Finding Aid to the Edward D. Freis Papers, 1926-2004

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Descriptive Summary

Biographical Note

Collection Summary

Index Terms

Administrative Information

Restrictions

Separated Materials

Series Descriptions

Series I: Personal and Biographical, 1969-2002

Series II: Scrapbooks, 1926-2004

Series III: Writings, Lectures and Public Appearances, 1942-2002

Series IV: Subject Files, 1931-2000

Series V: Studies, ca. 1960-94

Series VI: Photographs and Slides, 1972-85

Biographical Note

Edward David Freis (1912-2005) was born in Chicago, Illinois on May 13, 1912, one of four sons of Roy and Rose (Goldstein) Freis. He attended school in Chicago, graduating from Nicholas Seen High School in 1930, and earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Arizona in 1936. He married Willa Irene Hussey on August 12, 1936, after they met in college. They had three children before eventually divorcing around 1974; the two remained close until Willa's death in 1999. A year after the divorce, Freis met Mary Rose Curtis, the woman who would be his companion for the last thirty years of his life.

Continuing his education at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, Freis earned his M.D. in 1940. He interned at Massachusetts Memorial Hospital in Boston from 1940 to 1942, serving as House Physician of the 5th Medical Service of Boston University at Boston City Hospital from 1941 to 1942. When the United States entered into World War II Freis joined the U.S. Air Force and served at Lincoln Air Force Base in Nebraska as Assistant Chief and Chief of Laboratory Services from 1942 until 1944. He then became Chief of Laboratory Service in the Rheumatic Fever Research Program at Gowen Field in Boise, Idaho.

After leaving the armed services in 1945, Freis returned to Boston for a cardiology residency at Evans Memorial Hospital from 1946 to 1947, and afterwards held the position of Research Fellow for two years. While at Evans, Freis authored his first article on the benefits of using drugs in fighting the effects of hypertension. In addition to this work at the hospital, he taught at Boston University of Medicine as an Instructor of Medicine.

Freis's growing interest in the study of hypertension led him away from Boston to a joint appointment at the Veterans Administration Hospital and Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, DC in 1949; there he would build his reputation and remain for the rest of his career. From 1949 to 1959, Freis served as Assistant Chief and then Chief of Medical Service at the V.A. Hospital, and taught at the Georgetown University Medical Center. A year after joining the faculty, he established the Hypertension Clinic at the Medical Center and served as its chief for ten years from 1950 to 1960. Beginning in 1957 he investigated the first orally effective diuretic, an agent called chlorothiazide. His work led to a promotion in 1959 to Senior Medical Investigator. It was in this capacity that Freis would make his greatest contribution to the study of hypertension: he set out to prove his theories that hypertension was a cause of heart attacks, strokes, and kidney failure, and not merely a symptom of underlying vascular disease.

In 1964 Freis and his researchers at the Veterans Administration designed and led the Veterans Administration Cooperative Study Group on Antihypertensive Agents. This five-year study, which involved 17 hospitals and over 500 patients, was the first multi-clinic, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of its kind. Freis and his colleagues based the structure of this new study on a similar trial in antituberculosis research at the V.A., and while it was a continuation of sorts of earlier antihypertensive studies, the initial goals of the trial were to determine the potency of certain antihypertensive drugs. In particular, the researchers looked at occurrences of morbidity and mortality in cases of moderate to severe hypertension. The results of this undertaking confirmed Freis's belief that even moderate hypertension could be deadly, and that treatment through drug therapy could reduce the death rate and help prevent the development of serious complications such as stroke, congestive heart and kidney failure.

Little fanfare accompanied the release in 1970 of the study's results, until Freis was awarded the Albert Lasker Foundation Clinical Research Award in 1971 for his role in the V.A. Cooperative Study. Mary Lasker of the Foundation was so convinced of the findings that she brought them to the attention of the National Institute of Health's Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Elliot Richardson; shortly thereafter in 1972 he established the High Blood Pressure Education Program under the auspices of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The relative success of this first cooperative study laid the groundwork for many subsequent studies, many headed by Freis in his role as Senior Medical Investigator.

Throughout his long career, Freis actively participated in professional organizations such as the American Heart Association and the American Medical Association. He served on the editorial boards of several medical journals including Circulation and American Heart Journal. He has been recognized numerous times for his work, receiving the CIBA Award for Hypertension Research from the American Heart Association in 1981, and the first ever Stevo Julius Award for Education in Hypertension from the International Society of Hypertension in 2000. The National Conference on High Blood Pressure Control named an award after him in 1985.

Having received recognition for his contributions to the study of hypertension, Freis continued to work as a Distinguished Physician with the Veterans Administration until his death at 92 in February 2005. He had authored several books and chapters, countless lectures, and nearly 400 articles in medical journals worldwide. One of his most important articles, however, appeared early in his career: his "Hemodynamics of Hypertension," published in Physiological Reviews in 1960, drew attention to the relationship between circulation and hypertension. Many today consider this to be a classic text in basic hypertension; some of his colleagues rank this article with his V.A. study in terms of contribution to cardiovascular research.

