Hinshaw, H. Corwin (Horton Corwin), 1902-2000

H. (Horton) Corwin Hinshaw was born August 1, 1902 in Iowa Falls, Iowa, and was raised on an apple farm in the Quaker community of Greenleaf, Idaho. He became a physician and pulmonary specialist instead of a farmer, but ironically the high point of his career was his work with streptomycin, an antibiotic substance extracted from soil. Streptomycin, the first anti-microbial drug developed after penicillin, was a break-through in medical science. It has proven to be effective in combating a variety of bacterial infections, including those that are penicillin-resistant. It was also the first drug used to treat tuberculosis successfully, although the high rate of mutation in the tuberculosis baccilli causes it to build up a resistance to the drug over time. Hinshaw and his collaborator, William H. Feldman, were nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1952, but lost out to their colleague, Selman A. Waksman, who first extracted streptomycin in the laboratory. Hinshaw subsequently had a long and distinguished career in medical research, private practice, teaching, and writing.

Hinshaw was the third of six children born to Milas Clark Hinshaw (1873-1955) and Ida Letitia Bushong Hinshaw (1881-1942). He attended Greenleaf Academy in Idaho, and then took his B.S. degree from the College of Idaho in 1923. While at the college, he met Dorothy Youmans (1902-1994) whom he married on August 6, 1924. The Hinshaws had four children; his two sons followed him into medical careers, while one daughter became a zoologist and author, and the other an educator.

After spending a year in advanced studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Hinshaw took an M.S. degree at the University of California, Berkeley in 1926, and completed his Ph.D. at the same institution the following year. From 1927-1931, he taught Parasitology and Bacteriology at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon. Returning to the United States, Hinshaw earned his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1933. He was subsequently recruited to work at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he developed his interest in diseases of the lung.

The collaboration of Hinshaw and William Feldman dates to 1938, when the two shared a ride home from a tuberculosis conference in St. Paul, Minnesota. After Selman Waksman and Albert Schatz created the first supply of streptomycin in April, 1944, Hinshaw and Feldman decided to try the drug's efficacy in treating "the white plague" of tuberculosis. The first animal trials, conducted at Mayo with tuberculosis-infected guinea pigs, were amazingly successful and encouraged the researchers to expand experimental treatment to human subjects. Although the initial human trials recorded promising success, it subsequently became clear that the tuberculosis baccilli built up a resistance to the drug over time, and the drug was not the hoped for "miracle cure."

In spite of the fact that Hinshaw and his colleagues reported the negative aspects of streptomycin treatment in tuberculosis, the popular press reaction to the initial positive results was so strong that many people still believe that tuberculosis has been "cured." Many medical advances have been made in tuberculosis treatment, but it still kills almost three million people annually. It is a preventable disease that is most effectively treated in its early stages. Streptomycin continues to be used, in combination with other newer drugs, to treat tuberculosis, but there is still an on-going battle as the disease continues to develop drug-resistant strains.

Ironically, William Feldman actually contracted tuberculosis in 1948 as a result of his laboratory work with live tubercle bacilli. According to Hinshaw, this occurrence "threatened [Feldman's] life and ... interrupted the close collaboration which we had enjoyed during the previous ten years." Luckily, a combination drug therapy (including streptomycin and Promin, both of which Feldman helped to develop) enabled Feldman to recover. Hinshaw mused that "It must be a rare circumstance in medical history that a scientist is stricken as a result of his experiments and is also rescued by his own hand."

Following the heady days of early streptomycin research, Hinshaw moved his family to California, where he worked in internal medicine as a pulmonary specialist and served as Clinical Professor of Medicine, Head of the Division of Chest Diseases at Stanford Medical School from 1949-1959. In 1953, he went on a Rutgers-funded "World Tour" to Europe and Asia, where he lectured on treatment of tuberculosis as practiced in the US. In 1955, he was invited to attend the 5th Congreso Argentino de Tisiología, where he presented a paper on current trends in drug therapy for tuberculosis. In 1956, he co-authored the seminal textbook on pulmonary medicine, Diseases of the Chest, with L. Henry Garland, a work that went into four editions. At government invitation, he attended the Sixth All Union Congress on Tuberculosis held in Moscow in 1957 and presented a paper on tuberculosis treatment in the U.S. Hinshaw taught a course on Chest Disease in New Zealand in 1959. In that same year, he became Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco; he held this position actively for the next 20 years, and was named Emeritus Professor in 1979. An interesting early highlight of Hinshaw's career was the work he did with Charles Lindberg on experiments in high-altitude aviation medicine. In his later years, Hinshaw became an expert witness, testifying in numerous legal cases involving respiratory aliments, particularly asbestosis.

Hinshaw authored over 215 articles that appeared in medical and scientific journals. He was professionally active in a number of societies, including the American Thoracic Society, for which he served as president in 1948-1949. In 1990, he received the Mayo Foundation Distinguished Alumnus Award. He died peacefully at home on December 28, 2000 at the age of 98.

From the guide to the H. Corwin Hinshaw Papers, 1925-1994, 1925-1994, (American Philosophical Society)