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Donald Van Slyke, founder of clinical chemistry

by Sadie Davenport on 2023-03-28T14:42:00-07:00 in Chemistry, Health sciences, Medicine | 0 Comments

Happy birthday to Donald Van Slyke, the biochemist who founded clinical chemistry. In 1914, Donald Van Slyke became the chief chemist at Rockefeller Institute Hospital. Here, he measured the contents of patients' blood, including oxygen, carbon dioxide, acid, and electrolyte levels, in order to diagnose different diseases before more damaging or fatal symptoms appeared. This became the practice of quantitative blood chemistry, which has saved millions of lives. The term "clinical chemistry" encompasses measurements of blood and urine contents, and was popularized by the textbook Donald Van Slyke co-authored, Quantitative Clinical Chemistry. For his work on clinical chemistry, Donald Van Slyke won the first AMA Scientific Achievement Award. 

        

Left: Donald Van Slyke, PhD. MiddleInfographic on clinical chemistry tests, found in Access Medicine. Right: Clinical chemistry eBook available in Academic eBook Collection, one of our library databases. 

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