Robert Allan Phillips

Robert Allan Phillips (born July 16, 1906 in Clear Lake , Iowa , † September 20, 1976 ) was an American medic .

Life

Phillips studied at Iowa State University (BS 1927) and Washington University in St. Louis (MD 1929). From 1936 to 1940 he was an assistant professor at the Medical College of Cornell University .

As a lieutenant in the US Navy at the Rockefeller Institute during World War II , he developed an effective method that could be used in medical frontline missions to determine the hematocrit value and thus the fluid loss of the wounded. The method is still used today, for example, with blood donation candidates.

After the war, he founded and directed medical research units of the US Navy in 1946 (NAMRU, United States Naval Medical Research Unit) in Cairo and in 1955 in Taipei . In Egypt he was already researching treatments for cholera and developing an effective rehydration method through intravenous infusion and, in the 1960s, with others, an even simpler, glucose-based oral rehydration therapy. Phillips had first successes in 1964 with two cholera patients in the Philippines, which was then expanded by his colleagues, including Norbert Hirschhorn , and others to later become the standard procedure for ORS therapy for diarrheal diseases. After his retirement (he had the rank of Captain), he worked with the University of Washington and the Chinese government to develop cheaper alternatives to dialysis for kidney failure based on rehydration.

In 1967 he received the Lasker ~ DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award .

literature

• Savarino: A legacy in 20 ^th -century medicine: Robert Allan Phillips and the taming of Cholera . In: Clin. Infect. Dis. , Vol. 35, 2002, pp. 713-720, PMID 12203169

Individual evidence

1. ^ Bhattacharya: History and development of oral rehydration therapy . In: Indian J. Public Health , Vol. 38, 1994, pp. 39-43, PMID 7530695