Robert Platt, Baron Platt
Robert Platt, Baron Platt ( * April 16, 1900, † June 30, 1978 ) was a British physician and member of the House of Lords.
Career
Robert Platt was born in Marylebone, came from a family which, although they had no connection to the natural sciences, but socially very active and was musically interested. His parents founded a coeducational boarding school in Grindleford, which he also attended. His studies at the University of Sheffield, he joined in 1963 with awards from. In 1931 he became assistant physician at the Royal Infirmary, Sheffield and in 1934 a doctor. From 1941 to 1944 he served as a doctor in the British Army, in the UK, North Africa, Italy and India. He was a committed supporter of the National Health Service.
Robert Platt was specializing in the research of kidney disease. Particularly well known he was in the 1940s and 1950s through his scientific argument with his friend and Medicine Professor Sir George Pickering about the high blood pressure, known as the Pickering debate versus Platt.
" In the debate about the genetic basis of hypertension Platt argued, the blood pressure being based on a discontinuous distribution; greater hypertension genes were inherited as Mendelian properties. Pickering, however, argued that the hypertension befände at the upper end of a normal distribution of blood pressure; a number of genes practice from a small effect on an intermediate phenotypes, which - if it exceeded any one arbitrarily fixed limit - eventually lead to hypertension. "
1946 Platt Head of the Central Manchester Health Authority, the goal for the instrumental; 1949 to 1959 he was professor at the University of Manchester. In 1957 he became president of the Royal College of Physicians. During this presidency, he was instrumental in the Constitution and the publication of the first College Report on Smoking and Health, in which the causal relationship was first comprehensively worldwide. During his tenure of office of the college was rebuilt at the Regent 's Park - architect was Denys Lasdun - and officially opened by the Queen in 1964, then joined Platt from his post. He also conducted numerous training sessions for physicians on a Colloge. In addition to his professional activities, he participated in several medical associations and committees, such as the Eugenics Society, the Family Planning Association, ASH ( Action on Smoking and Health) and the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports. He was also a member of several music groups, since he himself played the cello. He was regarded as a dynamic and humanistic personality who devotedly cared for her patients.
Honor and death
On July 14, 1959 Platt Platt of Grindleford a baronet was collected and in January 1967 Life Peer. In the eleven years until his death, he took active part in the meetings of the House of Lords in part, in which he sat aloof, because he no Parteiintereressen, but the medicine represent his own words. He died in hospital from the effects of a femoral neck fracture after he fell on the stairs of the Royal College of Physicians. According to his will, there was no funeral, but a concert in his honor. In an obituary for Platt stated:
"He was one of the great figures in British medicine during the last half century, and yet a human, accessible and friendly man. He was able to show authority, but it never failed, the view of others and to listen to lend their weight. He stood on his opinion on some controversial issues, but he never tried to impose these others. He was a well- respected public figure. In each generation of medical professionals, there are a few who are recognized by a wider audience not only as a prominent figure in her profession, but as a man or woman of stature in the world outside, which are capable of a further term. Robert was such a personality. "
Publications
- Nephritis and Allied Diseases Their pathogeny and Treatment. Oxford University Press. 1934
- Doctor and patient. Ethics, Morale, Government. London. Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust, 1963
- Private and Controversial. Autobiography. London. Cassell 1972