PAGE, IRVINE HEINLY

PAGE, IRVINE HEINLY (7 Jan. 1901-10 June 1991), clinician and Director of Research at the CLEVELAND CLINIC FOUNDATION (1945-66), pioneered the scientific study of blood pressure and hypertension, promoted the development of hypertensive drugs, and raised national awareness about hypertension and atheriosclerosis. His research isolated the hormones serotonin and angiotensin, the basis of much modern brain chemistry research and treatment. Page was born in Indianapolis, IN to LaFayette and Marian Page. He began a lifelong membership in the American Chemical Society at age 14. Page graduated from Cornell University (B.A., 1921) and its medical school (1926). He interned at Presbyterian Hospital in New York and then worked as a brain chemist at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry in Munich, Germany (1928-31). Page returned to America to work at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, NY; Indianapolis City Hospital, a clinical branch of the Eli Lilly Company; and, finally, in 1945, at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, where he, Arthur Corcoran, and Robert Taylor began a new research division. Page proposed the "mosaic theory" of hypertension, emphasizing multiple causation rather than a single cause.

On 28 Oct. 1930 Page married Beatrice Allen; they had two children, Nicholas and Christopher. Author of over 300 articles, Page edited Modern Medicine. He participated in the formation of: the Council for High Blood Pressure Research (founded in 1947 in Cleveland as the American Foundation for High Blood Pressure); the American Society for the Study of Atheriosclerosis; and the International Society of Hypertension (1960s). Page, having isolated a variety of cholesterol in the 1920s, helped instigate the massive National Diet-Heart Study in 1960. He and industrialist U. A. Whitaker, both heart attack victims, created the Coronary Club in the late 1960s. In retirement Page moved to Hyannis Port, MA (1978) and continued to publish and serve actively in professional associations, including the Council for High Blood Pressure Research (vice-chair, 1987-89).


Irvine H. Page Papers, Cleveland Clinic Foundation Archives

Irvine H. Page Papers, National Library of Medicine, Washington, DC.

Page, Irvine H. Hypertension Research: A Memoir 1920-1960 (1988).

———————. Chemistry of the Brain (1937).

———————. Speaking to the Doctor (1972).

———————. Hypertension Mechanisms (1987).


Article Categories