Henry Bruce Chown (1893-1986)

Physician, medical researcher.

Born in Winnipeg, the son of surgeon Harry H. Chown, he graduated from McGill University with a BSc in 1914. After service in the Canadian Forces overseas in World War One, where he won several decorations, he graduated from the University of Manitoba Medical School in 1922. Chown founded the Winnipeg Rh Laboratory in 1944, serving as its director until 1972. His laboratory discovered the mechanism of Rh haemolytic disease, its management, and its ultimate prevention, perhaps the most outstanding medical discovery ever made in Manitoba. In 1945 he carried out the first exchange transfusion of blood in Winnipeg. He was chairman of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital from 1949 to 1959, and co-founded the Rh Institute in 1969.

He was a member of the Scientific Club of Winnipeg from 1934 to 1961. He was awarded honorary degrees by the University of Manitoba (1963) and the Univerity of Winnipeg (1979). He was inducted into the Manitoba Order of the Buffalo Hunt in 1968 and was given a Centennial Medal of Honour by the Manitoba Historical Society in 1970.

He died in Victoria. In 1988, he was inducted into the Winnipeg Citizens Hall of Fame.

Chown’s papers are at the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections.

More information:

Dr. Henry Chown by Patricia Saunderson (1985).

Source:

Profile revised: 14 July 2009

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