Brief Chronology

Return to the Table of Contents

Collection Summary

Journal articles and reprints, books, subject files, research data, photographs, slides, and videotapes (1926-2004; 18.3 linear feet) chronicle the work of Edward D. Freis as a pioneer in the research of hypertension and hemodynamics. As a senior medical investigator at the Hypertension Research Clinic, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Freis conducted many clinical trials that led to the development of more effective treatments for hypertension. However, the collection lacks much of the original clinical data collected during his research; if this data survives they would most likely remain at the V.A. Medical Center.

His clinical research and overall expertise on hypertension are best represented in Series III: Writings and Lectures and Series V: Studies. Freis wrote nearly 400 articles on all aspects of hypertension; the majority of the materials in Series III are reprints of articles written by Freis and his colleagues. Several typescripts of his articles are also contained within this series, as are several books on hypertension authored by Freis. Series V contains some materials regarding studies with which Freis was involved; these items include "investigator's brochures" (compiled data), study proposals, a final draft from the landmark V.A. Cooperative Study on Antihypertensive Agents, and some illustrative materials such as graphs and photographs.

In addition to his own reprints, Freis gathered reprints and photocopies of articles and essays by others, which he annotated and supplemented with his own notes, research data, and other materials (Series IV: Subject Files). Freis organized these files into three main subject areas: Hypertension, Hemodynamics, and Miscellaneous; he also created a detailed index to the scheme. Each main subject was given a unique letter designation: H for hypertension, T for hemodynamics, and U for Miscellaneous. Subsets within each main category were numbered in ascending order, while the individual component folders were numbered in descending order (usually beginning with 34). These numbers are found within square brackets. The index contains missing file numbers, presumably by intent and to be filled in later. During processing, unclassified files were arranged alphabetically in the subseries Subjects Not Filed by Freis; when missing, titles were supplied and marked by square brackets.

Also included in the Writings and Lectures series are audio recordings, videotapes, and transcripts of medical lectures and interviews given by Freis throughout his career to various audiences. Many of the videotapes were dubbed in the late 1980s from the original films, whose locations are unknown. One videotape, "Early Hypertension TV Broadcasts," contains lectures for the American College of Physicians (1954) and the CIBA TV Clinical Symposium (1959) whereby the audience watched the speaker through closed circuit television, making them a novel presentation method for that period in time.

The collection contains little personal information about Freis apart from the scrapbooks that comprise Series II. The scrapbooks themselves contain article reprints, some photographs, some correspondence, and programs from conferences, symposia, award ceremonies, etc. at which Freis participated or attended and are arranged chronologically. While most of the scrapbooks profile Freis's career, the next to last album in the series pertains to his retirement from the Veterans Administration; the contents consist of letters of congratulations from friends and colleagues (including Walter Mondale), as well as photographs from the farewell dinner.

In addition to the scrapbook materials, Series I: Personal and Biographical includes CVs and bibliographies from various points in Freis's career, including a recent one from 2001. A few items document the numerous awards received by Freis, although some of the actual awards are contained within this series. Also of interest are several of Freis's golf diaries that range in date from the 1970s until just a few years before his death. A handful of portrait photographs of Freis are included among the photographic materials in Series VI, however the bulk of the series contains illustrations for lectures and articles. The slides appear to have been used by Freis during lectures and for some of his publications. He mixed and matched slides to create different lectures and others were pulled to be used in publications; they are arranged loosely by topic when possible.

Return to the Table of Contents

Restrictions

Restrictions

Portions of the collection are restricted. Contact the Reference Staff for information regarding access. For online customer service, please visit http://www.nlm.nih.gov/contacts/custserv-email.html.

Copyright

Copyright was transferred to the public domain. Contact the Reference Staff for details regarding rights. For online customer service, please visit http://www.nlm.nih.gov/contacts/custserv-email.html.

Return to the Table of Contents

Return to the Table of Contents

Administrative Information

Alternate Forms Available

Portions of the Collection have been digitized and are available at: http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov

Preferred Citation

Freis, Edward D.. Edward D. Freis Papers. 1926-2004. Located in: Modern Manuscripts Collection, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD; MS C 550.

Provenance

Gift, Edward D. Freis, 10/19/2004. Acc. #2004-056.

Processing Information

The original pressure bindings were removed from the scrapbooks in Series II during processing and the contents re-housed; photocopies were made of Scrapbooks 1 and 39 (Freis's retirement) prior to disbinding to preserve the original context. Photocopies on acid-free paper have replaced the original newspaper clippings. An investigator's brochure from Series V was removed from its 3-ring binder and the contents re-housed.

Return to the Table of Contents

Series Descriptions

Return to the Table of Contents

Return to the Table of Contents

Return to the Table of Contents