Thrombosis & Bleeding

About the Book

The maintenance of the fluid state of the blood in the blood vessels is essential for blood flow and life, but almost equally important is the mechanism to stem the loss of blood following injury and trauma. The subject of blood clotting and thrombosis has long been a difficult and confusing one. However progress in the field during the last half century or so has been phenomenal, almost unbelievably so, and many previously inexplicable findings now have rational explanations. This book is primarily an attempt to give the reader a short overall view of the mechanisms involved in these vital processes and their significance both in health and disease.

The approach has been a historical one in the sense that I have related the key discoveries more or less in the order in which they evolved. I have done this to enable me to introduce new data in incremental steps and to avoid overwhelming the reader with new information. I have also sprinkled the book with anecdotes and historical events to make the narrative more interesting reading. The goal throughout was to write a book that was informative and could be understood by the general reader.

About the Author

Cecil Hougie M.D. is currently Professor Emeritus of Pathology at the University of California at San Diego. He was born in the UK and obtained his medical degree from the University of London. After service in the Royal Air Force, he briefly held a fellowship in the Wright-Fleming Institute under Sir Alexander Fleming, the discover of penicillin. In 1955, he completed his training in Pathology and Hematology at the West London Hospital Medical School where he was senior resident and Dan Mason Research Fellow. During this period he also received instruction in blood coagulation from Professor R. G. Macfarlane and Dr. Rosemary Biggs at the Radcliffe Infirmary and Medical Research Council Coagulation Unit at Oxford. He immigrated to the States in 1955 and held staff positions at the Universities of North Carolina, Virginia and Washington. He was formerly an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association and Director of the Hematology Laboratories at the University of Washington before becoming the first Director of the Clinical Coagulation Laboratory at the University of California Medical Center in San Diego. He is the author or co-author of several books and has written over 200 medical research articles. He is best known for his discovery of factor X, a pivotal factor in blood clotting.