survived by three children—Margaret Wilkins Noel, Mary Wilkins Haslinger, and Robert Wallace Wilkins Jr—a sister, Kate Woolley, and six grandchildren. His wife of 58 years, Margaret, died in 2000.
THE LANCET • Vol 362 • July 26, 2003 • www.thelancet.com
For personal use. Only reproduce with permission from The Lancet.
335
Boston University Medical Center
Obituary
Robert W Wilkins Leading hypertension researcher who showed effectiveness of chlorothiazide and the step-care approach to treatment, Lasker Award winner, former president of American Heart Association. Born Dec 4, 1906, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA; died April 9, 2003, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, USA, aged 96 years.
fter World War II, Robert W Wilkins “developed one of the world’s outstanding laboratories devoted to the clinical investigation of cardiovascular function and disease”, wrote Franz Ingelfinger, editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, in the July 6, 1972, issue of the journal. “Blood flows were measured, under almost all conditions, to skin, muscle, kidney, and liver. An obscure (at least to the Western world) Indian folk medicine, rauwolfia, and its pure derivative, reserpine, were shown to possess remarkable therapeutic effectiveness in combination with other drugs, especially the diuretics, for the management of hypertension.” Wilkins published his findings on rauwolfia in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1953, and in 1957 published a study showing that chlorothiazide was an effective antihypertensive. His so-called step-care approach to controlling hypertension—in which medications are gradually added to a regimen—is still in use. Wilkins was a major proponent of drug treatment for hypertension, according to Aram Chobanian, now dean of Boston University’s School of Medicine, where Wilkins was a faculty member, even though at the time it was thought that high blood pressure was necessary to force the blood through narrowed arteries. “No case of hypertension with normal renal function is accepted as impossible to treat medically until so proven”, Wilkins said in 1952. “He predicted early on, in the 1940s, that blood pressure lowering would not be detrimental in most individuals with high blood pressure, but rather would be preventing complications”, Chobanian, who first worked with Wilkins in the 1950s, told The Lancet. “The dogma was that you would do harm because you didn’t have enough of a pressure head to get through narrow blood vessels. It was going against the tide at that point.” Wilkins won the Lasker Award in 1958 “for distinguished contributions to the control of heart and blood vessel diseases through outstanding investigations in the causes, diagnosis, and treatment of hypertension”. From 1957 to 1958, he served as president of the American Heart Association. Wilkins also served as a member of the Advisory Heart Council of the National Institutes of Health and was one of six researchers who represented the USA in a
A
Ivan Oransky e-mail: [email protected]
cultural exchange with the Soviet Union in 1963 at the request of President John F Kennedy. He was co-author, with Chester Keefer and later with Norman Levinsky, of the textbook Essentials of Clinical Practice. Wilkins received his bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1928, and spent the next year teaching science and coaching football and track at Greensboro High School. In 1929, he began studies at the University of North Carolina Medical School, transferring in 1931 to Harvard Medical School, from which he graduated first in his class. He completed his internship, residency, and research training on the Harvard Service of the Boston City Hospital and Thorndike Memorial Laboratories. A yearlong American College of Physicians travelling fellowship sent him to London, where he studied the autonomic nervous system. Returning to the USA in 1938, Wilkins took a position as an instructor in medicine and a research associate in circulation at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1940, he became head of the section on cardiovascular diseases at Evans Memorial Hospital and assistant professor of medicine at Boston University Medical School. During World War II, he and colleagues developed early versions of the G-suits used to prevent blackouts by pilots during combat manoeuvres that created high G-forces. Wilkins would eventually become professor and chief of medicine at Boston University, posts he held until retiring in 1972. “He was a very incisive type of individual, an excellent thinker who could cut right to the core of the problem,” Chobanian said. Wilkins was remembered by The Daily News of Newburyport, Massachusetts, USA, his hometown for 60 years, as “one of the most influential figures in downtown Newburyport’s restoration”. Chobanian said Wilkins was an “excellent writer and editor” who, after his retirement, wrote a book on perennial plants. Wilkins, who also enjoyed sailing, is survived by three children—Margaret Wilkins Noel, Mary Wilkins Haslinger, and Robert Wallace Wilkins Jr—a sister, Kate Woolley, and six grandchildren. His wife of 58 years, Margaret, died in 2000.
THE LANCET • Vol 362 • July 26, 2003 • www.thelancet.com
For personal use. Only reproduce with permission from The Lancet.
335