Robert Wallace Wilkins

Robert Wallace Wilkins ( born December 4, 1906 in Chattanooga, Tennessee; † 9 April 2003 in Newburyport, Massachusetts) was an American doctor who dealt with high blood pressure.

Education and Career

Wilkins received a bachelor's degree in 1928 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and worked for a year as a teacher before 1929 his medical studies at the University of North Carolina began in 1931 and continued at Harvard Medical School. In 1933 he graduated as M.D. from. He then undertook a residency training at Boston City Hospital and the Thorndike Memorial Laboratories. He could spend on a scholarship a year in London and worked from 1938 at the Johns Hopkins University before brought him Chester Keefer 1940 as Professor and Head of the Cardiovascular Division at the Evans Memorial Department of Clinical Research and Preventive Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine. From 1950 he was head the Council of High Blood Pressure Research. From 1960 to 1972 he served as director of the successor Keefer Evans Memorial Department of Clinical Research and Preventive Medicine, Chief of the Medical Faculty and chief physician at the University Hospital, Boston University Medical School (later Boston Medical Center). In 1972 he retired and lived until his death in Newburyport.

Wilkins was married and had two daughters and a son.

Achievements

In 1950 he led a reserpine as a first resort to treat high blood pressure, an extract from the Rauwolfia. In addition, he recognized early hypertension as a dangerous disease, must be taken against the medication. Before that it was mostly assumed that this is a normal aging process and a reduction in blood pressure on the contrary harmful, since the blood then could no longer be pumped through the narrowed arteries and veins. In 1957 he published a study in which he showed the usefulness of chlorothiazide ( Diuril ) as a hypotensive agent.

In the 1950s he led his step- Care method ( also stepped care ) a for the treatment of hypertension. This method now widely used to adjust the treatment in stages depending on the success of lower dosage.

During World War II he developed pressure equalization suits ( G- Suit) for fighter pilots and parachute jumps from high altitudes. In 1958 he received the Lasker ~ DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. In 1957/58 he was president of the American Heart Association.

Publications

• Chester S. Keefer; Robert W. Wilkins: Medicine: Essentials of Clinical Practice. Little, Brown, Boston, 1970, ISBN 978-0-7000-0183-5, OCLC 125022nd