Horton Corwin Hinshaw

Horton Corwin Hinshaw Sr. (August 1, 1902, Iowa Falls, Iowa – December 28, 2000, San Rafael, California) was an American pulmonologist, known for the use of streptomycin as the first effective antibiotic for the treatment of tuberculosis (TB).

Biography H. Corwin Hinshaw was born into a Quaker family with roots in Quaker communities in North Carolina and Massachusetts. Some of his ancestors were among the first English colonists to settle on the eastern part of Long Island, near Horton's Point (where the Horton Point lighthouse is located). Upon returning to the United States he earned, within 2 years, an M.D. in 1933 from the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania.

When streptomycin was isolated from Streptomyces griseus by Albert Schatz, Elizabeth Bugie, and Selman Waksman at Rutgers University, Hinshaw and William Hugh Feldman, working together at the Mayo Clinic, requested a sample of streptomycin for testing in their guinea pig animal model of tuberculosis infection. After streptomycin proved effective for treating infected guinea pigs, Karl Hamilton Pfuetze, M.D. (1908–1990), superintendent and medical director at the Mineral Springs Sanatorium in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, contacted Dr. Hinshaw, in October 1945, concerning Pfuetze's tuberculosis patient Patricia "Patsy" Jane Thomas (1922–1966).

In 1949 Hinshaw moved with his family to Palo Alto, California and was affiliated with Stanford University School of Medicine as a clinical professor of medicine and head of the division of chest diseases from 1949 to 1959. In 1959 he moved to San Francisco and, at 450 Sutter Street, had an active internal medicine practice specializing in pulmonology in collaboration with his elder son, H. Corwin Hinshaw, Jr., M.D. Simultaneously, Dr. Hinshaw, Sr. was a clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco,

He was the author or coauthor of more than 200 refereed articles. His textbook The Diseases of Chest (1st edition, 1956), coauthored with L. Henry Garland, was a pulmonary standard for many years.

On August 6, 1924, in Pocatello, Hinshaw married Dorothy Kate Youmans (1902–1994). They had two sons and two daughters. Both sons became physicians. H. Corwin Hinshaw, Jr., M.D. (born 1927) shared his father's medical practice in San Francisco. Garland was also the coauthor for the 2nd edition in 1963. Hinshaw was the sole author for the 3rd edition in 1969. The 4th edition in 1980 was coauthored by Hinshaw and John Frederic Murray (1927–2020);