Rustom Jal Vakil Explained

Rustom Jal Vakil (17 July 1911 – 20 November 1974) was a cardiologist from India who was awarded a Padma Bhushan for his contributions to medicine. He was the first Indian to win a Lasker Award.

Born in Bombay in 1911, Vakil completed his medical education in London.^[1] He pioneered the use of reserpine to control hypertension. Reserpine is derived from Indian Snakeroot, Rauwolfia serpentina, known in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh as Pagal-ki-dawa (‘‘medicine for the insane’’) Himachal Pradesh.It was later explored as a treatment for schizophrenia.^[2]

Books authored

• Clinical Diagnosis
• Textbook of Medicine
• The romance of healing and other essays
• Heart in Health and Disease

Awards received

• 1958 Padma Bhushan
• 1959 International Albert Lasker Award
• 1965 Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Award
• 1969 B.C.Roy Award
• 1971 The V World Congress of Cardiology Souvenir Award by the Cardiological Society of India
• 1973 The First Dhanwantari Award

Notes and References

1. Web site: History of Medicine . Medind.nic.in . 2013-10-13 . 2 August 2014 . https://web.archive.org/web/20140802021426/http://medind.nic.in/jac/t02/i1/jact02i1p100.pdf . dead .
2. Web site: Mechanisms of neurotransmitter release by amphetamines : A Review . Sulzerlab.org . 2013-10-13 . 24 October 2020 . https://web.archive.org/web/20201024063926/http://www.sulzerlab.org/pdf_articles/Sulzer05AMPHreview.pdf . dead .