R Adams Cowley

R Adams Cowley (July 25, 1917 – October 27, 1991) was an American surgeon considered a pioneer in emergency medicine and the treatment of shock trauma.

He was born in Layton, Utah on July 25, 1917.

Cowley was the son of a pharmacist William Wallace Cowley, his family's first college-educated member, who was the founder of Kowley Drugs, a drugstore on Main Street in Layton, Utah.

Cowley's mother, Alta Louise Adams, was a self-taught painter and mother of five boys.

Cowley was from the country, where he enjoyed riding horses and farming.

Cowley quit medical school at the University of Maryland because of homesickness for family and country life.

Upon hearing this, the Dean of the Medical School raced to the bus station, found young Cowley, and offered to let him live in his home if Cowley returned to his studies.

Cowley was married to Roberta Cowley, a speech-and-language pathologist from the University of Virginia.

Cowley had a son, R Adams Cowley II, who was born three weeks prior to his own death, and a daughter, Kay Cowley Pace, a teacher, from a prior marriage.

Before he obtained his M.D. degree, Cowley studied in and graduated from the Layton Public Schools of Layton, Utah and Davis County High School in Kaysville, Utah; in 1940, Cowley graduated eighth in his class at the University of Utah.

In the late 1940s, while serving in the U.S. Army, he received extensive surgical training in Europe.

He attended medical school at the University of Maryland, from which he graduated in 1944.

Cowley completed a fellowship at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

After years of research which he conducted in the late 1950s, it was officially opened at the University of Maryland Hospital in 1959.

During his years in the Army, Cowley pioneered in 1957, the once-controversial, but now universally-accepted, the concept of the "Golden Hour," which he defined as the fact that a severe trauma patient had 60 minutes or less from time of injury to receive specialized treatment at a Shock Trauma Unit to reduce mortality.

The controversial aspect was that for countless years, injured patients had been taken, by ambulance, to the nearest hospital to die.

To accomplish his goal, Cowley delegated, and shared responsibility for, Trauma Medicine with such hospitals throughout the state of Maryland as the Johns Hopkins Hospital's Pediatric Trauma Center, the Curtis Hand Center of Union Memorial Hospital, and the state burn center at Bay view Hospital.

Cowley also organized the "Maryland Institute of Emergency Medical Services," the first statewide coordinated EMS system of care in The United States.

Called the "Father of Trauma Medicine", he was the founder of the United States' first trauma center at the University of Maryland in 1958, after the United States army awarded him $100,000 to study shock in people—the first award of its kind in the United States.

The trauma unit at first consisted of two beds, and was later expanded to four beds.

Many people called the four-bed unit the "death lab."

Cowley was the creator of the "Golden Hour" concept, the period of 60 minutes or less following injury when immediate definitive care is crucial to a trauma patient's survival.

He was a leader in the use of helicopters for medical evacuations of civilians, beginning in 1969, and founded the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

In 1969, he started the first injured "civilian" helicopter transport service with the assistance of the Maryland State Police Aviation Division.

With over 400 published professional articles, chapters, books, and white papers to his credit, Cowley was a pioneer in raising awareness of trauma prevention.

Notably, Cowley took on Dr. David Boyd in his residency, and mentored him.

Boyd went on to further develop the Trauma system with his successes in the Illinois Trauma Center.

He also founded the nation's first statewide EMS system, called MIEMSS by Executive Order of Maryland's Governor Mandel, 1972, as well as the National Study Center for Trauma and EMS, enacted by Congress in 1986 and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan.

He is also known for being one of the first surgeons to perform open-heart surgery and invented both a surgical clamp that bears his name and the prototype pacemaker that was used by Dwight D. Eisenhower.

As a professor of Thoracic Surgery, University of Maryland, Cowley was the organizer of the world's first and longest-running, "Shock Trauma" Center.

In 1986, at Cowley's request and with the support of Maryland Senator Mathias, Ronald Reagan, the then President of the United States, signed the act authorizing the establishment of "The National Center For The Study of Trauma and Emergency Medical Services" and recognizing, as its founder and first director, R Adams Cowley.

The center was renamed May 1989 "The R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center of the University of Maryland Hospital."

This center, still in operation as of early April 2015, is located at the University of Maryland.

The University of Utah, which honored Cowley as one of Utah's most famous legends, requested and received the collection of his personal and professional papers.

Papers and memorabilia collected by the University of Utah.

Cowley's son R Adams Cowley II, an Eagle Scout, graduated from the Gilman School in Baltimore, Maryland, Vanderbilt University; Georgetown University, MS, Georgetown School of Medicine, 2020.

An amateur oil painter, Cowley donated one of his finest paintings, "Winterscape," during the first Shock Trauma Gala.

Spencer Adams, Cowley's uncle, played professional baseball with the New York Yankees.

Cowley was passionate about classical music, his favorite composer being Mozart.

Though he could have afforded a large house from his earnings as a doctor, Cowley lived in an efficient apartment covered with books, some of which he even kept inside its stove.