Philip Medford LeCompte

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Philip Medford LeCompte (born  October 4, 1907 in Binghamton, New York , †  September 15, 1998 in Lexington, Massachusetts ) was an American pathologist . At Faulkner Hospital in Boston , a teaching hospital at Tufts University , he was director of the pathology department for 30 years. By investigating the pathological anatomy of the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas , he made a significant contribution to the understanding of the type 1 diabetes form of diabetes mellitus as an autoimmune disease .

Life

Philip LeCompte was born in Binghamton, New York in 1907 and studied medicine at the University of Minnesota and Yale University , where he graduated in 1936. After a year-long research stay at Harvard University , he returned to Yale in 1940 and was a lecturer in the Department of Pathology , in addition to working as a pathologist at Fairfield State Hospital in Newtown .

He later moved to Faulkner Hospital in Boston , a teaching hospital at Tufts University , where he was director of the pathology department for 30 years. He retired in 1974, but continued to serve in the medical school of Tufts University, teaching and researching gastroenterology .

Philip LeCompte, who was married from 1939 and had a son and daughter, died in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1998 . The pathological laboratory of the Faulkner Hospital bears the name "The Doctor Philip M. LeCompte Laboratory" in his honor.

Scientific work

Philip LeCompte made an important contribution to research into diabetes mellitus with a publication in 1958 in the AMA Archives of Pathology under the title “Insulitis in early juvenile diabetes” . In this work he described inflammation of the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas in four patients with diabetes in childhood. He brought this observation, known as insulitis , which had already been described in individual cases by other authors and discussed as a temporary phenomenon of no further significance, again in the interest of diabetes research. He discussed infectious or toxic damage to the islets of Langerhans as the cause of the insulitis , but also considered immunological processes .

The Belgian pathologist Willy Gepts , who subsequently worked closely with Philip LeCompte, was able to show through further studies on a large number of patients in the mid-1960s that an inflammatory infiltration of cells of the immune system in and around the islets of Langerhans is characteristic of the type 1 diabetes. Both laid the foundation for the view that is still accepted today that type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease .

Works (selection)

  • The Biology of Arteriosclerosis. Springfield 1938 (as Associate Editor)
  • Tumors of the Carotid Body and Related Structures. Washington DC 1951
  • The Pathology of Diabetes Mellitus. Philadelphia 1966 (as Associate Editor)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Cara Marcus: Faulkner Hospital. Series: Images of America. Arcadia Publishing, Charleston 2010, ISBN 0-73-857324-8 , p. 72
personal data
SURNAME LeCompte, Philip Medford
ALTERNATIVE NAMES LeCompte, Philip M.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American pathologist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th October 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Binghamton, New York
DATE OF DEATH September 15, 1998
Place of death Lexington, Massachusetts