Edward D. Freis—A True Pioneer

Abstract

but it is appropriate that a more detailed review of his major contributions be published by someone who greatly admired his work and knew of his major contributions through one of his trainees, and subsequently my mentor, Edward D. Frohlich.LIFE AND MEDICAL CAREEREdward D. Freis was born in Chicago, IL, on May 13, 1912. He earned his BS at the University of Arizona in 1936, obtained his MD in 1940 at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, and completed his internal medicine residency at the Boston University Hospital Program in 1942. He served as Chief of Laboratory Services in the Air Force in Nebraska from 1942 to 1944 and returned to Boston where he worked with Dr. Robert Wilkins until 1949. While in Boston, Dr. Freis authored his first article on the benefits of drug treatment of hypertension. In 1949 he went to the Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital and Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, DC and remained there until the end of his career in 2005. He established the Hypertension Clinic at the Medical Center and served as its chief for 10 years, from 1950 to 1960. In 1959, he was appointed one of five Senior Medical Investigators of the VA. Dr. Freis headed the VA Cooperative Study, which was the first to demonstrate the effect of antihyperten-sive drugs on cardiovascular events.Dr. Freis actively participated in professional organizations and on the editorial boards of many medical journals and was recognized by numerous organizations for his landmark research work. He received the Albert Lasker Foundation Clinical Research Award in 1971, the CIBA Award for Hypertension Research from the American Heart Association in 1981, and the first Stevo Julius Award for Education in Hypertension from the International Society of Hypertension in 2000. The National Conference on High Blood Pressure Control named an award after him in 1985. Dr. Freis continued to work as a Distinguished Physician with the VA until his death at 92 in February 2005.CONTRIBUTIONS TO CARDIOVASCULAR MEDICINEDr. Freis’s fundamental contributions to the field of cardiovascular medicine were summarized in his manuscript published in Hypertension in 2001.