Rustom Jal Vakil returned to India in 1938 after earning his medical degree from the University of London and focused on the treatment of heart ailments at a time when cardiology was not a distinct subspecialty in India. In 1949, after years of scrupulous collation and analysis of data, he published a watershed paper on the antihypertensive properties of Rauwolfia serpentina and effected a paradigm shift in the management of hypertension. Rauwolfia was the world's 1st successful blood-pressure-lowering agent, and its acceptance encouraged research scientists to pursue the development of other hypotensive drugs.Vakil was a prolific researcher whose contributions to Indian cardiovascular epidemiology—and to the whole of medical literature—were enormous. He was also a fine clinician with a remarkable gift for communication, be it with his patients, students, peers, or the lay public. All of this came together to make him the embodiment of a medically competent India.
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