Hench, Philip Showalter

Hench, Philip Showalter, 1896–1965, American physician, b. Pittsburgh, M.D. Univ. of Pittsburgh, 1920. Associated with the Mayo Foundation of the Univ. of Minnesota school of medicine after 1921, he was made head of the department of rheumatic diseases in 1926, began teaching in 1928, and was made professor in 1947. In 1946 he became consultant to the surgeon general of the U.S. army. He shared with Edward C. Kendall and Tadeus Reichstein the 1950 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his pioneering work in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis with cortisone and ACTH.

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Hench, Philip Showalter 

Born Feb. 28, 1896, in Pittsburgh; died Mar. 30, 1965, in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. American rheumatologist.

In 1920, Hench graduated from the medical school of the University of Pittsburgh. In 1921 he became a staff member at the Mayo Clinic; in 1926 he became a consultant in the clinic’s division of medicine and head of the section on rheumatic diseases. From 1928 he taught at the University of Minnesota in Rochester, receiving a professorship there in 1947. Hench studied the role of endocrinologic factors in the clinical treatment of rheumatic diseases. He successfully used cortisone in treating the diseases. Hench was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1950 (jointly with E. Kendall and T. Reichstein).

WORKS

“The Effect of Cortisone and of ACTH on Rheumatoid Arthritis and Acute Rheumatic Fever.” In The Rheumatic Diseases Based on the Seventh International Congress on Rheumatic Diseases. Philadelphia-London, 1952. (With others.)