Robert McCance

Robert Alexander McCance, CBE, FRS From 1919 he read Natural Sciences at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, after an initial start on the Agriculture course. In 1925 he went on to study medicine at King's College Hospital in London. While studying with R. D. Lawrence at his diabetic clinic and McCance became interested in diabetes, particularly in one of the complications of diabetic coma, sodium chloride (salt) deficiency. He then began a scientific career in the study of nutrition.

Career Remaining at King's College in the 1930s, McCance conducted research on himself, studying the physiological effects of salt. He would use volunteers who would eat a salt free diet, and lie sweating under heat lamps for two hours a day for 10 days, to remove salt from the body, and become salt deficient. This would lead to suffering in the volunteers including cramps and shortness of breath as well as anorexia and nausea. This led to further research which established that infants with salt deficiency, excreted little salt. the keystone based on his research on salt deficiency. In 1938, at the invitation of J. A. Ryle, he was promoted to Reader and moved to Cambridge, where he was made a fellow of Sidney Sussex.

Awards and honours James Spence Gold Medal, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health