My journey ends here...
Date of birth : February 8, 1908, Buffalo.
Profession cardiologist.
Addresses
* 1940 : 1750 North Serrano avenue, "Trianon Aparrments", Los Angeles (
,
* 1950 : 510 Rexford Drive, Beverly Hills (
).
Addresses of his private practice
* 1939 : 1136 West 6th room 803
* 1942 : 2007 Wilshire boulevard, room 901
* à partir de 1956 : 436 Roxbury Drive, room 222.
Story
He was the second son of Anna and Harry Prinzmetal. The family moved to Los Angeles where the death of Prinzmetal's invalid father forced his imother to boarding house for subsistence. Despite these hard beginnings, his brother, Isadore, became an outstanding lawyer, while Myron would leave his name in the annals of medical science.
On January 17, 1943 he married Blanche Julia Keiler (February 19, 1920, Illinois-October 1st, 1977, California)
in Los Angeles (
-
)(
).
They had 4 children : Byron (born on November 18, 1943, Los Angeles), Anita (born on May 2nd, 1946, Los Angeles), William (born on April 17, 1947, Los Angeles) and Cynthia (born on March 30, 1950, Los Angeles)
(
).
They divorced later.
Myron Prinzmetal attended Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles and received a B.A. degree from U.C.L.A. in the year of the great depression. He obtained a M.A. degree in pharmacy at the University of California in San Francisco, graduated M.D. in 1933. He spent his internship in San Francisco and his residency at Bames Hospital at Washington University in St Louis, and in 1935 he became Sutro Fellow at Mt Sinai Hospital in New York City. Eleven
more studies, including his first publication on hypertension, led to
his appointment as Fellow of the American College of Physicians at
University College, London. There he worked with Dr. G.W Pickering on
renin. After one year, he became Fellow of the Dazian Foundation,
returning to California at U.S.C. where he continued his studies on
hypertension. While
still a student he was a co-author of a paper on the effect of
broncho-constricting drugs on intrapleural pressure, the first of over
165 medical publications during his brilliant career. By
the time he had finished a fellowship from the National Research
Council at Harvard, he had already published 20 mom articles on
pulmonary disease, ventricular tachycardia, emphysema, and his first
papers on electrocardiography. He worked with W.B. Kountz and H.L.
Alexander in a joint publication on emphysema. Back in the USA he began working in a laboratory at Cedars of Lebanon hospital and began private practice in 1939.
,
He later became clinical professor of cardiology at U.C.L.A. Loss
of sight on one eye prevented Prinzmetal from serving in the U.S. Armed
Forces during the Second World War, but he continued his work on
pulmonary disease and begun research on coronary circulation. From 1950 he published a large number of papers on the auricular arrhythmias, making us of high-speed cine-electrocardiography. In
addition to belonging to many leading medical societies, Dr. Prinzmetal
was on the editorial board of the American Heart Journal and the
American Journal of Cardiology. He was a prime moving force in the
formation of the American College of Cardiology and the development of
cardiology on the West Coast. He was the recipient of numerous awards
and was a guest lecturer in many foreign countries, especially England,
where he gave the Sir Thomas Lewis Memorial Lecture. He
was an ardent book collector who owned all four folios of Shakespeare
and a first edition of Harvey's De Motu Cordis, the only one not owned
by a museum. "One of the most
important factors, if not the most important, in the incidence of
coronary disease is the diet. It is probably clear that we, as a rule,
eat too much. Primitive people usually don't. They can't afford to
stuff themselves. We seem to consider it a mark of affluence and luxury
to big meals. When an American suddenly gets an increase in income,
gets a raise in salary or puts over a big deal, he usually takes his
family out to celebrate with what he calls a "good meal". The "good"
meal is always high-caloric, fatty meal in which the family joins him
cramming more fuel into the system than the system can accomodate. Poor
people in economically backward countries don't usually put over big
deals; they don't take the family out for a big meal. They don't get
coronaries". On October 18, 1962, he married in Los Angeles Constance Emily Poland (August 13, 1916, West Virginia-November 10, 2012, California She had been Jerry Wald's wife until his death (
In 1959, with Dr.
Rexford Kennamer and others, he published their first observations on
the variant form of angina pectoris, a landmark report that was to
ensure him a place in the annals of medicine. This type of angina
became known as "Prinzmetal's angina." Many other articles and several
books were to follow until illness forced him to retire from research
and practice.
Dr. Prinzmetal published 165 articles or more. His interest ranged from
disease of the lung, kidneys, and peripheral vascular disease to
cardiac arrhythmias, circulatory shock, hypertension, and coronary
syndromes. 
).
).
They divorced in May 1968.
BACK TO "DOCTORS" FILE