Physician Frederick Mahomed
Frederick Akbar Mahomed impacted the way we understand high blood pressure and did so before the age of 35. Frederick Akbar Mahomed was born in Brighton in 1849 he was a Mixed-Race Indian. His grandfather was businessman Sake Dean Mahomed.
Frederick Mahomed qualified as a doctor in 1872 after studying at Guy’s Hospital in London. Just two years later he was made a clinical assistant at the London Hospital before moving on to the London Fever Hospital. His career advanced quickly.
At a time when high blood pressure wasn’t fully understood as a disease Dr Mahomed was already studying it with scientific rigour. He improved the design of the sphygmograph which is a device
used to record the pulse, to investigate the connection between the pulse, blood pressure and kidney disease. Dr Mahomed was one of the first people to define essential hypertension when high blood pressure occurs without an obvious cause.
His clinical research showed that high blood pressure could lead to damage of the kidneys and the heart, even before symptoms became apparent. At the time doctors primarily focused on treating visible illness, so Dr Mahomed was pioneering preventative medicine. His work was so respected that he was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and awarded the Royal Society’s Fothergillian Medal.
Frederik Mahomed was just 35 years of age when he died from typhoid fever in 1884.
