Leo Schamroth (2 June 1924 – 24 May 1988) was a South African

cardiologist Cardiology () is the study of the heart. Cardiology is a branch of medicine that deals with disorders of the heart and the cardiovascular system. The field includes medical diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery di ...

remembered for his work in

electrocardiography Electrocardiography is the process of producing an electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG), a recording of the heart's electrical activity through repeated cardiac cycles. It is an electrogram of the heart which is a graph of voltage versus time of t ...

and for describing Schamroth's window test.

Biography

Schamroth was born in Belgium and emigrated to South Africa in infancy. He graduated from the

University of the Witwatersrand The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), commonly known as Wits University or Wits, is a multi-campus Public university, public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg, South Africa. The universit ...

Medical School (WitsMed) in 1948. He went to Britain for post-graduate studies and returned to South Africa to complete his registrarship at

Johannesburg General Hospital The Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital is an accredited general hospital in Parktown, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa. History Background The land on Parktown ridge where the future hospital was built was at one time owned by Otto ...

. He joined the university staff based at the

Baragwanath Hospital Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital (colloquially known as Bara) is a hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is the largest hospital in Africa and seventh largest hospital in the world. It has 6,760 staff members, 3,400 beds and occup ...

in 1956 as a specialist physician. In 1965 he was awarded a Doctorate of Medicine and in 1970 a Doctorate in Science. He became Professor of Medicine at WitsMed and chief physician at Baragwanath Hospital in 1972. Baragwanath Hospital is the largest in the southern hemisphere and claimed to be the third largest in the world. He held those positions until his retirement on 31 October 1987 owing to ill health. He continued to write, teach and lecture as Professor of Medicine at WitsMed and abroad.

Works

Despite the lack of a cardiology unit at Baragwanath Hospital, Schamroth made important contributions to the field of cardiology. He published over 300 papers and eight textbooks, mostly concerned with electrocardiology. In 1957 he published '' An Introduction to Electrocardiography''. It ran to seven editions and was translated into Spanish, Italian, Greek, Turkish, and Japanese while also being the most frequently stolen book from medical libraries in the world. He wrote two other textbooks, ''The Disorders of Cardiac Rhythm'' and ''The Electrocardiology of Coronary Artery Disease'' which were translated into Italian and Spanish. His final work, ''Twelve Lead Electrocardiography'' was published posthumously in four volumes in 1969.

Private life

Schamroth was married to Beckey and had four sons, all of whom became physicians, but only one a cardiologist. He then married Renee who had four children too.

Acknowledgments and memberships

* Fellow of the

Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE) is a medical royal college in Scotland. It is one of three organisations that set the specialty training standards for physicians in the United Kingdom. It was established by royal charter i ...

* Fellow of the College of Physicians of Glasgow * Fellow of the

American College of Cardiology The American College of Cardiology (ACC), based in Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit medical association established in 1949. It bestows credentials upon cardiovascular specialists who meet its qualifications. Education is a core component of the ...

* Fellow of the

Royal Society of South Africa The Royal Society of South Africa is a learned society composed of eminent South African scientists and academics. The society was granted its royal charter by King Edward VII in 1908, nearly a century after Capetonians first began to conceive of ...

* 1972 Master Teacher Award by the

* 1984 Honorary M.D. by the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) (, ) is a public university, public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest univer ...

* Osler Award and Sodi Award from the

University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private university, private research university in Coral Gables, Florida, United States. , the university enrolled 19,852 students in two colleges and ten schools across over ...

for "excellence in teaching clinical cardiology" * 1983 Honoured at the 50th Grand Oriente de Belgique, Antwerp * Claude Harris Leon Foundation Award of Merit * WITS Alumni Award

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Schamroth, Leo South African cardiologists 1924 births 1988 deaths Fellows of the Royal Society of South Africa