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Paul Dudley White
American cardiologist, born 1886, Roxbury, Massachusetts; died 1973.
Associated eponyms:
Bland-White-Garland syndrome
A syndrome of left ventricular failure, congenital or occurring shortly after birth.
Lee and White method
Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome (Louis Wolff)
A cardiac pre-excitation syndrome in which normal sinoatrial impulses are conducted to the ventricles both by way of the atrioventricular node and by an abnormal pathway.
Biography:
Paul Dudley White was the son of a family doctor in Roxbury, Massachusetts. He was educated at the Roxbury Latin Grammar School, proceeding to Harvard University and graduating in 1908. His sister had died at the age of 12 of acute rheumatic fever and it is said that this determined his interest in cardiology. He studied medicine at Harvard, graduating in 1911 and interned at the newly established department of paediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital. For the next two years he was on the medical service with Dr. R. I. Lee and together they developed a technique for measuring blood coagulation, which is still commonly used, called the Lee and White method. This was his first medical publication. Financed by a Sheldon travelling scholarship he then spent a year with Thomas Lewis (1881-1945) studying the electrocardiogram (ECG) at the University College Hospital in London.
At the outbreak of World War I White volunteered and served with the Harvard Unit with the British expeditionary forces near Bologna and in 1917 helped establish the American base at Bordeaux. At the end of the war he organized an American Red Cross expedition to treat a typhus epidemic which was occurring in Macedonia and the Greek islands, and was awarded a decoration from the Greek government.
White returned to the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1919 to establish a cardiac unit. He became professor of medicine and with his outstanding clinical abilities established an international reputation for himself and his department. His classical monograph Heart Diseases, first published in 1931, went into several editions and set the seal on his career. In 1948 he was elected as president of the International Society of Cardiology and was subsequently president of the first World Congress of Cardiology.
In 1955 he attended president Eisenhower during his cardiac infarct and it is said that only he and the president were convinced that the president would survive. His optimistic approach to patients, mixed with common sense and a ready explanation, helped many patients who were frightened by their disease.
White emphasised the importance of prevention of coronary disease and was a strong advocate of fitness and exercise in aiding its prevention. His use of the bicycle was known throughout the world and the 17 miles Dr. Paul Dudley White Bike Path in the Boston-Brookline area is named for him.
White was a founder of the American Heart Association.
Bibliography:
With A. V. Boursy, White translated Giovanni Maria Lancisi’s book De subitaneis mortibus libri duo (Rome, 1707), published by St. John’s University Press, New York, 1971.
Obituary in British Medical Journal, 1973, 4: 362.
- Paul Oglesby:
Take Heart : The Life and Prescription for Living of Dr. Paul Dudley White. 1996.
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