Richard A. Cash, Inventor of Oral Rehydration Therapy, Dies at 83
Richard A. Cash Obituary in The New York Times:
Richard A. Cash, who as a young public-health researcher in South Asia in the late 1960s showed that a simple cocktail of salt, sugar and clean water could check the ravages of cholera and other diarrhea-inducing diseases, an innovation that has saved an estimated 50 million lives, died on Oct. 22 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 83.
He worked with David Nalin in East Pakistan, today Bangladesh:
They realized that a main problem was volume: Past efforts had resulted in too little or too much hydration. Dr. Cash and Dr. Nalin conceived a trial in which they carefully measured the amount of liquid lost and replaced it with the same amount, mixed with salt and sugar to facilitate absorption.
They divided 29 patients into three groups, with one group receiving an IV drip, another an oral treatment through a tube, and the third an oral treatment by drinking from a cup.
Other doctors and nurses found their experiment bizarre and tried to stop them. But Dr. Cash and Dr. Nalin persisted, splitting the work between them in two 12-hour shifts, to ensure the integrity of the trial.
The results were definitive: Only three of the tubed patients — and only two who drank the solution — needed additional IV treatment.
Their approach was put to the test in 1971, when Bangladesh’s war of independence drove tens of thousands of refugees into camps across the border in India. Cholera and other diseases soon spread rapidly.
An Indian pediatrician helping with the response, Dilip Mahalanabis, made oral rehydration a cornerstone of his strategy, with astounding success — proof for all the world that a simple solution could be brought to bear against one of the world’s greatest killers
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