Pioneer in study of blood clotting Posted on August 28th
Dr. Hugh R. Butt, whose studies of coagulation showed Vitamin K could be highly effective in halting internal bleeding and could be used to reduce deaths among patients with jaundice, died Aug. 16 in Rochester, Minn. He was 98.
His death was confirmed by a spokeswoman for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, where Dr. Butt was head of the division of gastroenterology and internal medicine from 1967 to 1974.
As a 25-year-old resident at Mayo in the 1930s, Dr. Butt learned that another researcher, the nutritionist Henrik Dam, had observed that a deficiency of Vitamin K in laboratory chickens frequently led to the birds’ bleeding internally. Dr. Butt theorized that jaundiced patients, who are prone to internal hemorrhages, might also have a problem absorbing the vitamin, a condition that could be corrected.
After extracting Vitamin K from fish meal fertilizer and a series of experiments with chickens, Dr. Butt was called to help a male patient with chronic jaundice who was reported to be bleeding to death. He mixed the vitamin with bile salts to aid absorption and sent the mixture through a tube directly into the patient’s stomach. Within an hour, the internal bleeding had stopped, and the patient eventually recovered.
Trackback URL