Lauder Brunton

Sir Thomas Lauder Brunton, 1st Baronet FRS (14 March 1844 – 16 September 1916) was a Scottish physician who is most-closely associated with the use of amyl nitrite to treat angina pectoris.

Brunton was born in Roxburgh in southeastern Scotland, the son of James Brunton and his wife Agnes (née Stenhouse). He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, beginning research into pharmacology while still a student there, and receiving a gold medal for his 1866 thesis on digitalis. Following additional work in Austria, the Netherlands, and Germany, Brunton returned to University College, London, and while there he was selected for a position at St. Bartholomew's Hospital.

Brunton's clinical use of amyl nitrite to treat angina was inspired by earlier work with the same reagent by Arthur Gamgee and Benjamin Ward Richardson. Brunton reasoned that the pain and discomfort of angina could be reduced by administering amyl nitrite to open the coronary arteries of patients. In 1874, Brunton was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was knighted in 1900 and made a baronet in 1908.

Brunton married Louisa Jane, daughter of the Venerable Edward Adderley Stopford, Archdeacon of Meath, in 1879. She died in 1909. Brunton died in London in September 1916, aged 72, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his eldest son Stopford.

Selected Works

 * Experimental Investigation of the Action of Medicines (1875)
 * Scanned copy of the above book
 * A Textbook of Pharmacology, Therapeutics, and Materia Medica (1885)

References and links

 * "T. Lauder Brunton and Amyl Nitrite: A Victorian Vasodilator" by W. Bruce Fye, Circulation, 1986, volume 74, pp. 222 - 229. This article is available in the Adobe pdf format from the American Heart Association here.
 * Obituary for Brunton - Proceeding of the Royal Society of London, Series B, volume 89, number 622, page xliv - xlviii.
 * A very brief summary of Brunton's work
 * Leigh Rayment's Baronetage Page
 * www.thepeerage.com