Dr. Maxwell Wintrobe, 85

December 23, 1986|By New York Times News Service.

Dr. Maxwell M. Wintrobe, who invented methods of identifying blood disorders that led to improved treatment of anemia, died of heart failure on Dec. 9 in his home in Salt Lake City at age 85.

Dr. Wintrobe, who in 1942 wrote a major textbook on blood and its diseases, trained dozens of the country`s leading specialists in the field. He codified the methods of measuring blood and invented a device to quantify the number and concentration of red blood cells. That device, the hematocrit, allows physicians to diagnose and treat different kinds of anemia.

He also conducted extensive research in blood-related cancers and the ways diet affects blood production. He was the first to use chemotherapy to treat Hodgkin`s disease, a cancer that originates in the lymph glands.

The son of an Austrian emigre, Maxwell Wintrobe was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and grew up in Winnipeg. He earned a bachelor`s degree at the University of Manitoba, where he received a medical degree in 1926.

Dr. Wintrobe began researching anemia as an instructor at Tulane University Medical School in 1927. He joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University in 1930, where he made his important early discoveries.

In 1943, he was named head of the department of medicine at the University of Utah`s new, four-year medical school in Salt Lake City. He presided over the medical school as it grew from a collection of rustic Army barracks into a huge, state-of-the-art medical and teaching complex.

Dr. Wintrobe was chairman of the university`s medicine department until 1966, attracting many of the top hematology students from around the country and the world.

He is survived by his wife, Becky, and a daughter, Susan Walker of Salt Lake City.