Philip Showalter Hench

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Philip Showalter Hench (born February 28, 1896 in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , † March 30, 1965 in Ocho Rios , Jamaica ) was an American doctor , rheumatologist and Nobel Prize winner .

Hench studied medicine in Eaton Township / Wyoming County (Pennsylvania) and received his doctorate in 1920 from the University of Pittsburgh . After internship in Minnesota and later Rochester , he headed the local rheumatism clinic from 1926. From 1928 to 1930, Hench completed study visits to Munich and Freiburg. As a professor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, he examined predominantly arthritic diseases and pointed out that the clinical pictures of patients were extremely inconsistent. From 1935 his friends isolated Kendall and Reichstein the cortisone from the adrenal gland, which Hench injected for the first time in 1948 into a patient with severe rheumatism who was then pain-free.

"For their discoveries in the hormones of the adrenal cortex, their structure and their biological effects" he received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1950 together with Edward Calvin Kendall and Tadeus Reichstein . In 1949, Hench received the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research . In 1951 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Hench was the founding president of the American Rheumatism Association .

Fonts (selection)

  • with Otto Ludwig Bettmann : A Pictorial History of Medicine. Springfield 1956.
  • Cortisone, hydrocortisone and corticotropin in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Geigy, Basel 1954 (= Documenta Rheumatologica. Volume 5).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Renate Wagner: Hench, Philip Showalter. In: WE Gerabek , BD Haage, G. Keil, W. Wegner: Encyclopedia Medical History. Walter de Gruyter, 2004, ISBN 978-3-11-015714-7 , p. 568
  2. ↑ Information from the Nobel Foundation on the 1950 award ceremony for Philip Showalter Hench (English)
personal data
SURNAME Hench, Philip Showalter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American doctor
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Pittsburgh
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1965
Place of death Ocho Rios