Jack B. L. Howell

Jack B. L. Howell qualified at the Middlesex Hospital, London, in 1950. From 1957 to 1958 he held an MRC fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland. He was senior lecturer and consultant physician at the Manchester Royal Infirmary 1960 to 1969 and foundation professor of medicine at the University of Southampton from 1969 to his retirement in 1991. He was dean of the faculty of medicine 1978-1983, President of the British Thoracic Society 1988-1989, of the British Medical Association 1989-1990 and chairman of the Southampton and Southwest Hampshire Health Authority 1983-1998. In 1994 he received the degree of Doctor of science. He was emerited in 1991.

Jack Howell has made outstanding contributions leading to a greater understanding of the control of breathing in health and disease and the mechanism of breathlessness. His clinical work was dominated by the management of asthma, chronic bronchitis and emphysema.

We thank Professor M.C.F. Pain for correcting our original entry.

• J. B. L. Howell, Roger Ernest Collingwood Altounyan (1922-1987):
  A double-blind trial of diodium cromoglygate in the treatment of allergic bronchial asthma. The Lancet, London, 1967, ii: 39-542.
• A. M. Edwards, J. B. L. Howell:
  The chromones: history, chemistry and clinical development. A tribute to the work of Dr. R. E. C. Altounyan.
  Clinical and Experimental Allergy, 2000, 30: 756-774. Biographical:
  
• Childhood Asthma and Beyond.
  A Witness Seminar Held at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London, on 4 April 2000.
  Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, Volume 11, 2001.