Thomas Lauder Brunton
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Thomas Lauder Brunton (1844 – 1916) was a Scottish physician who is most-closely associated with the use of amyl nitrite to treat angina pectoris.
Brunton was born in southeastern Scotland in Roxburgh. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, beginning research into pharmacology while still a student there, and receiving a gold medal for his 1866 thesis on digitalis. Following additional work in Austria, the Netherlands, and Germany, Brunton returned to University College, London, and while there he was selected for a position at St. Bartholomew's Hospital.
Brunton's clinical use of amyl nitrite to treat angina was inspired by earlier work with the same reagent by Arthur Gamgee and Benjamin Ward Richardson. Brunton reasoned that the pain and discomfort of angina could be reduced by administering amyl nitrite to open the coronary arteries of patients.
In 1916, Brunton died in London and was buried in Highgate Cemetery.
[edit] Selected Works
- Experimental Investigation of the Action of Medicines (1875)
- Scanned copy of the above book
- A Textbook of Pharmacology, Therapeutics, and Materia Medica (1885)
[edit] References and links
- "T. Lauder Brunton and Amyl Nitrite: A Victorian Vasodilator" by W. Bruce Fye, Circulation, 1986, volume 74, pp. 222 - 229. This article is available in the Adobe pdf format from the American Heart Association here.
- Very brief summary of Brunton's work
