Philip Hugh-Jones

Philip Hugh-Jones FRCP (22 August 1917 – 1 June 2010) was a British respiratory physician and Medical Research Council (MRC) researcher who during the Second World War investigated the effects of gun fumes on tank operators in Dorset and the effect of coal dust on Welsh coal miners with particular relevance to pneumoconiosis. This work led to future post-war pioneering research in lung physiology, the effect of asbestos on the lungs and lung diseases including emphysema.

Between 1952 and 1955, he took up a senior lecturer post at the then new University College of the West Indies and was the first to use the terminology of diabetes types 1, 2, and J in his 1955 paper for The Lancet titled "Diabetes in Jamaica".

Upon return to the UK, he became a consultant at the Hammersmith Hospital, London, where he continued MRC research on lung gas analysis using a newly modified mass spectrometer. Later, he would go on to King's College Hospital, where he continued research on lung diseases and set up a chest unit.

Early life Philip Morrell Hugh-Jones was born in London on 22 August 1917, the result of an affair between Philip Morrell, a Liberal Party politician who was married to Lady Ottoline Morrell, and Alice Louisa Jones who worked at The Nation. Both were associated with the Bloomsbury Group. He acquired the surname Hugh because Philip Morrell also had a legitimate son named Hugh.

He was educated at Highgate School, where he was head boy. Subsequently he gained admission to King's College, Cambridge, where he took the natural sciences tripos, passing with a first. The conclusion of the investigation, which used extensive Xrays, was that there was another disease, "pneumoconiosis of coal miners". This unit first described two types of the lung disease pneumoconiosis (the two-disease hypothesis) in which the progress of the disease was halted in one group of patients (those with early disease) by removing them from the source of coal dust. Where the disease was progressive however, the lung damage would continue to develop however far they went from the source of the coal dust. The resulting increase in unemployment from taking men out of work due to early disease, led Hugh-Jones to publish "the social consequences of pneumoconiosis" in 1951. This work, co-authored with Charles M. Fletcher, reported that "at present some 5,000 men with pneumoconiosis, three-quarters of whom are probably capable of work under normal industrial conditions, are unemployed."

He later recounted a visit by Nobel laureate Edward Purcell. Both being interested in gas analysis, they proposed using a mass spectrometer to investigate lung gases. However, the equipment needed redesigning in order to function in people. Their theories were largely forgotten by the early twentieth century however, when diabetes was seen as a disease on a spectrum that was explained by reference to age of onset and severity. In 1950, R. D. Lawrence reported that diabetics were of two types, those who were not deficient in insulin and those who were.

Hugh-Jones reported that 6% of the 215 diabetics attending the University College Hospital of the West Indies could not be classified as either type 1 or 2. They were young and underweight at the onset of their illness, but were resistant to insulin. If their diabetic control deteriorated, unlike in type 1 diabetes, the profound glycosuria was not accompanied with ketosis. He called this third type, type J, where J stood for Jamaica. Malnutrition was a key feature. It was later given various names including protein-deficient pancreatic diabetes, atypical diabetes and type 1B diabetes in the World Health Organization classification.

In 2000 he gave an oral history interview about his life to Queen Mary University of London.

Selected publications "The Social Consequences of Pneumoconiosis Among Coalminers in South Wales", co-authored with Charles M. Fletcher, Medical Research Council Memorandum (1951). "The Role of Periodic Examination in the Prevention of Coalworkers' Pneumoconiosis", co-authored with A.L. Cochrane, Charles Fletcher and J.C. Gilson, British Journal of Industrial Medicine, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Apr., 1951), pp. 53–61. "Diabetes in Jamaica", The Lancet, Vol. 266, No. 6896 (29 October 1955), pp. 891–897. . "The preparation and use of oxygen-15 with particular reference to its value in the study of pulmonary malfunction", co-authored with N. A Dyson, G. R. Newbury, and J. B. West, Proceedings of the Second UN International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, Isotopes in Medicine (1958) 26:103–115 "The Significance Of Lung Function Changes In Asbestosis", co-authored with Roger William, Thorax (1960),15,109. "Anaesthesia for the Respiratory Cripple", Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, Vol. 59, June 1966, pp. 519–522. "What's Wrong With the Funding of Cancer Research?", The British Medical Journal, Vol. 284, 1 May 1982, pp. 1325–1327. "A Rewarding Combination", Thorax. Vol. 47, No. 9 (Sept. 1992) p. 729.