Dakin, Henry Drysdale

SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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b. 12 March 1880 Hampstead, England

d. 10 February 1952 Scarborough-on-Hudson, New York, USA

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English biochemist, advocate and exponent of the treatment of wounds with antiseptic fluid, Dakin's solution (Eusol).

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The youngest of a family of eight of moderate means, Dakin received his early education in Leeds experiencing strict scientific training as a public analyst. He regarded this as having been of the utmost value to him in his lifelong commitment to the emerging discipline of biochemistry.

He was one of the earliest to specialize in the significance of optical activity in organic chemistry, and obtained his BSc from Manchester in 1901. Following this, he worked at the Lister (Jenner) Institute of Preventive Medicine and at Heidelberg. He then received an invitation to join Christian Herter in a private research laboratory that had been established in New York. There, for the rest of his life, he continued his studies into a wide variety of biochemical topics. Christian Herter died in 1910, and six years later his widow and Dakin were married.

Unable to serve in the First World War, he made a major contribution, in collaboration with Carrel, with the technique for the antiseptic irrigation of wounds with a buffered hypochlorite solution (Eusol), a therapy which in the 1990s is still an accepted approach to the treatment of infected wounds. The original trials were carried out on the liner Aquitania, then serving as a hospital ship in the Dardanelles.

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Principal Honours and Distinctions

Fellow of the Royal Society 1917. Davy Medal 1941. Honorary doctorates, Yale, Leeds and Heidelberg Universities.

Bibliography

1915, "On the use of certain antiseptic substances in the treatment of infected wounds", British Medical Journal.

1915, with A.Carrel, "Traitement abortif de l'infection des plaies", Bulletin of the

Academy of Medicine.

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