Wesley W. Spink
Wesley William Spink (December 17, 1904, Duluth, Minnesota – May 14, 1988, Minneapolis) was an American physician, medical school professor, and medical researcher. He was "an internationally recognized authority on infectious diseases and is credited with controlling the spread of brucellosis (undulant fever)". Education and career
In high school, Wesley W. Spink read extensively and was an outstanding football player. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Superior for one year and then, with the aid of a football scholarship, transferred to Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. There he graduated in 1926 with a degree in chemistry. In 1925 he served, for the summer, as the pastor of a community church in South Dakota. From 1926 to 1928 at Nebraska's Doane College he was instructor in economics and public speaking and also coached football and track. During the summer of 1927 he attended the Chicago Theological Seminary. He bought stocks with his salary from Doane College. In autumn 1928, one year before the Crash of 1929, he sold his stocks for a substantial gain and enrolled in Harvard Medical School, where after one year he was awarded a scholarship. After graduating in 1932 with an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, he was for 18 months from 1932 to 1933 a medical intern and for 3 years from 1933 to 1936 a medical resident at Boston City Hospital. During these years he was influenced by Hans Zinsser and George Minot and co-authored a number of papers with his supervisor Chester Keefer. At the University of Minnesota Medical School, Spink was from an assistant professor from 1937 to 1941, an associate professor from 1941 to 1946, and a full professor from 1946 to 1967, when he was appointed the Medical School's first Regents' professor. He retired in 1973 as Regents' professor emeritus. Spink did research on gonorrhea, streptococcal pharyngitis, staphylococcal infections, brucellosis, and sepsis and septic shock caused by Gram-negative bacteria. He was the author of 3 books and the author or co-author of about 500 articles. He served as president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 1949 and of American College of Physicians from 1963 to 1964. He established the Wesley Spink Memorial Lecture with the University of Minnesota's administration and the Medical School;  the first Memorial Lecture was presented in 1971 by William Ian Beardmore Beveridge. Family
In 1935 Wesley Spink married Elizabeth Hamilton Hurd, a Vassar graduate and a daughter of Randolph C. Hurd, who graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1899 and began to practice medicine in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1901. Wesley and Elizabeth Spink had a daughter, Helen, and a son, William. Helen Spink married Robert DuPont, M.D. Selected publications

References

1904 births
1988 deaths
American infectious disease physicians
American medical researchers
Physician-scientists
Carleton College alumni
Harvard Medical School alumni
University of Minnesota Medical School alumni