John Howland (doctor)

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John Howland
Cornell University Medical College (MD)
Signature

John Howland (February 3, 1873 – June 20, 1926)

pediatrician who spent the majority of his career at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he established the first full-time pediatric department in the United States. The John Howland Award, the highest honor given by the American Pediatric Society
, is named after him.

Early life and education

Howland was born in 1873 in New York City to a New England family whose ancestry included John Howland (1592–1673), who traveled on the Mayflower and helped to found the Plymouth Colony.[2]

After graduating from

Cornell University Medical College in 1899.[3]

Career

Howland interned at the

Harriet Lane Home for Invalid Children at the Johns Hopkins Hospital; he would remain the chair of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins until his death in 1926.[2]

At Johns Hopkins, Howland is credited with establishing the first full-time department of pediatrics in the United States,[2] and the first fully academic department of pediatrics in the world.[4] In his department, all faculty members worked full-time and had to dedicate at least half of their time to research. Howland published research on rickets, tetany and diarrhea. He and William McKim Marriott demonstrated that acidosis in diarrheal illnesses was caused by the excretion of bicarbonate in the stools rather than by a toxin, and with Edwards A. Park he showed that tetany was caused by alkalosis and hypocalcemia.[2]

Death and legacy

Howland died in 1926 from cirrhosis.[2] Many of the physicians he mentored at Johns Hopkins went on to become leaders in the field of pediatrics: these include Kenneth Blackfan, Edwards A. Park, Ethel Collins Dunham, L. Emmett Holt Jr., Grover Powers, Wilburt C. Davison, James L. Gamble, and William McKim Marriott.[2][4] In 1951, the American Pediatric Society created the John Howland Award, which is the highest honor given by the society "for distinguished service to pediatrics".[2]

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-88167-695-2
    .
  2. ^
    PMID 12595606
    .
  3. ^ "The John Howland Collection". Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Retrieved September 1, 2019.
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7817-3894-1
    .

External links
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