Background
Philip Showalter Hench was born on February 28, 1896 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Jacob Bixler Hench and Clara John Showalter. His father was a schoolteacher and classics scholar.
Philip Showalter Hench was born on February 28, 1896 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Jacob Bixler Hench and Clara John Showalter. His father was a schoolteacher and classics scholar.
After receiving preparatory-school education at the Shadyside Academy and the University School, both in Pittsburgh, Hench enrolled at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor of Arts in 1916.
He next entered medical school at the University of Pittsburgh. While a student there, Hench enlisted as a private in the Army Medical Corps (1917), but was transferred to the Enlisted Reserve Corps to finish his medical training. He received the Doctor of Medicine degree in 1920.
Between October 1928 and May 1929, he studied with Ludwig Aschoff at the University of Freiburg, and with Friedrich von Müller at the Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich.
After a year's internship at Saint Francis Hospital in Pittsburgh, Hench became a fellow in medicine at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine of the University of Minnesota at Rochester, Minnesota. In 1925 he was appointed a member of the staff of the Mayo Clinic, and in 1926 he became a consultant in the division of medicine and head of the new section on rheumatic diseases of the clinic.
Hench's compelling interest was the study of patients with rheumatic disease. In 1925, in a report of 320 cases of arthritis, he declared that "each arthritic patient is a problem for research of the most intensive kind. " He retained this belief throughout his medical career.
In 1928, Hench was appointed instructor in the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine, University of Minnesota at Rochester. Returning to Mayo, Hench devoted himself to helping his rheumatic patients by using all time-tested methods of therapy available and by teaching them how best to help themselves. The attention to the concerns and ideas of his patients enabled Hench to make, in 1929, an important observation on the analgesic effect of jaundice on rheumatoid arthritis. His lifelong effort to understand and control this phenomenon began at that time. His experiments centered on the induction of jaundice by various techniques. He carried out extensive studies of the clinical use of uricosuric agents in treatment of gout.
Hench was an American pioneer in the diagnosis and treatment of gout in its various manifestations. In 1936 he wrote that only one of four or five cases of gout were correctly diagnosed, and it was the suspicion of gout, not the disease, that had disappeared. He urged American physicians to have a new awareness of gout and diagnose it correctly, because "a group of patients who are suffering needlessly will be restored to a large measure of comfort and contentment. "
One of Hench's important contributions to American rheumatology was his role during 1932-1948 in compiling and editing the annual Rheumatism Review of the American Rheumatism Association, the first issue of which appeared in 1935. This exhaustive coverage of the English and American literature did much to give form and direction to the field.
By 1940 Hench had become a commanding figure in his specialty. He always seemed to be unaware of his speech handicap, a cleft palate, which would have hindered a less determined man. His concentrated interest in the clinical and investigative aspects of rheumatic diseases, combined with his abilities as a teacher, lecturer, and author, brought an unpopular field of medical practice into prominence. He established that chronic rheumatism and arthritis were among the most severe medical problems in the world. In August 1942, Hench was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Army Medical Corps. He served as chief of the Medical Service at Camp Carson, Colorado, and then as chief of the Medical Service and director of the Army Rheumatism Center at the Army and Navy General Hospital at Hot Springs, Ark. He was deactivated in January 1946 with the rank of colonel. In 1947 he was made a professor at the Mayo Graduate School.
In the mid-1930's, Hench discussed his postulation that there was an "antirheumatic substance X, " which could cause dramatic remission of the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, with the famous biochemist Edward C. Kendall. Kendall's laboratory had been a center for isolation and chemical identification of the hormones of the adrenal cortex since 1930. "Compound E" of the Kendall group of compounds had been found to be biologically active in muscle-work test in late 1935. Three years later its chemical name had been determined to be 17-hydroxy-11-dehydrocorticosterone. By 1941, Hench and Kendall had decided to test Compound E for a possible effect on rheumatoid arthritis, as soon as a sufficient amount became available for clinical investigation.
In 1948, Hench and his associates, Charles H. Slocumb and Howard F. Polley, began their studies of the effects of 17-hydroxy-11-dehydrocorticosterone (cortisone) and the adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) of the anterior lobe of the pituitary body in rheumatoid arthritis. Compound E was given to a patient with rheumatoid arthritis in September 1948. Great precautions were taken to prevent premature publicity about this mysterious "Substance H, " the term used during first hospital tests. The physicians were soon convinced of the antirheumatic action of Compound E. Preliminary results were presented in April 1949 at the regular scientific meeting of the staff of the Mayo Clinic. The undesirable effects as well as the desirable ones were described. Cortisone, an acronym devised by Hench in 1949 from corticosterone rapidly assumed great importance as a therapeutic agent.
Hench became senior consultant of the Mayo Clinic in 1953. He retired from the clinic and the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine in 1957. He died at St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, while on vacation.
Quotations: Hench's motivation and effort are exemplified in his axiom: "Medical truth must be put to work, it must serve. "
Hench was a founder of the American Rheumatism Association, and he also took part in organizing Ligue International Contre le Rheumatisme. He was president of the American Rheumatism Association in 1940-1941.
If it had not been for Hench's ebullience, tenacity, boldness, and ability, the great therapeutic comfort of cortisone would certainly have been delayed or it might never have been achieved.
On July 14, 1927, Hench married Mary Genevieve Kahler, daughter of John Henry Kahler, the Mayos' friend who had developed the Kahler Corporation's hospitals and hotels to serve the patients and physicians of the Mayo Clinic. They had four children.