Walter C. Alvarez

Walter Clement Alvarez (July 22, 1884 – June 18, 1978) was an American physician of Spanish descent. He authored several dozen books on medicine, and wrote introductions and forewords for many others.

Biography He was born in San Francisco and spent his childhood in Hawaii, where his father, Luis F. Alvarez, was a government physician. His father worked as a physician in California and Hawaii and developed a method for the better diagnosis of macular leprosy. His sister was California artist and oil painter Mabel Alvarez. In 1910, having received his medical education in Stanford University, he began his practice.

From 1913 to the end of 1925, Alvarez practiced internal medicine in San Francisco and conducted research at the University of California, Berkeley. He lived at 3837 Clay Street raising his family. In 1926, he joined the Mayo Clinic practice in Rochester, Minnesota until his retirement in 1950, where he lived at 815 5th St SW in the historic Pill Hill neighborhood. In 1934, he became Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota (Mayo Foundation) and later served as Consultant in Medicine Emeritus. In his 25 years as a physician at Mayo, Alvarez published 347 scientific papers, focusing on digestion and the human gut. He would be praised by colleagues for his willingness to explore beyond his specialty, and peer into the minds of his patients during treatment. and the couple had four children: Gladys, Luis, Robert and Bernice. Luis later became a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. His grandson is Walter Alvarez, a Professor of Geology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Beginning after his retirement in 1951, Alvarez began writing a medical column which soon became syndicated throughout North America in hundreds of daily and weekly newspapers. The Walter C. Alvarez Memorial Award is named in his honor and is presented to a member or nonmember of the American Medical Writers Association to honor excellence in communicating health care developments and concepts to the public. He worked to make his findings more understandable for the public. He is most notable for his enlightened approach to homosexuality and his efforts to educate the medical profession and the broader public about the topic. He is regarded as an ally of the homophile movement in the 1950s-1970s. He is known for his work on gastroenterology, with many thousands of physicians of the 20th century studying his notes and writings.

Alvarez' syndrome, a syndrome of hysterical or neurotic abdominal bloating without any excess of gas in the digestive tract, and Alvarez-waves, painless uterine contractions occurring during the length of pregnancy, are named after him.

Alvarez was the first to investigate electric activity of a stomach and, thereby, became the founder of a new diagnostic gastroenterology branch — electrogastrography. Aside from that, he also was among some of the first doctors in the world to emphasize the weight and significance of food allergy.

His personal papers are held by Lane's Archives and Special Collections.

Alvarez's syndrome Alvarez's syndrome is a medical disorder in which the abdomen becomes bloated without any obvious reason, such as intestinal gas. It may be caused when the muscles of the superior abdominal wall contract and push the contents of the abdomen inferiorly and anteriorly. It may be a psychogenic disorder. Currently, there is no cure to Alvarez's syndrome, but symptoms can often be improved through dietary changes, medications and in rare cases, surgery. It was discovered by and named by Alvarez in the late 1940s.

Publications