Tuesday, 27 May 2014

PAUL DUDLEY WHITE - THE CRUSADING CARDIOLOGIST WHO GOT RECOGNITION FOR HEART DISEASE!

     In 1911, Paul Dudley White entered Medicine. That was the year the heart disease was participating in the grim race with 2 better known causes of death - Tuberculosis and Pneumonia.  In fact, he was one of the first specialists in Cardiology which till then was considered an insignificant field by his teachers.
     Plunging into the study of heart diseased, he pioneered the use of Electrocardiograph - then a recently invented tool which recorded the activity of the heart by charting its electrical impulses. In 1914, he set up an ECG machine in the basement of the Massachusetts General Hospital. By 1931, he had collected 21,160 ECG s and case histories. By combining and analyzing this data, he wrote a 10000 page book on Heart Disease. It went on t become the standard textbook of cardiology for many decades.
     He also studied the hearts of animals. He used the electrocardiograph to study the heart beat of animals. He found out that a larger heart beats fewer times than a smaller heart. The heart of a humming bird beat over 1000 times a minute where as that of a whale beat fewer than 15 times a minute!
     He also realized that in the humans, the difference in the heart size could trigger significant variations of the heart  beat which sometimes could be dangerous. He realized that the athletes could have enlarged, slowly beating hearts which could be essentially normal. He warned the other doctors about defining the 'normal' heart with too narrow a definition.
     He became very well known among the doctors. In 1955, Eisenhower, the President of the USA suffered a heart attack while at office and White was summoned to treat him. He would report the daily progress to the people of the worried nation. He lectured to the country about the disease, its causes its treatment in a simple understandable language. This made him very famous with the public also.
     White was a strong advocate of exercise. He was of the opinion that the labor saving devices and sedentary jobs made the Americans more prone to heart attack. He went on to declare " death due to heart attack before 80 is not God's will, it is man's will.
     At the age of 75, he bicycled 30 miles per day. He used to say "people hold up their hands in horror that I do it!". But I hold up mine in horror that they don't!".
     Finally he retired at the age of 86. Soon after, he suffered a stroke. While he was convalescing in the hospital where he had practiced for 58 years, a patient arrived and requested an examination by doctor White. The doctor obliged and examine the patient wearing a bathrobe.
     Paul Dudley white lived his work and also loved it! He also thrived by it! He had a terse aphorism - "Hard work never killed any man!". He was a living example of that!

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