Harry Morrow Brown (1917-2013). Derby, UK.

Abstract

but nearly all patients were cured by 1956, making the treatment of other respiratory diseases possible. In 1956, a British Medical Research Council multi-central trial of oral steroids in chronic asthma concluded that steroids were no better than bronchodilators. Morrow Brown could not believe this because he had treated asthmatics with oral steroids with dramatic improvement, and his thesis had been closely concerned with the early development of corticosteroids. In 1956, consultant physicians in the National Health Service had the freedom to conduct clinical trials on their own initiative, so he decided to carry out his own trial and appealed for chronic asthmatics. Ninety patients were treated with oral steroids. After 3 months, 60 were greatly improved but 30 were unchanged. Suspecting that he was treating two different diseases he began sending sputum to the local laboratory and asking them to look for eosinophils, but none were reported even when he was sure they should be abundant. This negative finding was also unacceptable, so he decided to look for them himself using the antique Leitz microscope he had used as a student. Developing a rapid wet smear method of looking for eosinophils in the clinic, he discovered that the 60 One of the last of the independent researchers?