Edward Johnson Wayne

Wayne attended Leeds Central High School from 1914 to 1920 and then matriculated at the University of Leeds, graduating there in 1923 BSc in chemistry and in 1924 MSc after working on organic chemistry. He then went to the University of Manchester to do research[2] under Hugh Stanley Raper[3] on the intermediary metabolism of the fatty acids. Wayne graduated there in 1925 with a PhD.[2]

He took classes in anatomy and physiology during a postdoctoral year of research at Manchester and then returned in 1926 to Leeds to study medicine, graduating MB, ChB in 1929.[2] From 1930 to 1931 he was a demonstrator in physiology at the University of Leeds.[1]

Wayne carried out some of the earliest trials on digoxin as well as an investigation on angina, using the ‘2-step test’ for the first time.[2]

From 1931 to 1934 Wayne worked as an assistant under the cardiologist Thomas Lewis in the department of clinical research at University College Hospital, London. He qualified MRCP in 1932.[2] From 1934 to 1953 he was Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of Sheffield,[1] "establishing a reputation as a clinical scientist and as a talented director of research."[4] He also became an associate physician to Sheffield Royal Infirmary. He was elected FRCP in 1937 and graduated MD in 1938. In 1953, as successor to Sir John William McNee, Wayne was appointed Regius Professor of the Practice of Medicine at Glasgow University. He held the professorship until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1967.[2]

As Regius Professor at Glasgow he was able to use the facilities available in the Gardiner Institute at the Western Infirmary to pursue research into thyroid disease, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and blood disorders.[4]

... he was later appointed physician to the Children’s Hospital and to the Emergency Medical Service. In 1941 he took charge of the beds and consulting practice of Robert Platt, later Lord Platt ... during the latter's absence in military service. ... After the war he became once again a full-time professor of therapeutics ...[2]

He was the Bradshaw Lecturer in 1953 and the Lumleian Lecturer in 1959. He was elected FRCPE in 1955. He was knighted in 1964.[2]

Among many positions, Wayne was Chairman of the Clinical Research Board of the Medical Research Council, 1960 to 1964 and Honorary Physician to the Queen in Scotland, from 1954 to 1967. His work on the BMA's Committee on Alcohol and Road Accidents led to the introduction of the blood alcohol limit of 80 mg per 100 ml of blood in the Road Safety Act, 1967.[4]

In 1932 in Scarborough, North Yorkshire he married Honora Nancy Halloran. Upon his death in 1990 he was survived by his widow, a son, and a daughter.[1]

By using a statistical procedure partially based on discriminant analysis, James Crooks,[5] I. P. C. Murray, and Edward J. Wayne developed a clinical diagnostic index (sometimes called the "Wayne score") in thyrotoxicosis. The procedure allocates a positive or negative score to each clinical feature and provides a numerical estimate of the degree of severity of the disease.[6]

Older generations of endocrinologists were familiar with the use of Wayne's score and Billewicz's score[7] for clinical diagnoses of hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism, respectively. Contemporary medical textbooks have discarded those two diagnostic scores as old-fashioned. However, various scoring and grading systems in clinical thyroidology might still have value.[8]

• "Sir Edward Johnson Wayne". National Portrait Gallery.